Raymond continues to travel hopefully, this time in Australia and other far flung places.
It was on a beautiful late February day like today that Raymond’s thoughts strayed to a similar day during the war. The short story in this month’s blog post is a nostalgic look back to that occasion.
Raymond continues his outline of the evolution of English watercolour painting from the early topographical works to contemporary styles that reflect changing landscapes and fashion.
It should not be forgotten that tradition is constantly evolving and this is very true in art. The big names of the past – Turner, Cotman, Towne, for example, were ahead of their time. And in the 20th century Burra, Ravilious and Bawden all used watercolour in a fresh way devising techniques to match a personal approach to subject matter.
Raymond expands on this idea in the remaining four articles of his series The English medium that first appeared in The Artist magazine.
A seasonal piece by Raymond is featured this month. It was first published in the Christmas edition of The Artist magazine in 1985.
Raymond takes a fresh look at the traditional English medium of watercolour and describes how it has evolved from a historical style typified by artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The English watercolour tradition is one in which styles and techniques have varied in accordance with fashion and social change. Watercolour was Raymond’s own preferred medium for painting: examples of his work can be found in the artist’s galleries on this website and as illustrations in his books and articles that reflect his personal twentieth century vision. In the fist two articles in this series Raymond provides a practical background to understanding the techniques and materials used in watercolour painting.
In August 1914 a secret department responsible for foreign propaganda was set up by a Cabinet Minute. It came to be known by its address as Wellington House and was run under the very shrewd direction of the Liberal politician Charles Masterman who appointed the first of the official war artists. The uninformative name of the department belied its true purpose during the two and a half years of its existence. Its role was later taken over by the Department of Information, which incorporated Wellington House, and following further restructuring by the Ministry of Information headed by Lord Beaverbrook. Under a different scheme in World War II the War Artists’ Advisory Committee was responsible for the appointment of war artists.
Raymond Spurrier was a great admirer of the work of Edward Bawden, CBE, RA. In the 1980s he attended and reviewed two exhibitions of his work where he also had the pleasure of interviewing him as a longstanding fan. The first, at the Imperial War Museum, marked Bawden’s 80th birthday where 68 of his paintings as an official war artist were on display, but this was only a fraction of over 300 that he produced during that commission. The second was a more representative exhibition that showed the huge diversity of his talent, but it still only covered a small part of a prolific working life. Raymond concluded both reviews with pleas for a major retrospective of this leading 20th century artist and designer.
From an early age Raymond enjoyed travel. In this popular series for The Artist he wrote about his progress as an artist through experiences gained while travelling abroad initially in European countries and later in the contrasting settings of America.