Looking beyond the frame: (6) The Queue at the Fish Shop, (7) It weren't me, Miss

 

The Queue at the Fish Shop Oil on canvas 1942-5 Imperial War Museum

In this mini-series of Evelyn's paintings and drawings, in which figures look beyond the frame to some great matter, to something of particular importance, we come to The Queue at the Fish Shop of 1942-5. Excluding portraits, there are only 7 such figures: (1) August, (2) Putting on Anti-Gas Protective Clothing, (3) Dorset, (4) Joseph in the Pit, (5) 'Zacchaeus', (6) The Queue at the Fish Shop, and (7) ...wait and see: Evelyn's little joke. (Or is it?)

Evelyn, in self-portrait, is looking at us. She's impassive, unsmiling. How it would have transformed the whole painting and minimised its impact if she had been smiling! Nor is she angry. (Evelyn never was: impatient sometimes, but never angry.) She's challenging our complacency, maybe our mistrust. Let's explore this in a little detail.

There are certain lines, actual or implied, in The Queue at the Fish Shop. The cyclist is Evelyn's husband, Flight Lieutenant Roger Folley, RAF. If you extend the line of Roger's handlebars (it does no harm to do it with a transparent plastic ruler on a reproduction), if you extend the line of the fold of his fore-and-aft cap, if you follow the line of heads in the left-hand queue, you arrive at the same point: the beginning of the inscription LARGE SUPPLIES OF FRESH FISH FROM THE COAST DAILY. Just at the moment, of course, there aren't any fish at all, and superficially Evelyn is pointing an inescapable irony. But there will be. It's a promise. The guarantor of that promise is Roger, standing for the Royal Air Force and by implication the armed services. It must have been very exciting for Evelyn to cast this mantle on the shoulders of her fiancé: she started The Queue at the Fish Shop to mark their engagement, in February 1942. It was a personal statement. It was by no means a War Artists' Advisory Committee commission.

My thesis in these six - but not the seventh - 'Beyond the Frame' images is that, deliberately or instinctively, Evelyn draws our attention to major themes - death, war, personal tragedy (as in August), religious epiphany (as in 'Zacchaeus') - by giving them an unseen offstage existence, and creating the onstage, on-canvas tension and drama through her characters' reactions to them. The Queue at the Fish Shop, is exceptional in that what is offstage is a guarantee, a promise kept. We aren't so very far, once again, from Evelyn's driving notion of the Covenant, the contract between the Creator and mankind: in return for mankind's love for and care of the earth, the Creator promises endless abundance. It's this that Evelyn, in an earnest stare that some feel uncomfortable to confront for very long, is asking us not to forget.

* * * 

(7) It weren't me, Miss

 Sketch for Land Girls Going to Bed 1943 Photograph ©Liss Llewellyn

Above is a sketch for Land Girls Going to Bed. These Land Girls were billeted in a large country house, probably in or near Wooler, Northumberland. Evelyn included them in her portfolio of images from the Borders in May, 1943. These young women have allowed Evelyn into their dormitory to record them preparing for bed. One might be already asleep, the girl in the bunk below turns out in the final oil version to be applying cold cream to her face, and there's nothing much to be said about the other two girls, one kneeling in front of a chest of drawers, the other sketched in profile in the foreground. In the final version, however, she takes on a character absent from the sketch. Here she is:

 Land Girls Going to Bed (detail)

What is she looking at, beyond the frame, as she tugs her Women's Land Army jumper over her liberty bodice? Evelyn doesn't tell us, but as we should know by now, there's always something else in her work, something hidden, something hinted at, something alluded to, something unexpected for us to discover, we mightn't be far out if we supposed that what the girl is looking at is a supervisor, maybe a warden, asking 'Right, who broke the bunk? Come on, own up!'

Here's the final version:

 Land Girls Going to Bed Oil on canvas 1943 Imperial War Museum

If we look carefully at the lower of the two visible bunks, the side rail, the one close to those slippers, has come adrift. The nearer end appears to rest on the floor, meaning that Cold Cream Girl is going to have a lop-sided night. If we dismissed this as poor draughtsmanship (which we shouldn't have done: artists of Evelyn's calibre just don't make mistakes like that), we've only to refer to her sketch: it's just as deliberate there. What's more, someone has placed that rush-seated chair so as to obscure the broken bed rail. Clearly there's been some larking about. Who bust it? Who was bouncing on it? I don't think the answer is far to seek. However momentous Evelyn's off-stage concerns are, no doubt this was of equally pressing immediate importance to the beady-eyed girl undressing. What do you think?

