By James Brewer
A young woman in a beautiful floor-length cream-coloured dress poses elegantly, exuding serene self-confidence, alongside a majestic musical instrument, a cello. She is flawlessly painted by a once sought-after 1930s portraitist named Meredith Frampton, who was to fall into obscurity for three and a half decades of his life. The marvellous oil rendition, a classic of its kind, was consigned by an earlier generation of Tate gallery administrators to storage.
Now this work is one of many to be celebrated prominently after Tate Britain has refreshed the way its stand-out collection of British art is organised and presented in what is understatedly called a ‘rehang.’
Curators have used the rehang opportunity to link past and present, through judicious arrangements and brief but salient commentaries. One such connection is the way in which Meredith Frampton (1894-1984) in 1935 achieved Portrait of a Young Woman. The tall, vertical format echoes the full-body, courtly portraits of women that were painted in the 17th and 18th centuries. His subject is 23-year-old Margaret Austin-Jones, a friend.
The study of the sophisticated, auburn-haired Margaret was thoroughly thought through. Frampton said that he completed it “to celebrate an assembly of objects… beautiful in their own right.” The cello which leans against a pedestal was “an appropriate symbol” of Margaret’s musicality, although she was not a performer. Her chic silk dress and a pale lilac bodice was made by Frampton’s mother, the painter Christabel Cockerell, Lady Frampton (1863–1951) from a pattern he saw in Vogue magazine. On the table, a mahogany vase was designed by Frampton himself.
Always immaculate in his endeavours, he achieved a near-photographic realism: the gallery label says that “the precision with which Frampton paints, combined with the work’s feeling of extreme stillness, gives it an uncanny, modern feeling.”. Frampton’s heyday as a portraitist was in the 1920s–1940s, and his sitters ranged from the Duke of York, before he became King George VI, academics, and scientists, to full length portraits of society women – a genre associated with earlier artists such as Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) and Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788). He could spend an entire year working on a single painting. In the 1950s, his eyesight deteriorated, forcing him to stop painting for the last 35 years of his life. The portrait of Margaret was presented to Tate in 1935 by the trustees of the Chantrey Bequest.
Headlining Frampton as “the forgotten genius of British art,” a BBC website article written in 2017 by Alastair Sooke, chief art critic of The Daily Telegraph, referred to “this extraordinary artist, who combines the microscopic skill and technique of northern European masters such as Van Eyck and Vermeer with a peculiarly modern – and psychologically charged – sensibility.”
Frampton lived to see his retrospective at the Tate in 1982, shortly before his 88th birthday; and there was a belated compliment when in 2016 Penguin Classics used some of his paintings for editions of Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov, best known for his controversial 1955 novel Lolita.
This is one of many stories behind the displays that seem to burst with energy. The whole panoply is not to be missed: in other words, roll up for one of the greatest art shows in the world – one that is free of charge, to boot. It disparately dazzles with a firmament of dozens of shining stars such as JMW Turner, William Blake, John Constable, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and David Hockney, and of those whose stars faded too soon. The skilled presentation breathes new spirit into familiar Old Masters, and Frampton is just one of the neglected geniuses to evoke wonder.
A wealth of renowned works – from Ophelia by John Everett Millais, and Hockney’s A Bigger Splash to Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture Pelagos – are joined by more recent discoveries.
It is 10 years since this national treasure house of British art has been given a fresh coat of paint, so to speak, and there is clear commitment to inclusive and progressive values in the direction of travel. In concise and clear labelling, Tate seeks to “pose fundamental questions about artistic significance and how meaning changes across time, place, and context and is about our particular place in the world.” Should the occasional juxtapositions with conceptual and installation art, or the commentary not be to your taste, remember that many a trailblazer including the great Turner with his swirling depictions of the power of the sea, of steam power and of rural life for many years endured stinging criticisms.
In fact, it is a pleasure to glide through salon after salon, laid out chronologically, with their effusion of prowess and intriguing subject matter from the 1500s to the present day, and from which every visitor can distil their own narrative. Each room has a distinctive wall colour, title and theme and makes a tilt at social context, emphasising how artists responded to the cultural, political, economic, and technological changes they lived through.
Reflecting the growing diversity of Tate’s collection, the displays feature 200 works which were acquired after the millennium. Seventy entered the collection in the past five years, from grand Tudor portraits to contemporary installations.
Visitors will revel in a new display of 100 works tracing the career of Turner – Tate Britain has the world’s largest collection of his output. He identified Britain’s role as a great maritime power, while acknowledging the darker side of harsh conditions, shipwrecks and lives lost. How appropriate that such a large collection of his output is permanently located at Tate just a few metres from his beloved Thames – he lodged at various times at Isleworth in Middlesex, and Upper Mall, Hammersmith.
Between 1835 and his death in 1851 Turner’s dramatic and original depictions exemplifying the naturalism emerging in British painting, now universally hailed, were unjustly attacked by ignorant reviewers. One such is Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, which was exhibited in 1842. It shows a 200-ton paddle steamer, which in being fuelled by coal was emblematic of then-modern technology, struggling through threatening waves, snow, wind and turbulent seawater. Black smoke from the coal spirals into the sky, and the ship’s mast is bent by the gale. Perspective is hard to make out, as sea and sky merge into an almost a monochrome image.
