The archival holdings relating to Sir Thomas Monnington (1902-1976) illuminate the progress of one of his most significant earlier works, Allegory (Tate, 1924). The studies in this slideshow show how he developed the poses and facial expressions of his subjects, as well as the shading and placement against the light. They reveal the experimentations Monnington conducted with these elements. Notice, too, how some of these studies carry more detail than the final version, which was deliberately left ‘unfinished’ in places.
The figures of Allegory were set against the back drop of Piediluco, a lake that marks the border between Lazio and Umbria. This was a favourite spot for Monnington and he painted other landscapes of the area.
This study of a tree, likely from the Borghese gardens that are in close proximity to the BSR, reveals the attention to detail that artists must pay to shape and proportionality. The grid here is a traditional method used for accuracy and it was key to the pedagogy of the Slade School of Art at the time.
Other portrait studies show Monnington’s training in capturing the details of people’s faces.
Where would you like to go next? Who would you like to meet?
Please click on the images to enlarge them.
For a full bibliography and further reading, see here.
Sir Walter Thomas Monnington (1902-1976), or Tom Monnington to those who knew him, was under-appreciated for much of his lifetime, and has been seen as a somewhat enigmatic individual. In the early part of his career, he was valued within the artistic world more for his charm, intelligence and temperament than for his artistic skills. Despite the under-appreciation of his peers, and his own self-deprecation, he had a long life as an artist, going through two distinct phases in his career.
He began, as most Slade scholars did, as a classicist, his work earning him the Rome Prize in 1922 for decorative painting (the first to be awarded since 1920). Following the Second World War, he moved into abstractionism, inspired as he was by the technology of the period, and by his experience working during the war on camouflage and as a War Artist. Perhaps overshadowed by his wife, Winifred Knights (1899-1943), his work has since come to be appreciated more since his death in 1976.
Tom Monnington (left), with J. R. Skeaping, Barbara Hepworth, and his future wife, Winifred Knights (right), 1925, (BSR Photographic Archive, BS Collection)
Monnington arrived at the BSR at the age of 21. He had studied at the Slade School of Art from 1919 to 1923, and was one of several artists from the School who took the natural step towards competing for the Rome Scholarship in Decorative Painting. Monnington won with his depiction of Winter (1921). The oil on canvas shows the influence of Italian Renaissance painting on his work, and in particular the work of Piero della Francesca. He produced his most significant painting, and to date arguably his most famous, whilst in Rome. Allegory (1924) painted during the early part of his scholarship, was purchased by the Tate in 1925. This piece, like others he produced, was inspired by the landscape surrounding him in Italy. Allegory was based on Monnington’s studies of Piediluco, a town within the province of Umbria, and home to the Lago di Piediluco, a picturesque lake about 45 miles north of Rome. Piediluco was depicted elsewhere in this work, too.
The Wine Press (c.1923), Monnington’s first major painting in Rome, shows several people involved in the traditional production of wine, with the grapes pressed by foot. The background, as in Allegory, was based on the Umbrian landscape, and some of the figures were similarly inspired by Piero della Francesca’s work. The Annunciation, (c.1924/1925), was set in the Borghese gardens that are adjacent to the BSR. These paintings display a particular feature of Mornington’s work, revealing how Modernist impulses were affecting his classical training. Allegory features in the foreground several figures, inspired by Adam and Eve. Some remained unfinished, not from apathy or forgetfulness, but as part of the aesthetic. The incomplete forms of some of the figures add to the imaginative quality, and give the piece a Modernist feel. Monnington took a similar approach to The Annunciation, with the central figures given more detail than those to the sides, again revealing Monnington’s instinct that ‘finishing’ the painting would diminish, rather than enhance, its quality.
As well as showing the influence of Rome, these paintings also reveal Monnington’s connection with his fellow scholars. The most significant of these connections was with Winifred Knights, whom he married at Rome in April 1924. The Adam and Eve figures in Allegory were based on himself and Knights. A study exists of Knights for Allegory, showing Knights’ distinctive features embedded into the face of the Eve figure. Knights stayed with Monnington in Rome until the end of his scholarship, and long after hers had ended. Monnington left Rome in January 1926 to meet Knights, who had travelled out the month before to London.
