Representational Oil Paintings from the Nineteen Fifties

Norman Blamey
My Wife and Son
1959
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

William Roberts
Trooping the Colour
1958-59
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

LAVENDER

I planned to have a border of lavender
but planted the bank too of lavender
and now all of my crazy garden
    is grown in lavender

it smells so sharp, heady and musky of
lavender, and the hue of only
lavender is all my garden up
    into the gray rocks.

When forth I go from here the love I heedlessly
give, mostly in vain for I am stupid
and miss the moment, it has blest me silly
    when forth I go

and when, sitting as gray as these gray rocks
among the lavender, I breathe the lavender's
tireless squandering, I liken it
    to my silly loving,

I liken my silly indefatigable
loving to the lavender which has grown over
all my garden banks, and borders, up
    into the gray rocks.

– Paul Goodman (1959)

Margaret Mellis
Blue Anemone
1957
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

Peter Blake
On the Balcony
1955-57
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Carel Weight
Portrait of Miss Orovida Pissarro
1956
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

William Scott
Winter Still Life
1956
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Adrian Stokes
Piazza Sant' Eustachio, Rome
1955
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

WELLFLEET HARBOR

Visibly here the tide
creeps onto shore, almost
which particular lapping
wavelet is the utmost,
straightway the sea recedes.
The sun in my burning-glass
has moved a millimeter
off-center. Mars is rising
a little further west.
On on the summer
is hurrying away.
Next Thursday is my birthday.
I have already reached
a still point where I stand
hearing my heart pumping
my interior river round,
my friends drifting away,
the shoreline drifting away,
like a ship standing (as we say)
out to sea to sea.
Venus is not so high
when first at dusk she shines
descending with the sun
into the jaws of night.
All days are different days
monotonously flickering
past and faster by,
but there is one single night
and she is called the Night
starlit or dark the Night
my black brain, I have wrapped
myself around me like a coat
or I'd vanish shrieking in the night.

– Paul Goodman (1955)

Francis Bacon
Study for Portrait II (after the Life Mask of William Blake)
1955
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Ruskin Spear
Haute Couture
1954
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

Jack Smith
Mother Bathing Child
1953
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

Roy de Maistre
Interior with Lamp
1953
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

William Coldstream
Seated Nude
1952-53
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Michael Andrews
A Man Who Suddenly Fell Over
1952
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

from EVENING (AFTER RAMEAU AND CEZANNE)

Jolly hunters with their careless arrows
aim at the geese and bring down nought, or sparrows;
they are a menace in the rushes, oh
they are care-free and they come and go.
Around the fire the shepherds have murderous eyes.
No one is safe because no one is wise.

– Paul Goodman (1951)

Robert Medley
Rhododendrons
1950
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)

Small Scenes - Nineteen Forties (Preserved in London)

Pierre Roy
Boris Anrep in his Studio, 65 Boulevard Arago
1949
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

THE GIFT

Of the frail promises that lovers live on,
I shall not make one.  Instead
You shall inherit my bare room
And my hard bed;

And the view from my high uncurtained window,
The sky whereon the moon is set
Like tinfoil, and an ancient tree
Whose boughs have never blossomed yet.

– Bette Richart (1949)

William Roberts
Cantering to the Post
1949
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Barbara Hepworth
Project for Waterloo Bridge: The Hills
1947
oil, crayon and watercolor on paper
Tate Gallery

Barbara Hepworth
Project for Waterloo Bridge: The Valleys
1947
oil, crayon and watercolor on paper
Tate Gallery

TO MR. MUSCLES

Desire must touch first the spirit.
Who can be fooled by Paris's dimpled knees?
Who would not sleep in Vulcan's bed
Could he match her the jewel
In the eye of the robin,
Or meet her on the mesa of her mirth?
What is of the flesh only
Is heavy and rests there
Like a diamond on a dowager
Its value obvious but its meaning none.

– Inez Boulton (1947)

Wyndham Lewis
Portrait of Nigel Tangye
1946
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Frank Dobson
Nude
1946
drawing
Tate Gallery

Cedric Morris
Iris Seedlings
1943
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

COWARD

You, weeping wide at war, weep with me now.
Cheating a little at peace, come near
and let us cheat together here.

Look at my guilt, mirror of my shame.
Deserter, I will not turn you in,
I am your trembling twin.

Afraid, our double knees lock in knocking fear.
Running from the guns, we stumble upon each other.
Hide in my lap of terror; I am your mother.

Only two, and yet our howling can
encircle the world's end.
Frightened, you are my only friend.

And frightened, we are everyone.
Someone must make a stand.
Coward, take my coward's hand.

– Eve Merriam (1943)

Duncan Grant
Portrait of Vanessa Bell (at Charleston)
1942
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

James Pryde
A Fantastic Gateway
before 1941
gouache, watercolor
Tate Gallery

Victor Pasmore
Lamplight (during the Blackout)
1941
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

MEMORY

Cities are walled.  It is a cruel land
And private as a dream.  Nothing alive
Will grow there, yet great ghostly acres thrive
On a sound, an odor:  one blown pinch of sand
Erects a cape, and soon the seas arrive.
But nothing alters there.  Beyond return,
Joys lost, like meteors, cross the indifferent night
And fall away.  While fixed, nailed to the sight,
Sharp as midsummer stars, that blind and burn,
Most distant moments lend their chilling light.
Retired as the face of one who died,
The landscape lies.  The structures, being old,
Keep griefs too awkward for one life to hold;
The rooms are many-mirrored, not for pride.
Yet there delight blooms in remorseless cold.