Enormously proud of its magnificent portfolio, the London institution is keen to highlight the presence of women artists, which until recent years at leading art museums has been the exception, not the rule. That omission of an essential part of art history has been irretrievably remedied here, with female artists from all eras given their due: as an example, half of the contemporary works chosen are from the hand of women.
The rehang brings out the contribution of the nation’s earliest professional female painters, notably Joan Carlile and Mary Beale, and follows through to the protagonists of today.
Joan Carlile (1606-1679) was close to state power, being married to Lodowick Carlile (or Carlell), a courtier to Charles I as Keeper of the Great Forest at Richmond Park. The couple eventually moved to Covent Garden, to reside amid its artistic milieu. Portrait of an Unknown Lady from 1650-55 in a rich, gorgeous dress is one of some 10 paintings confirmed as being by Joan, and the situating of a full-length female figure in a landscape appears to have been her template for much of her production.
Mary Beale (1633-1699) who was born in Suffolk and lived in Hampshire and London, received great support from her husband Charles during her successful career as a portraitist. Charles kept notebooks which tell of his pride in her achievements, and he managed her studio, which from 1671 was in Pall Mall. He would buy materials, prepare canvases, mix pigments, keep the accounts, and deal with payments. Mary often asked members of her family to be her models, which lends her output a charming intimacy. Her Portrait of a Young Girl dwells on her subject’s youthful allure by adding intriguing shadowing. Four centuries after her death, Mary Beale is much in the London limelight in 2023 – as well as being lauded at Tate Britain, her story as a “technically innovative painter” is being featured at Dulwich Picture Gallery until September 3 of this year.
In comparison to the styles of the above two female artists, Peter Lely (1618-1680) is more concerned with asserting a sense of glamour and sophistication than conveying individual personalities, as in Two ladies of the Lake family, an oil on canvas from 1660. Such portraits tended to conform to the standards of ideal beauty which were current at court. Here, the woman on the left is playing a French-made guitar, the latest fashion to arrive from Paris. Born in Westphalia, and later living in Haarlem and London, Lely was the leading portrait painter of his generation, being appointed Principal Painter to Charles II.
Great upheaval was meanwhile afoot in Britain and elsewhere. In the same gallery just mentioned, covering 1640 to 1720, an entire wall is given to a mounting by contemporary artist Nils Norman of a large painting from 1710 by John James Baker. The impressive centrepiece is The Whig Junto, a portrait of political leaders exuding power and status – male power for certain. Norman has surrounded the painting with vinyl wallpaper illustrating radical pamphlets. He entitles the project Sparkles of Glory. Between parliamentary sessions, the Junto met behind closed doors in country houses to decide policy and party strategy. The lavish surroundings probably represent the house at Chippenham, owned by Edward Russell, the 1st Earl of Orford who was First Lord of the Admiralty. The house happened to be close to the Newmarket horse races, which members of the Junto frequented. The group portrait includes a black servant, included perhaps to indicate Orford’s wealth and social standing. At the time, Britain was profiting heavily from the trading of enslaved West Africans.
Norman’s setting of radical and utopian literature is a tribute to an upswell of activism and impact of the English Civil War. One of the pamphlets reproduced is An exact Diurnall of the Parliament of Ladyes published in 1647 by Henry Neville (1620-1694). It held out the prospect of “A parliament of ladies with their lawes newly enacted.” Other publications represented include An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, from 1696, “in which are inserted the characters of a pedant, a squire, a beau, a vertuoso, a poetaster, a city-critick, &c. in a letter to a lady.” Norman, who completed this concept in 2022, says: “Parliament relaxed censorship rules in England between 1640 and 1660. This allowed previously silenced groups to disseminate their ideas through self-published pamphlets and newspapers.”
A bygone era of quarrying activity in the Royal Borough of Kensington was recorded by John Linnell (1792-1882), when he painted Kensington Gravel Pits in 1811-12. Gravel had been dug in the area from at least the early 16th century, to supply the building trade in the West End. Linnell shared a house with another painter, William Mulready, at the junction of what are now Bayswater Road and Kensington Church Street – in other words Notting Hill Gate. The quarries bordered the gardens of Kensington Palace, but the area was home to many labourers and increasingly, artists. Rather than romanticising the scene, Linnell expresses his admiration for the labourers and shows them in a starkly naturalistic landscape.
In contrast to the visual representation by Linnell of workmen, George Stubbs (1724-1806) who is known for his paintings of horses and peasant life, would pictorially idealise haymakers and reapers in spotlessly clean garb, despite their toil in the fields.