* * * 

This is the 100th post in this blog, and with it I take my leave of the thousands of readers who have stayed the course since I first started this series of essays and commentaries on Evelyn Dunbar's work in 2011.  Thank you all for your loyalty and support; I hope you've enjoyed reading them as much as I've enjoyed writing them. Best wishes to you all.

Text ©Christopher Campbell-Howes 2023. All rights reserved.  

Looking beyond the frame (5) 'Zacchaeus'

 

  'Zacchaeus' pre-1933 Pen and wash heightened with white on paper Signed 'E.Dunbar' Private collection

I ought to preface 'Zacchaeus' and its fascinating back story by putting CONJECTURE ALERT at the head: what follows is the piecing together of several sometimes quite disparate elements in the hope of composing a convincing narrative. Alas, some of what follows is guesswork - informed guesswork, I hope, but still more conjecture than good scholarship has houseroom for. If any reader knows better or has information to add to the following reconstruction, please leave a comment. I'd be very grateful!

* * *

In about 1922, when Evelyn was in her mid-teens, she seems to have considered illustrating a series of Bible stories in pen and ink, and in contemporary dress. What her purpose was we don't know, but we can maybe assume some project connected with the Christian Science community in Rochester of which her family (apart from her father William) were committed members. Biblical illustration was something that drove her throughout her life: her final completed painting was Jacob's Dream, on her easel in her studio when she died in May 1960. One such early drawing was Martha, Mary and Lazarus:

 Martha, Mary and Lazarus 1922 Pen and wash on paper NS Image ©Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Evelyn has gone to St Luke' gospel, chapter 10, for his account of Jesus' visit to the house where the siblings Lazarus, Martha and their young sister Mary lived. Lazarus doesn't appear in Evelyn's picture: the man on the left is Jesus; sitting on a plaid rug opposite him, enraptured by his discourse, is Mary, who has some resemblance to the teenage Evelyn; in the background is Martha, peeling apples or potatoes in a posture reminiscent of Evelyn's mother Florence that we've seen elsewhere. Jesus has taken his boots off, a standard practice in Islam, one which the Koran shares with the Old Testament, denoting that the place where he is and the context of his teaching is sacred. How much Evelyn knew of Stanley Spencer's casting of scriptural subjects in modern dress and surroundings we don't know, but for Evelyn to do so, in the context of her own home, and possibly including herself, is surely an equally powerful vector.

In 1957, towards the end of her life, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford asked Evelyn, who had been teaching part-time in Oxford for some years, for some samples of her work. She chose to donate a couple of family pencil portraits and Martha, Mary and Lazarus. It may be noteworthy that Evelyn didn't sign it.

Was Martha, Mary and Lazarus the only Biblical pen-and-ink illustration in the series?

* * *

In the final months of Evelyn's postgraduate year at the Royal College of Art Evelyn volunteered to join a small team of recent graduates to decorate the hall at Brockley School for Boys in south-east London. She did so at the invitation of her mural tutor, Charles Mahoney. It was a big project, and the work lasted, largely uninterrupted, for a little under three years, April 1933 to February 1936. As the project neared its end, by which time Evelyn and Mahoney had become lovers, she looked about for other projects and commissions. One result of her search was an invitation in March 1936 by Athole Hay, Registrar at the Royal College of Art, to submit mural designs for the interior decoration of some new buildings at the University of London.

To accompany this request she was asked to submit a supporting portfolio of her work, to be delivered to Athole Hay at the Royal College of Art, and this she did. What happened to this portfolio is not known. It seems to have disappeared from the RCA. Having left the RCA three years before, Evelyn no longer had an automatic entrée there, even less after she and Mahoney separated in 1937. There's some suggestion in the Evelyn-Mahoney correspondence, now housed in the Tate Archive, that she asked him to collect it or at least enquire about it. Evelyn was concerned that it shouldn't fall into unauthorised hands. There the story dies until many years later.

It was in 2010 or thereabouts that a very fine pen and ink drawing, rather hurriedly signed 'E Dunbar' in the style she favoured in the mid-1930s, came to light in a document drawer in a piece of furniture once belonging to Eric Ravilious, who died in 1942. When his daughter Anne Ullmann told me about it she had no idea how it came to be there. Although he never taught Evelyn, Eric Ravilious had taught at the Royal College of Art throughout the years of her studentship and thereafter. Evelyn and Ravilious hardly knew each other. The likelihood, but pure conjecture, is that the pen and ink drawing had come from Evelyn's missing portfolio.

