A peaceful winter scene with an unexpected twist.

Today, November 11, is Poppy Day. The United Kingdom and the Commonwealth countries commemorate Remembrance Day. Just one year ago, during this week of celebrations in remembrance of members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty,  I found what looked like a small oil sketch on board, apparently a pleasant snow scene with a woodcutter, at one of the ramshackle market stalls of Portobello Road, near Golborne Road. It was Friday, November 15. Its size, 236 x 156 mm.

Snow Scene with logger.

 

In this painting, under a grey leaden sky we observe a snowy landscape with a logger, who stares at the remote horizon. It could be just one more peaceful winter scene, but the fact is that the picture transmits some sense of unease. Something about it is disturbing from the start, and when we finally examine it closely we discover some logged branches in the foreground. The tip of one of them is stained with vivid red paint, so it appears to be bleeding. Such disclosure makes us turn our eyes towards the woodcutter, with the axe in an upright position, as if it were a rifle, and suddenly he resembles a watchman standing on the ground. What appeared to be a line of bushes half-buried in the snow looks now like barbed wire when observed more closely. And we begin to think that what we see at the front of the landscape may not be trees and bushes in the thick snow, but trenches, like the ones that slashed life or mutilated hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The blood-chopped branch becomes a metaphor for war, for the loss of someone loved in the fighting,something that an entire generation suffered. The artist appears to be expressing that, although the winter snow has hidden the barbed wire fences, they are still there, like the psychological consequences of war. As The Orchard(1917) by Paul Nash, it is a psychologically troubled picture. What the painting seems to offer, a relaxed winter scene, is later revealed as a scene of grief, distress and disturbance.

 

The style and technique of this painting recalls an oil on panel, also of reduced dimensions, 5 x 8 1/2 in (12.8 x 21.8 cm), by British artist Charles Sims RA (1873-1928), Snow Scene (circa 1918). That was possibly the panel exhibited by Sims at the Royal Academy in 1918, under the title April Snow, (533). Sims' life is the story of an entire European generation who fought and suffered the devastating effects of the great war. The reason for bringing him to this post is that it may provide a better understanding of what is going on in our small oil on board.

Snow scene (c.1918), by Charles Sims.

 

As for many other artists, the First World War was a traumatic experience for Sims, from which he never recovered. In 1915 his eldest son had been killed in action. In his painting Clio and the Children (1913/1915), Charles Sims depicted Clio, the muse of history, reading to a group of children in a still landscape in Sussex. In 1915, following the death of his son, Sims stained Clio's scroll with red paint to symbolise blood. Sims believed that the War had violated the innocence of future generations. He felt that History could no longer be personified as a beautiful goddess passing on wisdom but that she had more violent lessons to teach. Sims often painted mythological scenes in everyday contexts, using friends and family members as models.

Clio and the Children (1913, 1915), by Charles Sims.

 

Sims was also unbalanced by what he witnessed in France, where he was sent in 1918 as an official war artist. His subsequent paintings often show signs of the mental disturbance which led him to resign his post at the Royal Academy Schools in 1926. Three years later Sims committed suicide. 

The Old German Front Line, 1916, by Charles Sims, R.A.

 

Sims was born in Islington, London. He had a solid artistic background that is shown in his fluid handling of paint and in his confident treatment of space and atmosphere, qualities that rapidly gained him critical and academic success. At first he was sent to Paris, during 1887-8, to study commerce, but in 1890 he began full-time art studies at the Royal College of Art. He also studied at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1891-2, under Benjamin Constant and Jules Lefebre, and at the Royal Academy Schools from 1892 to 1895, where he was awarded the Landseer Scholarship. In 1903 he returned to Paris to study briefly under Baschet. At first Sims was influenced by Orchardson and Bastien-Lepage, but his later work shows an interest in Italian quattrocento painting and in Puvis de Chavannes. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1894. One of his pictures was bought for the Paris gallery of modern art, the Luxemburg, in 1897, and one more for the public gallery in Sydney, Australia, in 1902. His first one-man exhibition held at the Leicester Galleries in London in 1906 was highly successful. Another of his paintings, 'The Fountain', was bought for the Chantrey Bequest in 1908. Academic honours followed. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1908, Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1911, Member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1914, and Royal Academician in 1915. He became keeper of the Royal Academy Schools in 1920, and a Trustee of the Tate Gallery 1920-1927. A further solo exhibition took place in 1926 at the Knoedler Galleries in New York. In addition to his many society portraits, Sims painted King John Confronted by his Barons for St Stephen's Hall, Westminster, in 1924. Just before his death he painted pictures of a mystical nature, which were initially rejected by the Academy. Sims was the author of Picture Making: Technique & Inspiration, which was published posthumously by his son, Alan Sims, with a critical survey of the artist's work and life. He died at St Boswells, Scotland. Sims was included in the Royal Academy Late Members exhibition of 1933.

 

Further reading:

-Charles Sims, ed. Alan Sims, Picture Making: Technique & Inspiration, London 1934.
-Harold Speed, 'Charles Sims, R.A.', The Old Water-Colour Society's Club 1928-1929, vol.6, London 1929, pp.45-66.

-Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II.

-Simon Reynolds, "Sims, Charles Henry (1873–1928)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 27 June 2007.

-Maas, Rupert. British Pictures. London: The Maas Gallery. 2006. Catalogue number 53.