Clipping from The Times from the 7th December 1966 announcing Monnington’s appointment as president of the Royal Academy. He was elected, so contemporaries reported, for his personal, rather than artistic, qualities (BSR Administrative Archive)
Monnington found work, like other Slade and Rome scholars of his time, in large-scale public commissions. Like his contemporary Colin Gill (1892-1940), Monnington painted for St Stephen’s Hall at Westminster and the Bank of England. The former was a mural depicting the 1707 Articles of Union being presented to Queen Anne, while the latter depicted contemporary figures of the Bank. It was a disappointment to Monnington, who found the process uninspiring. His last major mural was Supper at Emmaus (Bolton Parish Church, 1931).
Monnington’s return to public painting in the 1940s showed a marked departure in tone and style, demonstrating the affects of his time as a War Artist, notably an interest in radar, aeronautics and geometry. His first major commission, and the first to show this departure, was a painting for the ceiling of the Bristol Council House (c.1953). This was followed by the Mary Harris Memorial Chapel at the University of Exeter (1956). His canvas paintings reveal a similar shift, moving away from the landscapes and images of aeroplanes that had dominated his wartime painting to a series of abstract pieces influenced by mathematics and geometric patterns. During this time, he also taught at Camberwell School of Art and at the Slade. He became President of the Royal Academy in 1966, was knighted in 1967, and served as President until his death in January 1976.
Where would you like to go next? Who would you like to meet?
Explore the Sir Walter Thomas Monnington Collection in the BSR’s Fine Arts Archive
Visit the Borghese Gardens
Meet Winifred Knights (1899-1947)
Meet Colin Gill (1892-1938)
Learn more about Mural Painting at the BSR, 1913-1930
Sources and Further Resources
Liss, P. et al. (1997). Sir Thomas Monnington 1902 – 1976. Rome: The Fine Art Society, Paul Liss and British School at Rome.
Liss, P. Llewelyn, S. Et al. (2013). British Murals & Decorative Painting 1920 – 1960. Bristol: Samson & Co.
Liss, P. Llewelyn, S. Et al. (2013). British Murals & Decorative Painting 1910 – 1970. Bristol: Samson & Co.
Wallace-Hadrill, A. (Ed). (2001). The British School at Rome: One Hundred Years. Rome: BSR.
Wiseman, T.P. (1990). A Short History of the British School at Rome. Rome: BSR.
For a full bibliography and further reading, see here.
The BSR’s artists and scholars have left their mark on our library’s collections. We can discover in the stacks the kind of inspirations and sources readers could draw on in their studies from Classical to Renaissance art and culture to the contemporary era. Director, Thomas Ashby (1874-1931) and Librarian and then Assistant Director, Eugénie Sellers Strong (1860-1943) made considerable contributions to the library, purchasing and donating most of the books in the fields of classical studies and archeology. Yet it was also the responsibility of the scholars to add to the Library’s collections. In the 1920s, the Library Committee had a representative scholar from each of the BSR’s Faculties. Artists would make suggestions for the books they most wanted to read. As a result we can track the interests and influences of the administration and artists in this period.
The Library Main Reading Room, c. 1921-1922 (BSR Photographic Archive, BS Collection)
Committee notes from 1922-1923 give an indication of the tastes and values of the artists and scholars. Expressing their pleasure at new books arriving from London they take note of what is still lacking. In architecture, Stephen R. Pierce (1896–1966) notes with delight that books by Gauthier, Gromort and Racinet have been shipped but they are still in need of the important volume of Hauptmann’s Palast Architecture in Ober Italien in five volumes and the American periodicals. Winifred Knights (1899-1947) states that the illustrated biographies and Flemish section of the collection on paintings are now improved but requests works on Oriental (Chinese) Art and requests that a large facsimile edition of reproductions of illuminated MSS be sent from the British Museum. In Sculpture, Alfred Hardiman (1891-1947) reports that only the books on Rodin and Alfred Stevens have arrived. Lilian Whitehead (1894-1959) requests books on Legros, Muirhead Bone and Goya for the engraving and etching collection.
Other volumes readers appreciated include books on Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt, Romanesque and Lombardy Architecture, Town planning guides and volumes of drawings of the Greeks. Later, PK Baillie Reynolds (1896–1973) became committee member for archeology, history and letters.
It is notable that a number of important books were not purchased. One example is the lack of works on modernist architecture. The BSR’s administration was cautious of modernist ideas, wishing to maintain an interest in traditional methods and themes.
Committee meeting notes and a memo are available to read in the BSR’s Administrative Archive.
Where would you like to go next? Who would you like to meet?
