The art world has never made it easy for women but four of them challenged convention and flourished. Their work features in the first post-lockdown main attraction at Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery. David Whetstone got a virtual preview.
Self Portraits by Dod Procter (left) and Vanessa Bell. © The Artist’s Estates – Bridgeman Images. Photo credit: Colin Davison
Why, someone asks Julie Milne at the online press preview, is now the right time for an exhibition dedicated to four women artists?
Gwen John, Laura Knight, Vanessa Bell and Dod Procter feature in Challenging Convention, the Laing Art Gallery’s main attraction when it reopens on May 17.
A bit of serendipity replies the chief curator of art galleries for Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums.
The pandemic had “shone a light on inequalities around the world for women which we thought weren’t there but still are.
“Obviously, we didn’t plan the pandemic but as an all-female creative team (curator of Challenging Convention is Lizzie Jacklin) we’re passionate about pursuing research around female artists and highlighting female artists in the collection.”
With justification, she might have answered the question with another: when would not be the right time for such an exhibition?
The art world was tough on women right from the start.
How many people, before last year’s lockdown-shortened National Gallery exhibition dedicated to a 17th Century artistic genius, had heard of Artemisia Gentileschi?
You can be sure that a male painter with her jaw dropping talent would be a household name.
Out of curiosity I flicked through my copy of Nothing If Not Critical, selected essays by the late Robert Hughes, acclaimed art critic for Time magazine.
Of the 80 artists he reviewed in the book, only three are women – Louise Bourgeois, Susan Rothenberg and Elizabeth Murray.
All were born long after the trailblazers featured in the Laing exhibition.
Challenging Convention at the Laing. Photo credit: Colin Davison
In 1990, when the Hughes book was published, the Laing Art Gallery put on an exhibition of Dod Procter’s paintings. I’d never heard of her but it was an eye-opener.
The name Dod (she preferred it to Doris) would have stuck in my mind but so now do the paintings, and especially her serene and timeless portraits of women.
One of them, called Morning, showing a young woman (Cissie Barnes, daughter of a Cornish fisherman) reclining on a bed, caused a sensation when it was shown at the 1926 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London. The Daily Mail bought it for the nation.
In Newcastle Dod’s paintings were hung with those of her husband, Ernest Procter, also a painter, who was born in Tynemouth.
A selection of Laura Knight’s stunning and vibrant paintings (she loved circuses and ballet dancers) was shown at the Laing in 2013, again alongside those of her husband, Harold.
Supportive husbands, says Lizzie Jacklin at the press preview, were an asset to female artists hoping to break through, although the fact both Mr Knight and Mr Procter were First World War conscientious objectors can’t have made life easier.
The two women met at Newlyn, Cornwall, where a colony of artists was established in the late 19th Century. Knight, born in 1877, was older than Procter (born 1890) but they became friends.
Paintings by each of the four artists featured in Challenging Convention at the Laing Art Gallery. Photo credit: Colin Davison
The Laing has plenty of examples of their work which must have given Lizzie and her team a flying start.
Setting their paintings alongside those of Gwen John (1876 – 1939) and Vanessa Bell (1879 – 1961) meant hunting down potential loans, a task, says Julie Milne, made more difficult by Covid-19.
Full marks, then, for bringing together more than 60 significant works from some 30 public collections.
Julie Milne says the linking factor between the four artists is that they all took up the new opportunities that the 20th Century afforded to women.
Nowadays those opportunities might seem slight. Women didn’t get equal voting rights until 1928, by which time the Royal Academy of Arts, founded in 1768, still hadn’t elected a woman to full membership.
The first to be so honoured was Laura – by now Dame Laura – Knight in 1936. The second was Dod Procter in 1942.
Paintings by Gwen John. Photo credit: Colin Davison
In a patriarchal world, Gwen John, a prize-winning art student, never fully emerged from the shadow of her more celebrated brother, Augustus, despite moving to France to establish a career away from family ties.
Vanessa Bell, whose sister was the writer Virginia Woolf, tended to be noticed more for the colourful antics of the Bloomsbury Group of artists and intellectuals than for her talent as a painter.
But that will be put right here, promises Lizzie, with the Laing exhibition focusing on the paintings rather than the gossip.
Judging by the Zoom preview, the set-up is simple – an introductory section followed by a separate section for each of the artists.
Each will give ample opportunity to appreciate what talented painters these women were and to see how they seized the opportunities that presented themselves.
If the portraits are mainly of women, this could be because art schools forbade female students to attend life classes featuring the nude figure. It was unfair but the women got round the ban by asking friends to pose.
While the social background and circumstances of each artist was different – Knight had a less privileged upbringing than the rest, suggests Lizzie – they all determinedly pursued their artistic ambitions.
In Paris Gwen John painted exquisite portraits and interiors while quietly experimenting and refining her colour palette.
A Balloon Site, Coventry 1943 by Laura Knight. Photo credit: Colin Davison
Vanessa Bell, influenced by the bold forms and vivid colours of the so-called Post-Impressionists, moved towards abstraction. Part of her legacy can be seen at Charleston, the country retreat of the Bloomsbury Group, which she and others decorated flamboyantly.
Laura Knight’s work is a tangible example of how women benefited from conflict. She became an official war artist during the Second World War and in one stunning painting, Balloon Site, Coventry, shows women in uniform hauling on ropes to steady a barrage balloon.
Her talent for depicting the creases and folds of circus costumes are here applied to the silvery surface of the balloon as it bucks and billows under the sun.
The exhibition doesn’t have Dod Procter’s Morning but it does have (on loan from the art gallery in Hove) Early Morning, the smaller version of her blockbuster portrait which she painted the following year, presumably in response to public demand.
An absorbing and illuminating exhibition is in store. These were four exceptional artists but you wonder how many more there might have been.
Why hadn’t I heard of Dod Procter in 1990? Why will she be unknown to many others today? Julie Milne must be right when she says exhibitions like this will be needed as long as people need reminding of the female artists who challenged the patriarchy.
Challenging Convention opens on May 17 and runs until August 21. Admission charges apply. Running alongside it is an exhibition called WOW: Women Only Works on Paper, a display of watercolours, pastels and prints by more than 50 women brought together by art dealers Liss Llewellyn and including some works from the Laing collection (admission free). Details of both exhibitions can be found on the Laing Art Gallery website .