Illustrations of integrity
Peyton Skipwith revels in this summer’s bonanza of exhibitions and books dedicated to the innovative graphic designer, book illustrator and printmaker
Edward Bawden is breaking out all over the country this summer. dulwich Picture Gallery and the Fry art Gallery in Saffron walden, essex, have major surveys of his work, each with an accompanying book; the V&a Museum is displaying his mural The English Pub from the SS Oronsay; his late self-portrait is included in ‘about Face’ at rugby art Gallery; ‘Bawden’s Beasts’ is at The Higgins Bedford; and Mainstone Press’s Are You Sitting Comfortably?, detailing his 100 plus bookjackets, has just hit the bookshops. Illustration, illumination and calligraphy were important ingredients in Bawden gaining his scholarship to the royal College of art (rca) in 1922, and formed a continuous strand throughout his work as a designer and an illustrator for the next 65 years.
A modest man, Bawden had an unshakeable belief in the integrity of his work
Bawden (1903–89) was a man of extraordinary personal modesty, but he had an unshakeable belief in the integrity of his work, be it a vignette for a cookery book, a London Transport poster, a watercolour of the essex countryside, a portrait for the war artists advisory Committee or his 40ft-high mural for the Festival of Britain. He was a designercraftsman, as well as an artist-printmaker.
with regard to prints and ephemera, there is overlap between the exhibitions at dulwich Picture Gallery and the Fry art Gallery, but context is everything. Tiles, ceramics, books, line engravings and textiles were all grist to his mill, but watercolours and linocuts predominate. The Fry’s ‘edward Bawden at Home: a working Life’ was triggered by roy Hammans’s photographs of interiors of 2, Park Lane, Saffron walden, Bawden’s home for the last 20 years of his life, which feature in the accompanying book of the same title. For the exhibition, the curators have taken a broader view, starting with a 1918 watercolour of the local Quaker school and going on to embrace the whole gamut of watercolours and designs he produced during his Great Bardfield and Saffron walden years, culminating in the remarkable series of late interiors, ranging from studio and sitting room, to kitchen sink—or at least draining board—with Ajax, Fairy and Orchids (about 1986–87).
James russell, curator of the dulwich show and author of an accompanying book, has tackled the task of representing this multifarious artist thematically, under headings such as ‘The world off duty’, ‘Gardening’, ‘Spirit of Place’, ‘Portraits’, ‘architecture’ and ‘Fable & Fantasy’. Fantasy shines through almost everywhere—on entering the exhibition, one is faced by his 1931 Map of Scarborough and a 1953 poster design for ealing Studios’ classic The Titfield Thunderbolt (a printed version is at the Fry). douglas Percy Bliss, Bawden’s first biographer and a fellow student at the
Faced with sitters who spoke no English, he could study them dispassionately
RCA, described his presence as ‘like having a foreigner in our midst... his sense of humour transfigured every object in our daily lives’—the exception here being the remarkable series of portraits he painted in Egypt, Ethiopia and Iraq during the Second World War, which take up one room. Part of the reason that Bawden had been consigned to the Design School at the RCA was that he was deemed unable to draw the human figure, but what his teachers failed to appreciate was his excruciating shyness. Faced with sitters who spoke no English, he could remain happily silent and study them dispassionately. His 1941 portrait of an Eritrean policeman, with blue flesh tones, orange fez and mustard-yellow uniform, is a masterpiece.
For an insular Englishman rooted in north-west Essex, Bawden’s wartime experiences ranging over North Africa and the Middle East were extraordinary, but, as Jim Richards wrote in the Penguin ‘Modern Painters’ book on the artist, he was able to ‘greet the strangest of new worlds with complete assurance and control, and evoke new power and vision from his own resources’.
He needed to—once back in England, he found the world had moved on and it was necessary to reinvent himself. He had used the medium of linocut since college days for wallpaper designs and posters such as Chestnut Sunday, Bushy Park. Now, starting in 1950 with Autumn, he was to produce a remarkable sequence of prints: Brighton Pier (1958), Liverpool Street Station (1961), Lindsell Church (1963) plus the London markets and witty ‘Aesop’s Fables’ series. Thirty years after his death, Bawden’s work still has the power to bemuse, amuse and enchant. Peyton Skipwith’s most recent books include ‘Are You Sitting Comfortably? the book jackets of Edward Bawden’ (The Mainstone Press) and ‘Dear Edward, being the correspondence between Peyton Skipwith & Edward Bawden, 1968–1989’ (Hand & Eye Editions) ‘Edward Bawden’ is at Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, London SE21, until September 9 (020–8693 5254; www.dulwich picturegallery.org.uk) ‘Edward Bawden at Home: A Working Life’ is at The Fry Art Gallery, 19a, Castle Street, Saffron Walden, Essex, until October 28 (01799 513779; www. fryartgallery.org) ‘Bawden’s Beasts’ is at The Higgins Bedford, Castle Lane, Bedford, until January 27, 2019 (01234 718618; www. thehigginsbedford.org.uk) ‘Edward Bawden’ by James Russell is published by Philip Wilson (£25) ‘Edward Bawden at Home: A Working Life’, with essays from Iris Weaver, Richard Bawden, Peyton Skipwith and Christopher Brown, is published by St Jude’s (£17.95) Next week Henry Lamb: two Wiltshire exhibitions