British Council British Council Visual Arts

An exhibition of drawings and watercolours curated by Geoffrey Grigson in 1951 and drawn from the British Council Collection. This exhibition was a mainstay of the touring exhibition programme and underwent various revivals during its lifespan. Works by Sickert, Gilman, Gwen John and Frances Hodgkins, as well as Moore, Sutherland and a few younger artists were added for a tour of New Zealand, and the exhibition was shown in Israel and Portugal on its return to the UK. The exhibition was reformulated again with the addition of works by artists such as Robert Adams, Eduardo Paolozzi and Alan Reynolds, for a tour of Canada from October 1955 to May 1957, and revived again in the 1960s for showings in the Middle and Far East; and finally in the 1970s for showings in Europe.

The exhibition would return regularly to London for conservation checks and refurbishment. Some works would be withdrawn for exhibition purposes elsewhere to rejoin the show at a later date.

Various language editions of the catalogue, with Grigson's introduction and notes on the artists, were published. No ISBN numbers.

Reviews

Wuerttembergusche Abendzeitung (21 February 1951

It would be difficult indeed to discover the character of a national school in the work of the last 50 years represented here ... The Versatile Wyndham Lewis, from the point of view of art history, stands, so to speak, on the turning point of modern English art. His abstract composition of 1912 is in its way as revolutionary as the contemporary work of Franz Marc. Form is still expressed in dynamic terms.

The largest contribution to the exhibition has been made by the sculptor Henry Moore with five figure drawings, amongst them groups of shelterers in the London Underground. This is human tragedy translated into the monumental language of a compact mass of human forms, only faintly indicated, in a grey tone with the slight breath of colour. Notice the calm of the Seated Woman reading (now known as The Artist's Sister, Mary). This is indeed a great artist.

Another prominent artist, though more problematical, is Graham Sutherland, who, in his still-life-like Landscape with Estuary under a red sky, shows himself a daring colourist, and in his Thorns and Palm Leaves an inventor of strangely expressive form. Robert Colquhoun's Card Players and Keith Vaughan's Oyster Fisherman show some of Sutherland's visionary force. Edward Burra created a pleasant, ironical decoration in his colourful Band.

The abstract compositions of Etchells, Ben Nicholson and Robert Adams - the latter in the manner of Miro - are very similar to those executed in Paris, the Bauhaus, or indeed anywhere, In the work of the other artists, however, we can find certain individual an artistically interesting characteristics, even though the subject treated is often commonplace, as in Craxon's drawing A Greek Shepherd Boy, or the fascinating sheet by Christopher Wood of a French hotel on the beach. To this group belong the gouaches, in a surrealist vein, of Bryan Wynter Foreshore with Gulls and John Minton Stormy Day, Cornwall as well as the delightful pen and ink drawings on prepared ground by Anthony Gross, and a romantic Curtained Outlook by David Jones. The language of art has indeed become international, the language of humanity.

The exhibition toured in New Zealand in 1953 and ran into controversy, described by the British Council Representative as 'a storm in a teacup'. A town councillor declared 'I could get similar in the primary departments of any school in this town. It is harmful that young people are being taken to these displays and told that they are art when they are not'. The Town Council passed a resolution that the exhibition was not welcome and its showing should be cancelled. A warmer reception awaited the exhibition in Auckland and a review in the New Zealand Listener of 6th November, A R D Fairburn singled out the exhibition as one of the most important of 24 or more held during 1953 but found fault with individual drawings

I was disappointed by several … in particular by a piece of fiddling by David Jones, a rather nondescript Sickert doing nothing like justice to that great man, and what seemed to me a meaningless black and yellow collage that stopped just this side of impudence. On the other hand, I was most grateful for the opportunity of looking at fine tings by Henry Moore, Frances Hodgkins, Graham Sutherland and some others.

At Nelson the principal of Nelson College for Girls wrote on 6th November

I wish to thank you and the Trustees of the Gallery for making such a valuable collection available to our pupils. To read about the works of modern artists amd to see reproductions of their pictures in books is a very different matter from seeing such an exhibition as this. In many cases it is not easy to understand what the modern artist is trying to express, but … we must surely try to understand them. I feel that the recent exhibition was a help to this end …

9th December 1957 the British Council Representative in Belgium reported

The opening began with a flourish and something of an event, the flourish being contributed by the Grand Ducal Band, which is a sort of state para-military wind ensemble of high standard … Professor Mayers, Director of the Museum, told me that it was on the whole perhaps the finest collection seen in Luxembourg since the war … When I returned to Luxembourg a few days later to lecture I was told that the number if visitors was gratifying.

5th January 1959 the British Council Representative in Poland reported that the galleries in Krakow and Szczecin had both requested an extension of time for the exhibition which suggested that the exhibition was proving popular with their visitors. He went on to write

On all sides there was high praise for the selection; for the framing and (among Museum experts) for the most efficient method of packing. This is more important than it may seem as the ease with which the Exhibition could be packed and unpacked enabled a day to be saved between Szczecin and Warsaw.In countries such as this - where little enough about the so-called Capitalist countries I permitted to percolate down to the level of the normally intelligent member of the public - manifestations such as the British Watercolours Exhibitions pay untold dividends in goodwill to Britain and will be remembered, spoken about, and compared to the rivals from the democratic countries long after the pictures have left the country.

Representative Tunisia reported on 2 November 1966 that the exhibition had had favourable comment in the press. 'The Minister of Culture, who was invited to attend a preview, said 'This exhibition is of great intrinsic importance because of the remarkable standard of paintings. But it is also important because it encourages cultural exchanges between our two countries in a new way.;