| Current stock |
| Gallery tour |
| Arts & Crafts |
| The Antique Trader |
| The Millinery Works |
| Art Gallery and previous art exhibitions |
| Forthcoming exhibitions |
| Past furniture exhibitions |
| How to contact us and opening hours |
The Millinery Works Art Gallery
Previous exhibitions
10 March - 4 April 2004
Gerald Wilde - A Forgotten Genius
'Moments of Vision'
"... Their conviction and their amazing strength of line, devouring colour
and interlocking shapes, make it obvious that they are not abstractions. They
are painted with the passion and denial with which an artist might paint the
belly of the woman he loves ...
... The trapped in all of us can respond to these works because they strive for
release, and in all our recognition of this and of the loneliness and suffering
involved, we think - however rashly - of the word genius"
John Berger, The Spectator and Nation, 24 Sept 1955
Click on thumbnail to see enlarged image,
then click on back to return to this page
Photograph top: Gerald Wilde Gilbert Cousland 1955 (Courtesy
the October Gallery)
Above: The Art Critic David Sylvester Gouache on paper 37 x 56cm 1955
How is it that the work of Gerald Wilde has not yet become
synonymous with the best of twentieth-century British painting? Why do many of
us not instantly recognise his major works as we do those of Bacon or Auerbach?
For in practically every discussion of his work, by artist or critic, whether
contemporaneously or posthumously, the word 'genius' is employed again and again
to describe his gift for painting and lithography.
Looking back at his early life he seemed to have all the right ingredients for
success. Born in London in 1905 and believed (wrongly) to be the son of Oscar
Wilde - he was then by some curious coincidence put through art school by Lord
and Lady Douglas - Oscar's very own Bosie! He lost one eye in a childhood
accident and went to on to study at Chelsea Art College, to be taught by Graham
Sutherland and Henry Moore, who became life-long friends and advocates.
Click on thumbnail to see enlarged image, then click on back to return to this page
Above: Man and Woman Oil on canvas 76 x 45cm 1934
In 1941 he participated in the Cotton Board's exhibition Designs for Textiles by
Twelve Fine Artists. Zika Ascher commissioned him in 1946 alongside Matisse,
Derain, Sutherland, Piper and others to produce Ascher's extraordinary fashion
fabrics. One of his designs, printed on silk, was worn by Her Majesty the Queen
when she was Princess Elizabeth on the Royal Tour in 1947.
His first solo exhibition in 1948 was held at the Hanover, London's then most
discerning gallery. The Institute of Contemporary Art held a major retrospective
of his work in 1955. A man at the height of his powers, admired and championed
by the likes of David Sylvester, Kenneth Clark and David Kenworthy (Lord
Strabolgi), he seemed destined to become one of the leading painters in
twentieth-century Britain.
And yet today if it had not been for the work of the art historian Timothy
Hilton and the prolonged efforts of London's October Gallery many of us would
have missed the work of this profoundly powerful painter.
Partly the answer to his relative obscurity is due to his drinking and behaviour.
He was a member of the hard-drinking post-war Soho coterie and was originally
believed to have been the inspiration for Joyce Cary's semi-deranged artist
Gully Jimson in his seminal novel The Horses Mouth. He then spent some time
during the second half of the 1950s in St Ebba's Mental Hospital where he was
subjected to electric shock treatments, after which he abandoned painting for
twenty years.
Click on thumbnail to see enlarged image, then click on back to return to this page
Above: Fata Morgana Gouache on board 72 x 33.5cm 1949-1952
A part of the puzzle lies in what David Lee has called his "romantic
loneliness", a factor, "common among English artists whose
nonconformity needles the establishment", which meant that, like so many
other non-conformists, he was doomed almost to be forgotten or overlooked. He
was by his own admission, "always an outsider".
Certainly he did not seek to ingratiate himself with the art establishment.
"His best examples [were] sold off for next to nothing so as to get some
money to buy drink or to give away to strangers in the pub". This did not
auger well for the kind of relationship between artist and dealer that was then
current in Britain – indeed it was near fatal for Wilde.
The destruction of much of his early work during the Blitz when Wilde served in
the Pioneer Corps did not help matters. And yet none of these explanations seems
fully satisfactory. They point maybe to the 'form' of Gerald Wilde's life, an
outer shell (that without doubt had a very real and often destructive impact on
his artistic development and life) but they do not get us close to the 'content'
of the tortured 'genius' of Wilde's work nor do they completely explain his lack
of recognition.
To understand the apparent contradiction of his immediate recognition by peers
and 'invisibility' to the general public for a long period after 1955, we have
to look to the work Wilde produced.
Its uniqueness and refusal to be categorised are at the heart of the question of
recognition. Indeed, in the 2002 Barbican exhibition catalogue Transition: The
London Art Scene in the Fifties Martin Harrison devotes four pages to Wilde's
work arguing that he "qualifies as a special case for many reasons, not
least his work – which has been called Abstract Expressionism and Neo-Romantic
– firmly resists classification. He remains, as he was in life, difficult to
pin down". For this he would be "denied establishment recognition
almost as much as was David Bomberg" and characteristically he was
"omitted from 60 Paintings in '51 yet commissioned to supply the cover for
the exhibition catalogue!" (Organised by the Arts Council as part of the
Festival of Britain.)
The trouble was that much of what Wilde produced always turned out to be unique.
And as has been argued by Hannah Arendt, "posthumous fame seems, then, to
be the lot of the unclassifiable ones, that is, those whose work neither fits
the existing order nor introduces a new genre that lends itself to future
classification".
This exhibition, comprising 22 works, many produced in 1955, does not set out to
provide a full survey of Gerald Wilde's work. Its is part of a process, to build
on the work begun by others, most notably Flash Allen, Chili Hawes and the
October Gallery, to bring Wilde's work to the attention of a broader audience,
to ensure Gerald Wilde's 'genius' is allowed its rightful place in history. To
see again that which Lord Strabolgi called a painter whose, "genius burns
with the brightness of acetylene."
Click on thumbnail to see enlarged image, then click on back to return to this page
Above: Fata Morgana Oil on canvas 66 x 56cm 1949
Jeff Jackson
For The Millinery Works Gallery
Illustrated exhibition catalogue: Gerald Wilde - A Forgotten Genuis, available £3 plus p&p From paul@millineryworks.co.uk
Also available Gerald Wilde 1905 - 1986 Synergetic Press with an introduction by David Sylvester and essays by William Feaver, Flash Allen and Corinna MacNeice. £15 plus p&p Edited BY Chili Hawes From paul@millineryworks.co.uk