Threshold of the modern History of the New, at the Fine Art Society
A big welcome to the Fine Art Society, exhibiting for the first time at the British Art Fair this Autumn. Save the RA, is there a more august organisation in the British art world? The society – which runs galleries in Edinburgh and London – was founded in 1876, and played a big part in the history of art by pioneering the one-man exhibition (most famously that of James McNeil Whistler in 1880).
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, c.1924-1927.
Courtesy of The Fine Art Society Ltd
Last week the society opened their summer exhibition, simultaneously in both their galleries, 350 miles apart. The title of the show is History of the New, bringing together artists who, according to the catalogue’s introduction, by managing director Emily Walsh, ‘found themselves working at the threshold of the modern… [and who] rejected the received wisdom of the day in favour of forging new ways of making art’.
The society moved from their historic London premises on New Bond Street in 2018, round the corner to Carnaby Street. Entering through the door takes you from the garish commercial bustle of that part of the city, into a peaceful, back-in-time, four-storey townhouse, where you can admire paintings and engravings by the likes of Paul Nash, Peter de Francia, John Byrne, Graham Sutherland, Keith Vaughan, Alberto Morrocco, Harold Gilman, CRW Nevinson and Iain McNab, as well as sgraffito stoneware by Waistel Cooper, and art furniture by Alfred Waterhouse and Lamb of Manchester, inter alia.
The catalogue’s cover is illustrated with a townscape by the Glasgow-born, British art-nouveau architect, designer and watercolourist Charles Rennie Mackintosh, painted in c1924-27. The subject is the village of Palada, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, near to Amélie-les-Bains, where the artist had moved in the autumn of 1923 with his wife Margaret Macdonald.
The painting is hung on the third floor of the gallery, and it is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the show. It is noted in the catalogue that this is not a purely topographical depiction of the village: in the spirit of Cubism, it is a conglomerate of representations from different points of view. Mackintosh has omitted most of the wooded hillside overlooking the settlement, for dramatic effect, and dulled the colours of the rooftops – from red to dark umber and grey – to lend a wintry feeling to the scene, as the cuboid dwellings cascade down to the riverside, crowned by rounded, roofless medieval towers. These are not the decisions of an architect dabbling in watercolours: they are the decisions of a sophisticated artist at the top of his game.
Another work that exemplifies the title of the show is The Washerwoman (La Lavandeuse) c1911, by Harold Gilman. Gilman had recently paid a visit to Paris, where, immersing himself in the works of the post-impressionists, he had been particularly struck by the work of van Gogh. You can clearly see the influence of the Dutchman in the choice of everyday subject matter, bold use of pulsating colour and impasto brushstrokes. There’s also a Cezanniness about the blocky, multicolour mountains in the background. Gilman, of course, was a founder member of the Camden Town Group, those Modernist pioneers, who developed a very British brand of post-impressionism, shunting British art into the twentieth century. This is a painting – like many others in the show - that deserves to be seen in the flesh.