* * *

It's an impressive piece of work, of a depth rarely achieved with pen, ink and wash, heightened with white, alive with movement and excitement. Here it is again for reference:

 

This, then, is another in this mini-series of images Evelyn has created in which a principal figure is looking beyond the frame. There are only 7, and one of them, number 7, is one of Evelyn's jokes; this is number 5. It's a technique Evelyn uses to evoke something of great importance happening beyond the frame. Some would say that what is happening here is of unequalled significance.

Clearly something very exciting is about to happen. A star-struck, enraptured girl - could she be the same girl as in Martha, Mary and Lazarus above? - is looking out of the frame at something so blinding, so brilliantly powerful that the girl next to her has to shield her eyes. Other people (I can count sixteen), it seems of all ages, are hurrying to see what's going on, what's happening beyond the frame, who's coming. And two, to get a better view, are climbing a tree, one by ladder and one, not an enormous person, by rope or - it isn't clear - rope ladder, slung from a much higher branch.

Could there be a clue in St Luke, chapter 19? Has Evelyn transported her imagination to 1st Century AD Jericho, clothing her scene in modern dress?

And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. And behold, there was a man called Zacchaeus...and he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for today I must abide at thy house...

But how did this drawing come into Eric Ravilious' possession? Better not to ask, surely. A conjecture too far.

Text ©Christopher Campbell-Howes 2023. All rights reserved.

  

Further reading...

EVELYN DUNBAR : A LIFE IN PAINTING
by Christopher Campbell-Howes

is available to order online from:

Casemate Publishing | Amazon UK | Amazon US

448 pages, 301 illustrations. RRP £30

 

 

 

Looking beyond the frame (4) Joseph in the Pit

 

 

Joseph in the Pit Oil on canvas 1947 Photograph Petra van der Wal ©Christopher Campbell-Howes Private collection

Here is poor Joseph, youngest of Jacob's sons and his father's favourite. If he's unfamiliar through reading of Genesis, Chapter 37, he's reasonably universally known though the late 1960s musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Evelyn's picture above is the second of a trilogy of paintings illustrating crucial moments in the Joseph story. The first is Joseph's Dream, begun in about 1937 and analysed here, and the third is Joseph in Prison, completed some 12 years later.

Joseph's brothers, destined to found the 12 tribes of Israel, detested Joseph bitterly, partly because of his favoured family standing and partly because of his boastfully egocentric dreams. The brothers plotted to kill him, but were dissuaded from murder by the eldest, Reuben, who suggested that they should let nature take its course by robbing him of his coat of many colours and throwing him into a pit, where he would certainly die of starvation or be eaten by a wild beast.

* * *

Shortly after World War 2 Evelyn went with her husband Roger Folley to the Yorkshire dales, a walking expedition which included exploring Gordale Scar, a massive limestone ravine, possibly a collapsed cave. Has she invoked Gordale Scar as the backdrop for Joseph's discomfiture? Was this the trigger for the continuation and completion of Evelyn's long-considered Joseph trilogy? 

Joseph in the Pit is unique in a curious way. It's the only painting in her entire canon (we exclude minor works like mice climbing Lake District mountains) which features mountainous scenery in the form of bare unyielding rock, with not the slightest hint of any form of growth or hint of regeneration, in which the hand of man hasn't intervened to work the land. So Joseph is condemned to die...apparently.

Joseph in the Pit is unusual, if not quite unique, in another way: it's another of the very few paintings, I believe 7 in all, in which the principal subject is looking out beyond the frame, searching, regretting, identifying, welcoming something of the greatest personal or general significance. Here Joseph, stripped of everything apart from a sort of undershirt, looks despairingly upwards for any sign of help. Maybe Evelyn, as she often did, had a line of a Psalm handy as she conceived the design of her painting, perhaps Psalm121: I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help, in the 17th century diction she loved.

And of course help did come, in the form of a band of desert nomads who discovered Joseph, hauled him up, took him to Egypt with them and sold him as a slave. He never looked back.

Text ©Christopher Campbell-Howes 2023. All rights reserved.

EVELYN DUNBAR : A LIFE IN PAINTING
by Christopher Campbell-Howes

is available to order online from:

Casemate Publishing | Amazon UK | Amazon US

448 pages, 301 illustrations. RRP £30