One of Tate’s most prized and popular possessions as a defining image of the Pre-Raphaelite movement is Ophelia (1851–52) by Sir John Everett Millais, who encapsulated the emphasis on vibrant colour, exacting detail, and literary themes. The scene is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which Ophelia drowns in a stream. Millais painted the setting before beginning the central figure of Ophelia. The model, Elizabeth Siddal, who later married Dante Gabriel Rossetti, posed in a bath of water warmed by lamps, but caught a severe cold when the lamps went out. Viewers can gaze at the flowers in the picture which all have emotional significance. The violets which Ophelia wears as a necklace symbolises faithfulness, chastity, or death. The roses by her cheek and dress, and the field rose on the bank, may allude to her brother calling her ‘rose of May.’
Among women who have been largely neglected in art literature is Marianne Stokes (1855–1927), born in Austria, who settled in England after her marriage to Adrian Scott Stokes (1854–1935), a landscape painter whom she met in 1883 at an artists’ colony in Brittany. Despite being considered one of the leading women artists in Victorian England, she eventually dropped from public attention. The couple lived in Cornwall and were members of the post-impressionist Newlyn School which delighted in the Cornish light and in portraying the seafaring community.
Marianne and Adrian travelled widely in Europe, and in 1881, and her religious works were influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1908, she helped design and make banners for the Women Suffrage Procession to the Albert Hall, and four years later designed a tapestry for (William) Morris and Company, which was exhibited across Europe. Marianne is represented by the seldom seen A Fisher Girl’s Light (A Pilgrim of Volendam returning from Kevelaer) from 1899.
Being a woman, Stanislawa De Karlowska (1876-1952) was excluded from the Camden Town Group founded by her husband Robert Bevan. She painted realist scenes of city life and landscapes in a post-impressionist style which she exhibited in the more liberal areas of London’s art scene such as the Allied Artists Exhibitions, where her oil painting Swiss Cottage, was shown in 1914. She addresses the question pondered by many artists at the time about how to depict the modern city. Her use of colour as she depicts residents going about their daily chores turns grocery shopping into art, say the Tate curators.
Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-75) in 1946 produced Pelagos (one of the 17 words for ‘sea’ in the Greek language) which was inspired by a view of the bay at St Ives in Cornwall, where two stretches of land embrace the sea. Thus, her sculptures with string have been likened to harps, resonating with the energy of life, sea, rock, and wind. The hollowed-out sculpture is in spiral form resembling a shell, a wave, or the roll of a hill. Hepworth wanted the taut strings to express “the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills.”
The relationship between British art and the empire and wider world is a key theme brought up in the rehang. Reflecting the internationalism of Britain’s history and its multicultural present, it is worth remembering that many of the artists on display were born outside the UK: from Rubens, Van Dyck and Canaletto to Frank Bowling, Paula Rego and Mohammed Sami.
Several works by living artists are placed among 16th, 17th, and 18th century art, making connections between past and present. These include a sculpture by Mona Hatoum which reflects the prominence of migrant and refugee artists in Tudor Britain, and a drawing by Pablo Bronstein which brings to attention the gay communities of Georgian London. Another room with more recent work aims to show how money, media and celebrity transformed the landscape of British art, with provocative young artists including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.
Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, said: “Tate Britain now tells a more expansive story of British art in ways that resonate with us today. We want to show that art isn’t made in a vacuum – it’s made by real people living in the real world. By exploring the connections between artists and the times they live in, we can shed new light on Britain’s greatest artworks and showcase a wider range of perspectives and ideas.”
Polly Staple, Tate’s director of Collection, British Art, said: “The rehang offers a broader, more complex picture of British art, and this is only possible because of the way Tate’s collection has been extended, deepened and diversified in recent years.”
Captions:
Portrait of a Young Woman, 1935. By Meredith Frampton. Oil paint (full view).
Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, exhibited 1842. Oil paint on canvas. JMW Turner. Photo: Tate.
Portrait of a Young Girl, 1681. By Mary Beale. Oil on canvas.
Portrait of an Unknown Lady, 1650-5. Oil paint on canvas. By Joan Carlile. Photo: Tate.
Sparkles of Glory, 2022, by Nils Norman, around The Whig Junto of 1710 by John James Baker.
Essay in Defence of the Female Sex. Detail from Sparkles of Glory. By Nils Norman. Vinyl wallpaper. 2022.
An exact Diurnall of the Parliament of Ladyes. Detail from Sparkles of Glory. By Nils Norman. Vinyl wallpaper. 2022.
Swiss Cottage, 1914. By Stanislawa De Karlowska. Oil paint.
Kensington Gravel Pits, 1811-12. By John Linnell. Oil on canvas.
Two ladies of the Lake family, 1660. By Peter Lely. Oil on canvas.
Pelagos, 1946. Elm and strings on oak base. By Barbara Hepworth © Bowness. Photo: Tate (Matt Greenwood).
Ophelia, 1851-2. Oil paint on canvas. By Sir John Everett Millais. Photo: Tate (Seraphina Neville).
A Fisher Girl’s Light (A Pilgrim of Volendam returning from Kevelaer), 1899. By Marianne Stokes. Oil paint on canvas. Photo: Tate (Seraphina Neville).
