The Camden Town Group

Since I'm in London this week I could not pass up the opportunity to go and see one of the many excellent art shows that are on display at the moment. This one was at Tate Britain and it was dedicated to the Camden Town Group, the most famous member of which must have been Walter Sickert, also suspected of being Jack the Ripper! So far no damning evidence has really ever been produce to indict him, perhaps aside from his morbid fascination for the notorious Camden Town Murder, which inspired him to paint a whole series of canvases. Each picture in the series is representing a naked woman lying on a bed, assumed to be a prostitute, together with a man threateningly standing over her while still completely dressed. That, somehow, did strike me as totally odd, like Sickert himself could have been the murderer and he was going back over his exploit, displaying it braggingly to the whole world. At the very least I strongly had the impression, judging from the canvases, that Sickert would have loved to have been the murderer.

That said, the whole show in itself I found quite impressive, well curated, and most importantly the art was extremely interesting beyond its great aesthetic appeal. For the most part the Camden Town artists focused on some resolutely modernist themes to go with their post-impressionistic style. For instance Spencer Gore spent a lot of time and effort picturing the activity of the horse-drawn taxis of London and their drivers around 1911-1912, basically at a time when they were being systematically replaced by motorized vehicles. Gore himself was a keen rider apparently and so he loved painting horses, with a fondness that showed on the canvas.

A number of portraits are also on display and most of these imply a strong social commentary. For instance Harold Gilman painted this great picture of his landlady in Maple street, Mrs Mounter. The whole composition, showing the old woman with a scarf wrapped around her head sitting at the table where tea is served, emphasizes the innocence of a hard-working old lady and invites sympathy from the viewer. Gilman himself was a socialist at heart and so was keen to depict themes relating class and the difficult lives of the working poor in London at the turn of the century.

Another important series of canvases, which struck me as very strong, is depicting scenes of life in Britain during the first world war. These go from Sickert's portrayal of a group of Pierrot performers playing to an audience on a public square but everybody and the whole scene looks sad and exhausted. We also see soldiers being taken care of at a hospital ward, where they had been brought back from the Battle of the Somme, in which about 420,000 of their English comrades had been massacred.

I shall not go into a detailed critique of the whole show but I do hope the above will give anyone who likes art the motivation to either go the show if they can or simply pick up a book about Walter Sickert and his Camden Town friends. Worthy stuff indeed.