Beschreibung:

SIR LAWRENCE BURNETT GOWING CBE (1918-1991) Mare Street, Hackney, 1937 oil on canvas 28 x 36 in (71.2 x 91.4cm) Exhibited:The Storran Gallery, Piccadilly, London 1938 The Ashmolean Gallery, Oxford 'Members of the Euston Road Group' May-June 1941 no.17 Royal Academy of Arts, London 'British Art in the Twentieth Century' Jan-April 1987, no.162 Musee D'Arte Moderne, Paris. 'Annees 30's en Europe' Feb-May 1997 Literature: Bruce Laughton The Euston Road School. Scolar Press. 1986 (col. ill plate 7) For another London view by the artist cf. 'A view of Wellington Square (Chelsea)', sold Bearne's, Hampton and Littlewood, 4th Sept 1991 Laughton wrote that 'Mare Street Hackney' was the best known work that Gowing executed while a pupil at the Euston Road School in 1937/38. It was painted over the winter of 1937-8 as the artist recorded 'mostly before Christmas'. 'Mare Street, Hackney' was exhibited as one of the 'Fifteen Paintings of London' shown at the Storran Gallery, Piccadilly in October 1938, in the company of other works by founding members of the School including William Coldstream, Victor Pasmore and Claude Rogers. Claude Rogers is said to have referred to the painting with affection as 'Lawrence's Tram'. The painting features a no 31 double decker London tram car negotiating a bend in the main street of the Borough of Hackney. It was singled out by Clive Bell in his review of the Exhibition as 'the surprise of a surprising Exhibition'. Recognising it as a significant work by a student of the School, Clive Bell wrote in 'The Statesman and Nation' in November 1938 that if 'Rogers is sensitive, Gowing is supersensitive' by which he meant the delicacy of Gowing's perception of colour. Laughton also noted of the painting 'The artist's apprehension of the subject and place is highly lyrical- in spite of the ostensible drabness of the venue, he paints it as a Venetian might have painted The Grand Canal. But the light is not that of Venice. Grey and Shadowless, it gives the houses of predominantly yellow-grey London brick, dense and tangible surfaces within their sharp silhouettes. Against these grey planes unusual details such as the white lozenge of awning over a shop front, the odd geometric structures of the red and ochre tram,and the two non-conforming house facades (a cream by a red) stand out with increased luminosity'. The various foot passengers, and the belisha beacons (introduced by Mr Hare-Belisha, Minister of Transport in Neville Chamberlain's Government of 1938) are recorded with a provision surely inspired by Coldstream and comparable to the details in the latter's 'St. Pancras Station' which was also displayed in the 1938 Exhibition. Claude Rogers noted in his Memoirs that the Tram itself was slightly 'askew' in the road, a feature which pleased him because compositionally it acted as a stabiliser to the thrust of the orthogonal lines in the picture. 'On the skyline every black chimney-pot is measured in relation to its stack, point by point. the sky is pale and of a grey transparency, giving the whole illumination a feeling of the kind of clarity that occurs after rain' (Laughton, op. cit) The painting also had a profound impact on Graham Bell one of his fellow artists in the Euston Road School. In the early war years when the prospect of a German victory in Europe loomed, Bell reproduced 'Mare Street, Hackney' in a late 1940 edition of The Studio. He included it within an article that he termed 'Art in the Island Fortress, a survey of contemporary British Art from Walter Sickert and Ethel Walker to Graham Sutherland and Lawrence Gowing'