Meet Alfred Hardiman (1891-1949)
Meet Winifred Knights (1899-1947)
Learn more about Architecture at the BSR, 1913-1930
Meet Eugénie Sellers Strong (1860-1943)
Meet Lillian Whitehead (1894-1959)
Meet Stephen Rowland Pierce (1986-1966)
For a full bibliography and further reading, see here.
The BSR Photographic Archive contains photographs of the sculptures and studies made by John Skeaping (1901-1980). The images include a bust of Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) and some self-portraits, as well as models and sketches of works in progress. The collection also holds correspondence and administrative documentation which detail some of what was valued in sculptural and artistic practice and education from the 1920s until after the Second World War. Several detailed letters to the BSR’s administrators reveal Skeaping’s process and reflections on his residency, detailing how he learnt and developed his practice whilst in Italy. Some of the correspondence reports on, negotiates and explains the reasons for the different processes he was adopting. They also reference his desire to make trips out of Rome to places such as Florence, as well as what had helped him to move on and become productive and informed.
John Skeaping collection 28 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)John Skeaping collection 27 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)John Skeaping collection 27 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Skeaping’s request that he spend more time traveling and seeing art outside of the confines of the School and Rome were met with a reply from the BSR’s Honorary General Secretary, Evelyn Shaw. Shaw maintained that the BSR’s overseeing administrators would want to see students working at the School during their visits. These letters reveal some of the tensions and conflicting values between the students and the administration. Nevertheless, Skeaping did spend time in Florence, Siena, and elsewhere; his later letters to the BSR report on his time visiting museums, his sketches and studies of architecture, and the plans for his works. He mentions how he would like his work to be returned to England, and briefly talks about his marriage to Barbara Hepworth (which has “in no way impeded my course of study”). A Directors’ report, as well as Skeaping’s own re-application requests, detail the work that Skeaping did during his scholarship, listing his plans, studies and complete and incomplete pieces.
John Skeaping’s personal file, Letter to Shaw from Skeaping, 1924, p.1 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping’s personal file, Letter to Shaw from Skeaping, 1924, p.2 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping’s personal file, Letter to Shaw from Skeaping, 1924, p.3 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
There is also an informative report Skeaping made after re-visiting the BSR in 1949. In it he made recommendations for how to create a good environment for emerging sculptors visiting Italy from Britain. This report tells us something of Skeaping’s time at the School in the 1920s, and what he felt would be conducive for students of art. Alongside training, he recommended that the BSR be more receptive to new ideas and intercultural exchange. He also noted what had changed in the period, and “the vital and happy co-operation which exists between all students and the Director”, which “is in contrast to the time of my studentship at the school some twenty years ago”.
John Skeaping collection 17 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)John Skeaping collection 08, Fountain BSR Courtyard (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
After speaking with those in residence at the BSR, Skeaping reported that the main weakness of art students at the BSR was their lack of Italian which prevented them from conversing and interacting outside the School. He also noted the importance of art history tutelage and recommended that they resist the temptation to simply continue their previous practice or produce work straight away without absorbing the influences around them.
He stressed the importance for students to learn from the art and culture of Italy, and also made recommendations on materials and facilities: marble is expensive and should be funded, while “direct terra-cottas (not squeezes or casts)” should be encouraged so that the students “better appreciate the Etruscan terra-cottas in the museums that one of the chief treasures of the Roman district”. He noted, however, that the BSR “is still very badly equipped for sculpture”, and made recommendations for the purchase of new equipment.
The collection also contains news cuttings relating to Skeaping’s later activity, such as a review of his book written after a trip to Mexico in the 1950s, as well as his obituary in The Times (1980). The latter gives an overview of how his work was assessed at the end of his life.
John Skeaping’s personal file, Report, 1949, p.1 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping’s personal file, Report, 1949, p.2 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping’s personal file, Report, 1949, p.3 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping’s personal file, Report, 1949, p.4 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping collection , Bust of Barbara Hepworth (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
John Skeaping collection, Bust of Barbara Hepworth (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Where would you like to go next? Who would you like to meet?
Meet John R. Skeaping (1901-1980)
Learn more about Sculpture at the BSR, 1913-1930
Learn more about Photography at the BSR, 1913-1930
For a full bibliography and further reading, see here.
This page gives a brief history of the period the Fine Arts at the BSR in the 1910s and 1920s. You can find out more about the people, places, themes and objects by clicking on the bold links in the article.
