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Mrs Mounter
Harold Gilman1916
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Liverpool, United Kingdom
Gilman was a founder member of the Camden Town Group, a progressive artists’ society formed in 1911 at the suggestion of W R Sickert. Among its members were several like Ginner, Bevan and Gilman himself who introduced French Post-Impressionist ideas to English art. Gilman’s most distinctive works show figures in rather claustrophobic domestic interiors and this portrait of his fellow tennant and cleaning lady is one of the best known. In it the artist displays the strong colour and two-dimensional pattern-making which are typical of Post-Impressionism. At the same time he achieves a believable, touching and penetratingly frank likeness.
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Details
- Title: Mrs Mounter
- Creator: Harold Gilman
- Creator Lifespan: 1876/1919
- Creator Nationality: British
- Creator Gender: Male
- Creator Death Place: London, England
- Creator Birth Place: Rode, Somerset, England
- Date Created: 1916
- tag / style: Post Impressionist; woman; Camden Town Group; Mrs Mounter; Harold Gilman; tea; teapot; cup; chair; headscarf; jug; plate; interior; kitchen
- Physical Dimensions: w615 x h918 cm (Without frame)
- Artwork History: This painting was previously owned by Gilman's second wife Mrs Sylvia Gilman. It was exhibited at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition in 1933.
- Artist biographical information: Gilman developed a very individual style that had gone largely unnoticed when he died suddenly during the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1919. He sold very few works during his lifetime and it was not until the 1955 Arts Council exhibition of his work that he began to receive recognition for his short-lived but significant contribution to British modernism. Harold Gilman was born in Somerset to the Reverend John Gilman, a Rector of Snargate with Snave in Kent. After studying at Oxford for a year in 1894 he decided to become an artist. In 1897 he went to study at the Slade School of Art alongside Frederick Spencer Gore (who became his lifelong friend) under the instruction of Tonks, Wood, and Steer. The strong foundation in draughtsmanship encouraged at the Slade is evident throughout Gilman's artistic career. Gore introduced Gilman to W R Sickert and his circle at Fitzroy Street in 1907 and it was here that the colour of Lucien Pissarro began to filter through into Gilman's painting. In 1910 Gilman travelled with Charles Ginner - another member of the Fitzroy Street Group - to Paris where he became familiar with the recent advances in French art made by Signac, Gauguin, Matisse and Van Gogh. In particular, he began to admire the work of the Post-Impressionist Cézanne. However it was not until Roger Fry's infamous 1910 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists' exhibition and later 1912 'Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition' held at the Grafton Galleries in London that Gilman really began to admire the art of Van Gogh, who became his idol. Wyndam Lewis said of Gilman: "He was proud to be a man who could sometimes hang his pictures in the neighbourhood of a picture postcard of Van Gogh". After grievances with their main exhibiting society, the New English Art Club, the informal group of Fitzroy Street artists formed themselves into the more progressive Camden Town Group.
- Additional artwork information: This painting was the subject of an ‘Artwork Highlight’ talk at the Walker Art Gallery in 2001 To read the notes from this talk please follow thsi link: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of-month/displaypicture.asp?venue=2&id=47
- Type: Oil on canvas
- Rights: Purchased in 1943 from Reid and Lefevre
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