Camden Town Group

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists active during 1911-1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.

In 1908 critic Frank Rutter had created the Allied Artists Association, a group separate from the Royal Academy artistic societies and modelled on the French Salon des Indépendants. Many of the artists who became the Camden Town Group exhibited with the AAA.

The members included Walter Sickert, Harold Gilman, Frederick Spencer Gore, Lucien Pissarro (the son of French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro), Wyndham Lewis, Walter Bayes, J.B. Manson, Robert Bevan, Augustus John, Henry Lamb, and Charles Ginner.

The group organized the exhibition of Cubist and Post-Impressionist paintings.

Influences include Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin whose work can clearly be traced throughout this groups work. Their portrayal of much of pre 1914-18 war London, as well as during the conflict, is as historically interesting as it is artistically important.

Of the many works this group produced "In the Cinema" by Malcolm Drummond is well noted for its claustrophobic feeling. In addition, it is an interesting foil to the work of Sickert who painted many rowdy music hall scenes, including "Gallery of the Old Mogul" (also depicting the viewers of a film).

However Sickert's "Ennui" of 1914 is often considered the masterpiece of this groups work, with its stunning portrayal of boredom and apathy in the mould of Flaubert and others.

A major retrospective of the group's works was held at Tate Britain in London in 2008.