Tuesday 24 June 2008

COMMENTARY: 'Bradshaw's Defence' by Ford Madox Brown

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 24th June 2008

Focus on Art: "Manchester Under Attack, Thalia Allington-Wood on Ford Madox Brown's strangely calm depiction of war"

Artist: Ford Madox Brown

What and Where: 'Bradshaw’s Defence of Manchester A.D. 1642', Manchester Town Hall

Date: 1879-1893

Who?

Ford Madox Brown was one of the most important influences on the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Of a slightly earlier generation, Brown was a pioneer in the style and aspirations of the Brotherhood. It was his accuracy in portraying the physical elements and subjects of his work, and the bold use of colour he employed, that captivated artists such as Rossetti, Hunt and Millais.

Wounded men lie face down on the floor or slumped against the bridge battlements with very little expression of pain, and minimal evidence of horrific wounds or blood loss. The sky is pale blue and calm. The river ambles gently under the bridge. Everything feels static and calm despite the obvious confusion of the scene.

It took him a bloody long time to finish. Painting the murals in the delicious and magnificent Great Hall dominated the latter part of Ford Madox Brown’s career. He began work in 1879 and finally finished in 1893. That’s 14 years although he did spend time away completing other work.

Each painting is illustrative of Victorian Manchester and captures different elements of the city's history – from the Romans building Castlefield’s fort, to the expulsion of the Danes, to John Dalton and his gas experiments.

‘Bradshaw’s Defence of Manchester’ was the last painting to be completed and depicts the defence of Manchester from the Royalist assaults in 1642 – the start of the English Civil War. This particular mural probably took Brown the longest, despite it not being his most complex or technically brilliant, as the poor man suffered a stroke and as a result had to paint the image with his left hand. If you look at the green landscape in the back right, it does seem like he’s struggling. Gone are the clearly defined lines and detail we see in the other murals.

Tell me more

Brown’s mural is typically romantic and full of the glorious English sentiment that characterises much of his work. As he often painted outdoors in natural light, it is interesting to see a painting by him which, due to its setting, must have restricted him to working indoors.

Despite this, ‘Bradshaw’s Defence of Manchester’ still maintains Brown’s characteristic brightness of colour. This produces an unexpected and strange image of war, which we often expect to be gritty and blood-stained. Here, wounded men lie face down on the floor or slumped against the bridge battlements with very little expression of pain, and minimal evidence of horrific wounds or blood loss. The sky is pale blue and calm. The river ambles gently under the bridge. Everything feels static and calm despite the obvious confusion of the scene. The Royalists in the foreground are not aggressive or panicked; two soldiers calmly help a comrade from under his fallen horse, while a young man quietly reloads his gun and observes their struggle without obvious concern. This creates a peculiar and uneven balance in which battle, death and anger contrast with brightness, nature and stillness.

Bradshaw looks a bit lonely

Yes, there he is, Bradshaw, standing ahead of the other gunmen who are shielded by smoke, alone and vulnerable but fending off the attacking troops. Not sure if Mr Brown is being entirely accurate here – one man and his musket would definitely not have been able to hold off all those men. The damn thing would have taken far too long to load if nothing else. In fact, if we are going to pull the historic correctness of the painting to shreds, it wasn’t even Bradshaw who defended the bridge at Salford but Colonel Rosworm. However, Ford Madox Brown is not attempting to perfectly document history. Instead, as can be seen in the other murals, he wants to create a dramatic conception of Manchester’s past.

From the very outset of the English Civil War, Manchester was considered a fierce and loyal Parliamentary stronghold. It was one of the few towns in Lancashire not to support Charles I and thus was a lone but stubborn holder of controversial and dangerous politics. Ford Madox Brown’s Bradshaw; the singular man, standing brave and defiant against a whole group of armed men, fiercely defending his beliefs and home, is symbolic of Manchester as a community. The city that remained unassailable. Heroic and glorified.

LINK: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/Manchester-under-attack

Tuesday 10 June 2008

COMMENTARY: L.S Lowry, Selected Works

Published: MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL, 10th June 2008

Focus on Art: "Lowry: Is the Old Bugger Any Good?"

Artist: L S Lowry

Who's that?

You mean you live in the North and don't know? LS Lowry, born in 1887, a tall, suited, Lancashire man turned self taught artist has long been a household name. Often thought of as naive, his sentimental sketches and paintings depicting industrial working class landscapes and people brought him ridicule but also fame. He is now considered to be one of Britain's most popular and celebrated artists.

