Spectator

IONCE visited the artist Edward Bawden in his tiny cottage in Saffron Walden, Essex. I still remember the hall, staircase and landing, all papered in Church and Dove, his own design. One might have thought that such a large pattern wouldn’t work at all in such a restricted space, but it did.

The rest of his house was very much like walking into one of his prints or paintings. The walls were hung with pictures and everywhere there were plants of a large and violent nature. I can’t remember much about Bawden himself, other than that he looked like a grumpy pixie.

At Bawden’s memorial service, Sir Hugh Casson, president of the Royal Academy, said he had been described variously as enigmatic, solitary, shy, fastidious, frugal, austere and irreverent and that ‘he clanked with descriptive adjectives like some bemedalled Russian general’. One of Bawden’s own favourites was curmudgeonly. I would agree. He wasn’t the ideal interviewee.

By the time I went there, he was living alone—there probably wasn’t room for anyone else— with his cat, Emma Nelson, a stray. A few years before he died, he took to doing paintings of the rooms of this small house, each including a cat. Originally, he left a space for cat insertion, but, later, apparently found it easier to start with the cat and add the rest of the room after. His drawing of the hall shows Emma Nelson glaring fiercely from the stairs.

Bawden was a superb artist, notable for using so many different techniques, often with a humour that didn’t emerge in his person. He was one of a group of talented artists born in the first years of the 20th century— Rowland Hilder, John Aldridge, Richard Eurich and Eric Ravilious, the most talented of the lot, who was killed when a war artist in 1942. Bawden, born in the same year as Ravilious, 1903, is enjoying a revival as a result.

St Jude’s, a graphic-design firm run by Simon Lewin and his artist wife, Angie, has started to reproduce Bawden’s wallpaper, beginning with Seaweed and followed later this year with Trees and Cows. The famous Pigeon and Clock Tower will reappear in spring, followed by Bird Nest and Ivy.

Angie discovered Bawden’s work when she bought a secondhand book. ‘I was drawn to his distinctive style, illustrating a wide range of subjects with humour and a strong graphic energy,’ she explains. ‘I’ve always admired his skills in working within the constraints of black and white and also two-colour printing, which was essential in the predigital era. I’ve learned that these constraints can create the most exciting images.’

It’s very satisfying that one talented and varied printmaker is reviving the work of another. Angie’s work is in the same slightly understated vein as Bawden’s, although she’s not at all curmudgeonly. Next May, St Jude’s is also publishing a small book of photographs of the Saffron Walden house taken shortly after his death in 1989 and the Dulwich Picture Gallery is mounting an exhibition.

Bawden may have been unjustly brushed aside by the critics—‘too British, not modern enough’—but, looking through the definitive book of his work, Malcolm Yorke’s Edward Bawden and His Circle, his output was astonishing: adverts for Paxton & Whitfield, a drawing of the retreat from Dunkirk (during his years as a war artist) plus a portrait of an African in the Italian police force, paintings of Essex churches, sketches in letters and, of course, lots of cats. His work should be a criticism of the critics.

‘He clanked with descriptive adjectives like some bemedalled Russian general’