Dorset is another of Evelyn's paintings in which the subject looks out of the frame. The previous post looked at August, a largely autobiographical image, enveloped in deep emotions. The conclusion was drawn that when Evelyn wants to express something particularly profound, moving or important, the principal figure's gaze is concentrated on something, actual or notional, outside the frame. In all Evelyn's work there are only 7 such images, so the rarity of this arrangement perhaps indicates the importance she deliberately laid on her subject and its implications.
The fascinating back-story of Dorset is told here. Briefly, the figure is based on Anne Garland, heroine of Thomas Hardy's novel The Trumpet Major. She has climbed to a vantage point on Portland Bill, the southernmost point of the county of Dorset, which has wide views over the English Channel. The views are wide enough to encompass and follow the course of shipping up and down the Channel.
The date is September 16th, 1805, and the time is about 4pm. It's not certain that Evelyn knew this, or even needed to know it, although given the colouring of the grasses about her and the early autumnal feel of the landscape, maybe she has done some homework in the interests of historical accuracy. In fact these details come from a contemporary ship's log: none other than the log of HMS Victory, outward bound from Portsmouth on a voyage that will culminate five weeks later near Cadiz, off the Atlantic coast of Spain, by Cape Trafalgar.
Among the ship's company of HMS Victory are Bob Loveday, whom Anne Garland will eventually marry, Admiral Horatio Nelson and, to square the circle, the captain of HMS Victory, Thomas Masterman Hardy, whom Thomas Hardy the novelist claimed as a distant family relative. Both Hardys were Dorset men.
What the people of Britain - including the fictional Anne Garland - knew in the summer of 1805 was that Napoleon, intent on invading Britain, had gathered a massive fleet of transports at Boulogne to ferry his 200,000 strong army across the Channel. All he needed was the French navy to protect its passage for the few hours it would take to cross the Channel. In Napoleon's words: 'Let us be masters of the Channel for six hours, and we are masters of the world'.
At Trafalgar on October 21st 1805 the French fleet was destroyed. Britain was safe. Part of the price Britain paid for salvation was the death of Nelson, shot by a sniper high in the rigging of a French ship. (In fact Napoleon, ever impatient with the non-arrival of his navy, struck camp at Boulogne in late August and marched off to trouble southern Germany. The whole vast but eventually futile enterprise had been financed by the Louisiana Purchase, the sale of Louisiana by France to the infant United States.)
End of history lesson. Not, of course, that you needed it, but it gives us the background against which Anne Garland, conscious and fearful of great national danger threatening, focuses her gaze through the protective shield of her hands to a point beyond the frame where the great battleship - with her suitor on board - slowly disappears over the western horizon. Thank you, Thomas Hardy, and thank you, Evelyn.
We move on to something curiously similar.
Putting on Anti-Gas Protective Clothing 1940 Oil on canvas Imperial War Museum, London
Putting on Anti-Gas Protective Clothing was among first of Evelyn's war paintings. Perhaps unexpectedly, it bears comparison with Dorset above. It's another of the very few paintings in Evelyn's output in which the principal subject - seen alone in the final box - is looking beyond the frame, indicating something particularly significant or important. It was very well received by the War Artists' Advisory Committee, to the extent that Evelyn appears to have received a bonus payment for it by order of Sir Kenneth Clark, the WAAC chairman. It was painted in May and June, 1940.
At the outbreak of war in September 1939 gas attacks, using the same gases - phosgene, chlorine and mustard gas - as those used in World War 1 were widely expected. Gas masks were issued to the entire British population. Warning, recovery and primary care, particularly in the cities, of victims of gas attack were entrusted to Air Raid Precautions (later Civil Defence), a civilian organisation drawing its members partly from the Women's Voluntary Service, which is exactly what Evelyn's subjects were. By the final frame her principal subject, helmeted and dressed in rubberised anti-gas material probably dating from World War 1, is facing with grim determination the dreadful threat from German poison gas bombing raids...
...which never happened. However, before Evelyn's paint was fully dry the threat of gas had been replaced by something else. In late May and early June 1940 the news was grim. The British army, maintaining a presence in northern France since the outbreak of war, had been outmanœuvred and driven by Hitler's armies to the Channel coast. An enormous rescue operation, overseen by the Royal Navy, evacuated thousands of British, Commonwealth and French troops from the beaches of Dunkirk. Immense amounts of equipment were abandoned. The army was broken. Soon afterwards France fell. The German army lay poised to invade.
And in the few weeks' interim between Evelyn sketching out her first designs and signing off Anti-Gas Protective Clothing in the bottom right hand corner, there was a change of Prime Minister: the ineffectual Neville Chamberlain was replaced by Winston Churchill. Evelyn has tilted her subject's head in an attitude of defiance and determination, which cleverly allows us to see her face through the perspex of her gas mask. It is this expression which make me wonder if she had seen a photograph of Winston Churchill at much the same time, similarly looking resolutely upwards and outwards towards the national peril.
Text ©Christopher Campbell-Howes 2023. All rights reserved
by Christopher Campbell-Howes
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