What and Where? Coming From the Mill, The Lowry
Date: 1930


Quintessentially Lowry?

Yes indeed. Here we have one of those industrial scenes the punters love so much. 'Coming from the Mill' depicts closing time at the factories, workers stream out of the gates on to the street and make their way home. The people are puppet like, no expression or individual characteristics bar the different colours of their clothes. Caps and red or dark green jackets throng the crowd. Their feet clad in oversized black boots. This should make the crowd seem like a mass, an organism of 'the people', yet it does not. In this painting, as with most of Lowry's, every figure seems to be alone. Lowry shows us, through his own experience of solitude, that there is emptiness in multitude.

Looking at 'Coming from the Mill' is like creating a story inside your head. Each individual can be taken, their life and activities constructed. In the right bottom corner a horse rears, throwing back the carriage driver in surprise. Two children stand side by side behind a fence, left out and observing others at play. While on the far left someone leans out of a window to talk to a mother below, a baby slung across her back. These characters turn into real people; they and the scene become symbolic of a nostalgic past that viewers remember knowing.

L S Lowry developed a very personal and stylised technique. The composition of 'Coming from the Mill' is linear and graphic, the oil paint thick and his colour palette limited. The buildings are flat, with simplistic white curtains and emotive, sombre ochre and red walls; their diluted and un-solid colour reflects the lack of money within. The buildings create a grid on the canvas and trap the wandering figures within the white roads. This painting is not one of freedom, but necessity and labour. The figures are hunched, head down and exhausted.

What and Where? Man with Red Eyes, The Lowry
Date 1938
Is it Lowry?

Well sort of. 'Man with Red Eyes' is a shocking and disturbing image, and a far cry from the heavily populated and distant figures in 'Coming from the Mill'. A man, worn and angry, stares directly out of the canvas, his large eyes burning with a sore red. The directness and raw emotion of his look arrests you.

Though a composite image, 'Man with Red Eyes' was started as a self-portrait. It was, as Lowry explained, him 'letting off steam'. For eight years Lowry had nursed his bed-ridden mother, simultaneously holding down a full time job and painting in the early hours of the morning. This painting he made right before her death, at a time when he felt frayed and on the brink of breaking. It's not Lowry, but the expression of his internal turmoil.

Lowry depicts this anonymous man with stark and grotesque detail. Small dark hairs protrude from his ears; the skin under his eyes is a heavy and dull grey. This man personifies not only Lowry's pain and grief at the time of its composition, but also that of the downtrodden worker, driven and laden by economic necessity. His brow is deeply furrowed, the unshaven stubble twinged with steel grey.

The man, hard and stern, also appears as though completely naked. He is bare and vulnerable in his anger. The red colour of his eyes, nose and scarf form a centre to the canvas. The scarf is tight as if slightly strangling him, while the overly large black cloak envelops him, overcomes his body, curving his shoulders, repressive. When asked about this painting, Lowry replied, "It frightens me".

Opinions…

On Lowry differ greatly. Many find his work sentimental, the language he speaks too simplistic. Looking at both paintings the subject does not feel real, but distanced. This is probably because Lowry did not depict real places or people. They are composite images, or as Lowry described them 'dreamscapes', created and imagined as he sat, tweed suited, in an armchair before his easel. Hence his rather ambiguous titles such as 'A Lancashire Town'. This makes his work surreal, but also at times frustrating and annoyingly innocent.

Yet people identify with them and come in their hordes to see them. The Royal Academy retrospective exhibition of his works in 1976 broke all records of attendance for a twentieth century artist. His mill scenes and portraits convey a uniquely English sentiment, very much of the industrial period. The landscapes are typical, full of shared associations. The boots and caps, smoke filled skylines and thronging crowds surging from the factories feel familiar.

Maybe the men do look like sticks, the whole painting somewhat cartoonish. Maybe, the industrial subject does not seem gritty enough, the white pavements too unbelievable. Maybe as comedian Harry Hill tells us, you could replicate it age 10. But maybe that's not the point.

L S Lowry was always aware that every painting he did was an extension of himself. He was a man drawn, not to document correctly what was in front of the work, but to show what he saw through himself, his feelings. His paintings were his indulgence, so why should they not be our indulgence too? Buy a poster for your living room, hallway and bathroom, as two loudly indecisive ladies were doing in the gift shop.

Both these works can be viewed in the Lowry, The Quays. 0870 1112020 www.thelowry.com

Link: http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Architecture/Lowry-is-the-old-bugger-any-good

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