'Acomb Grey and Green'
Kenneth Rowntree (1915 1997)
Pencil and Acrylic on Card
190 x 222
Pencil and Acrylic on Card
190 x 222
Undated
£150.00
2013.08
I organised an extra showing at Abbot Hall of Kenneth Rowntree’s
mid-nineties Oriel 31 retrospective organised by Michael Nixon.
In preparation for the show he invited me
to his house in Corbridge (two shop fronts knocked together in Front street) opposite
the Black Bull for a lunch. He was something of a bon viveur and lunch was very
nice. He had wonderful art on the walls, a superb Ben Nicholson with an airmail
motif, a Pasmore and a great big watercolour of his own showing a red box car.
He was a terrific story teller and spoke about how they had come by these works, much
to the irritation of his wife Diana who had probably heard each successive
iteration of these accounts practiced to perfection on their guests.
After lunch we drove a less than straight route to his
studio above the town in his little French car, rolling suspension, rolling
landscape. If wine had not been taken it would have been alarming but it seemed
smooth as if the world turned underneath us. He was so hospitable and showed me
an enormous quantity of his work - some of which we agreed to add to the Oriel
Show.
Over lunch we discussed the announcements and publicity for
the show and he produced two pictures, small copies on card of ‘proper
paintings’ but made by hand. These would do to send to the press he said; they
would be better than photographs! It didn’t matter if they were lost, he didn’t
want them back, I could keep them. I was astonished but he was sincere. I was
slightly embarrassed by this because I knew that the process involved in
printing would prevent them and us from using them as he intended and I didn’t
want to reject them. This one is a retrospective copy of ‘Acomb Grey and Green’
in the collection of Northumbria University Gallery.
Rowntree had been professor of Fine Art at Newcastle
University well before my time there as a student and we talked about the
school.
I love Rowntree’s painting it’s a paen to ‘Modern’ Britain, the
one that was born with the ‘Skylon’ and buried with ‘Get Carter’, via the other
country that was also lost in the Second World War and so beautifully commemorated
by the War Artists Committee – Rowntree included.
Unlike many of his contemporaries Rowntree was inspired by
fellow departmental staff Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton to embrace modernity
becoming ‘a bridge’ between the painterly Euston Road formality of Laurence
Gowing (also a Professor at the Department) and these, last gasp of credibility, English moderns.
I’m not sure such a bridge was actually needed.
This later work has never been well liked or received and Rowntree is
better represented in public collections by the work he did before the war and
for the war artists committee. Rowntree’s comfortable life and security of
tenure meant that he didn’t have to strive to maintain critical subscription
for his work. Fogeys who like the early work regard him as an artist who 'went off'.
He is however celebrated with a superb biography by art
historian John Milner who worked under him and also later became Professor at
Newcastle. I wish that as a student I had learned more and had greater insight
into John’s knowledge. I suspect that the biography is a way of repaying the
mentoring of the older man.
Links
Acomb Grey and Green, University of Northumbria Gallery (They have spelt it incorrectly.)
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