 

However, when it comes to the depiction of nature, and particularly trees as a visual metaphor to express the catastrophe caused by war, Paul Nash was definitely the master. Official war artist in both world conflicts, he expressed through landscapes full of symbolism the aftermath of the battle, creating genuine scenes of devastation. He portrayed nature in the form of shattered forests of broken trees, and war-torn fields and slopes. Broken trees represented for Nash living personalities. Many of his great wartime paintings were exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in May 1918, in a one-man exhibition called ‘Void of War’, and immediately achieved great success. In We are Making a New World, one of his most iconic pictures, the sun's rays shine down through heavy, blood-red clouds, as if Nature is bleeding. In his battlefield landscapes there are hardly any images of soldiers, and trees have replaced people, or have features that make them look like animals or strange creatures.Nature emerges in the form of desolate landscapes, as an innocent victim of war. Nash uses visual metaphors, as in his picture Wire, where he depicts a shattered tree still standing dominated by a dense web of barbed wire, as a crown of thorns.

 

Before living in the UK I would never have imagined that I would come to appreciate the art of war. Then, I arrived to London and I visited the Imperial War Museum and the National Army Museum, discovering the great talent of many of those official war artists. Visiting other museums and galleries, and reading about them, I learned about the artworks by Eric Ravilious, David Bomberg, Christopher R. W. Nevinson, Stanley Spencer and the brothers Paul and John Nash. I have already mentioned here that a watercolour by Michael Vicary took me to a remote river stretch in the Thames Valley. On that journey I also visited the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, and the Holy Trinity Church, where the painter staged his famous painting The Resurrection, Cookham. Stanley Spencer's approach to war is very different from both Sims and Nash.

 

Just one week after buying the snow landscape panel I had the chance to acquire a new painting, this time a small oil on canvas. It was an antique canvas depicting a maritime scene with boats. The painting was signed, but the author's name was illegible. The original framer's stamp on reverse suggested that it was a canvas dating from before 1890, as I will explain next. 

 

The stamp, 9.2 cm wide, on the canvas that reads “Reeves and Sons, Manufacturers, 113 Cheapside, London” in sans serif typeface, was used on smaller pictures from 1881 to 1890, as stated in National Portrait Gallery, British artists' suppliers, 1650-1950: British canvas, stretcher and panel suppliers’ marks. Part 7, Reeves & Sons:

Despite the antique frame, the painting seems later, from the 20th century. There was no title on the canvas, nor any other clue to the scene rendered. The painting showed a sea setting, depicted in a low horizon, in which several vessels, some steamers and a sloop, sailed in choppy waters. The nearest steamer funnel has blown up, and a big explosion is still visible in the wide sky.

 

A seascape capturing a war episode?

 

This composition is probably related to some war episode. When guessing its meaning I' m tempted to think that it is about a WW2 scene that took place just 80 years ago. Although the original stamp on the back of the canvas is prior to 1890, the painting is very much younger, probably the result of using an old canvas because of the shortage of material during wartime. From my point of view, one of the plausible explanations is connected to one of the most significant episodes during the Second World War. The ‘Little Ships’ of Dunkirk were about 850 private boats that sailed from Ramsgate in England to the hell of Dunkirk, in northern France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940, many of them pleasure boats. The ‘Little Ship’ term applied to all craft that were originally privately owned, and included commercial vessels such as barges, fishing vessels and pleasure steamers. It is one of the handful of iconic events in the Second World War that everyone remembers, and it is particularly dear to the hearts of the people of Britain. The courage of these "little ships" was praised by Yorkshire-born writer JB Priestley, the "voice of Britain" during the darkest days of that war, in a BBC broadcast that remains one of the most powerful recordings of that conflict.

 

The Dunkirk evacuation, officially known as Operation Dynamo, was the evacuation of around 336,000 Allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, France, between 27 May and 4 June 1940. The operation was decided upon when large numbers of Belgian, British, and French troops were cut off and surrounded by the German army during the Battle of France. In a speech to the House of Commons, British PM Winston Churchill called the events in France “a colossal military disaster”, saying “the whole root and core and brain of the British Army” had been stranded at Dunkirk and seemed about to perish or be captured.

 

A big problem was that the shallow waters at Dunkirk meant that a number of small craft were needed to move the troops from the beaches to the larger craft. Because Dunkirk was under heavy bombardment by the German army, the harbor could not be used. An astonishing variety of small vessels from all over southern England were pressed into service. Today we know that more than 700 private vessels were requisitioned to assist in the evacuation of Dunkirk. 

A commercial trawler serving during the Second World War.

 

On 27 May, the British Ministry of Shipping telephoned boat builders around the coast, asking them to collect all boats with “shallow draft” that could navigate the shallow waters. Attention was directed to the pleasure boats, private yachts and launches moored on the River Thames and along the south and east coasts. The boats were checked, refuelled and taken to Ramsgate to set sail for Dunkirk. When they reached France, some of the boats acted as shuttles between the beaches and the destroyers, ferrying soldiers to the warships, while others carried hundreds of soldiers each back to Ramsgate, protected by the Royal Air Force from Luftwaffe attacks.

 

The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) lost 68,000 soldiers (dead, wounded, missing or captured) from 10 May until the surrender of France on 22 June. All the heavy equipment had to be abandoned. Many boats never returned from Dunkirk. The Royal Navy’s most significant losses in the operation were six destroyers sunk, along with nine other major vessels. In addition, 19 destroyers were damaged, and over 200 British and Allied sea craft were sunk, with a similar number damaged, but the evacuation’s success showed that Britain had the courage and resources to fight on. In his ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech on 4 June, Winston Churchill hailed their rescue as a “miracle of deliverance”. Many Little Ships were lost and the wrecks of some can be seen on the Dunkirk Beaches to this day. 

 

In remembrance of them, we will entitle this painting 'Naval trawlers and a sloop at Dunkirk', and will date it at circa 1940. It's the magic of art. A painting always opens a door to research and speculate on what is depicted there, and it is always a chance to learn about fascinating stories from the past, and discover the artworks by interesting artists who may have some connection to it.