– Babette Deutsch (1941)

Stanley Spencer
Daphne
1940
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

William Nicholson
Mushrooms
1940
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Clive Branson
Still Life
1940
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Duncan Grant
Girl at the Piano (Angelica at Charleston)
1940
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

from STANZAS IN MEDITATION

Full well I know that she is there
Much as she will she can be there
But which I know which I know when
Which is my way to be there then
Which she will know as I know here
That it is now that it is there
That rain is there and it is here
That it is here that they are there
They have been here to leave it now . . .

– Gertrude Stein (1940)

Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)

Paintings of Domestic Life in the Nineteen Thirties

Mary Potter
Golden Kipper
1939
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Marie Louise von Motesiczky
Still Life with Sheep
1938
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

William Nicholson
Silver
1938
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

OLD BOOKS

Sappho's dark hyacinth,
Prospero with his rod,
Achilles in his tent,
Saint Francis praising God:

Hold fast, hold fast to these,
The sturdy and the few
That are more lovely than your love,
More actual than you.

– Lindley Williams Hubbell (1938)

Claude Rogers
Mrs Richard Chilver
1937-38
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Glyn Philpot
Mrs Gerard Simpson
1937
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

James Ensor
Effect of Light
1935
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

from AN ELEGY FOR D.H. LAWRENCE

Greep, greep, greep the cricket
chants where the snake
with agate eyes leaned to the water.
Sorrow to the young
that Lawrence has passed
unwanted from England.
And in the gardens forsythia
and in the woods
now the crinkled spice-bush
in flower.

– William Carlos Williams (1935)

Eliot Hodgkin
October
1935
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

Henry Lamb
The Artist's Wife
1933
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

from APOLLO AT DELPHI

Now I know
there is no before
nor after,
that all escape lies in the perfect contour . . .

– H.D. (1933)

Tristram Hillier
Composition 1933 (Interior)
1933
oil on panel
Tate Gallery

William Ratcliffe
The Artist's Room, Letchworth
ca. 1932
oil on paper
Tate Gallery

Ivon Hitchens
Autumn Composition - Flowers on a Table
1932
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Vanessa Bell
Pheasants
1931
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

HUSK

Here is the husk of my thoughts, as brittle
As last year's sheaves, meaning as little
As long dried nut-shells stripped of the kernel
Or yesterday's promises of the eternal.

Here is the crisp word, whose dust will linger
After you crush it between thumb and finger.
Here is a funeral – light slender taper
And watch by the corpse inscribed on my paper.

– Frances Jennings (1931)

Dod Procter
Kitchen at Myrtle Cottage
ca. 1930-35
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Walter Russell
Cordelia
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)

Images of Country and Town in the Nineteen Thirties

Graham Sutherland
Pastoral
1930
etching
Tate Gallery

Leonard Brammer
The Two Ovens
1931
 ink and watercolor on paper
Tate Gallery

Stanley Spencer
Terry's Lane, Cookham
ca. 1932
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

from THE ESTHETIC PROBLEM ENTIRE

First you sing it.  Stand there, start it now;
When you have finished you may step down and bow.
Second, you draw it.  I wish you better luck;
The grade you undertake is hard to make.
Third, you carve it.  That is a little more
Clear and plain, still the result is poor.
Fourth, I will try to say it, even though
I fail, here goes: I have failed; it had to be so.

– Merrill Moore (1932)

Paul Nash
Harbour and Room
1932-36
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Paul Nash
Equivalents for the Megaliths
1935
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

William Roberts
Playground (The Gutter)
1934-35
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

William Roberts
Skipping (The Gutter)
1934-35
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

from THE GONE

We are gone, no one remembers the gone
After the first proud legend of their going.
Oh we are legion who have smiled and sped
From one place to another.

They will think, over an old book yellowing,
"Fellow minds who are not here any more, the laughter
Does not tinkle between your words after you go,
You, the speakers."

– Eunice Clark (1935)

James Bateman
Commotion in the Cattle Ring
1935
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

David Gascoyne
Perseus and Andromeda
1936
paper collage
Tate Gallery

Charles Mahoney
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
ca. 1936
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Clive Branson
Selling the Daily Worker outside Projectile Engineering Works
1937
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

from DUST AND THE GLORY

On a low Lorrainian knoll a leaning peasant sinking a pit
Meets rotted rock and a slab.
The slab cracks and is split, the old grave opened.
His spade strikes iron and keenly rings.
Out of the earth he picks an ancient sword,
Hiltless with rust and the blade a long double curve,
Steel of no Roman or Teuton king,
But metal struck in the sleeping East and lost in the raids.
He turns it awhile in the thick hands,
His thumb stretching the eaten edge, and throws it aside.
The brown strip winks in the light and is sunk;
Winks once in a thousand years, in the sun and the singing air,
And is lost again in the ground.

– William Everson (1937)

Clive Branson
Portrait of a Worker
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Edward Wolfe
Laugharne Castle
ca. 1937-38
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Graham Sutherland
Entrance to a Lane
1939
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)