From the outset the BSR has been a place where researchers, artists and practitioners from different fields have come together in the midst of Rome’s Classical, Renaissance and Baroque culture. Having been founded as an institution to consolidate the strength of British classical studies and archaeology in 1901, in parallel with the British School at Athens, the fine arts faculties were established to bolster British art, design and scholarship by building connections to Roman culture and heritage, in a similar way that the academies of other European nations were also doing in Rome.
The BSR grew in part out of the tradition of classical studies and the Beaux-Artes academy approach to fine arts education. The desire for a centre for the Fine Arts in Rome also has its roots in the history the Grand Tours of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the BSR’s predecessor the British Academy of Arts at the Spanish Steps. British artists, writers and aristocratic and wealthy travellers had been joining European visitors in the cultural hub of Rome for some time. This culminated in the creation of the prizes for the Fine Arts at the BSR which began in 1913.
The Fine Arts Faculties and prizes for decorative painting, engraving, sculpture and architecture were established in order to encourage a new generation of artists and architects in Britain, particularly those who could produce monumental work in the classical tradition, as demonstrated by the Roman environment. Another aim was to compete with other European nations and to establish and consolidate the work that British classicists and artists had begun in previous periods.
The Rome Prize winners were able to take up residence at the BSR for up to three years, though they had to re-apply to extend their scholarships after each year. After 1916, the young artists and practitioners lived and worked in the newly erected building, the British pavilion designed by Lutyens and still under construction for a number of years into this period. They were met by Thomas Ashby (1874-1931), the BSR’s director from 1906 to 1925 and assistant director and librarianEugénie Sellers Strong (1860-1943) from 1909 to 1925, both formidable scholars of the classics, art history and archaeology in their own right. Subsequent directors in this period included Bernard Ashmole (1894-1988) from 1925 to 1928 and Arthur Smith (1860-1941) from 1928 to 1930. The community formed at the BSR then included archaeologists, art historians, architects, sculptors, mural painters, engravers and printmakers and administrators.
The Fine Arts archive contains the traces and stories of a network of talented people who came together in the BSR courtyard, library and around its dinner table. These artists set to work in new studios, visited Rome and its surrounding areas and attended museums, lectures and parties. This was an environment for new relationships to spark up and several scholars went on to form professional collaborations, personal friendships and in several cases, marriages (for example between Winifred Knights (1899-1947) and Tom Monnington (1902-1976)).
The early BSR community included people of different artistic disciplines, divergent ideas, colourful temperaments and ambitious personalities. Together with a traditional and strict bureaucratic structure, this created a complex environment for young artists newly arrived from art school to encounter. The directors could not always please everyone and friction seems to have emerged from competing ideas around who should lead the school. Thomas Ashby, for example, though a respected archaeologist and scholar, had little interest in the social work of running student accommodation. Meanwhile, the School’s overseers attempted to ensure that the students did not get distracted by new ideas. In discussion around the appointment of a new director in 1930, one committee member Sir William Rothenstein, wrote that
“Up to now the head of the British School at Rome has been an archaeologist… One or two of us have felt that archaeologists are not the best people to look after the studies of painters, sculptors and engravers, especially in these days when all sorts of extreme ‘abstract’ ideas are about, which settle like microbes in the students’ brains…”
In the earliest years, this conservative traditionalism was embedded into the structure of the institution: to win a Rome Prize, artists had to adhere to precisely determined criteria that governed size, style and subject of works submitted. Students had to ask for permission from London for trips made out of Rome. Artists themselves were also sticking with tradition: the traumatisation of the World War One lead to a “return to order” in the early 1920s when artists pulled back from aggressive or outlandish styles and ideas.
And yet in the archive and the artistic works produced in these years at the BSR, one can still trace new ideas and approaches beginning to flourish alongside a reaffirmation of love for Classical, Renaissance and Baroque aesthetics. The allure and energy of the modernist movements emerging in France, Russia, USA and Germany, and indeed in Italy, at this time meant that artists could not help but be pulled between different ideas, aesthetics and methodologies. Sculptors John Skeaping (1901-1980) and Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) for example, studied traditional direct marble carving whilst in Italy but went on to use these techniques in distinctively inventive and modernist ways. There was also a growing influence of Futurism, Vorticism and Surrealism emerging in Britain and Europe.
In architecture a new interest in functionalism was emerging in contrast to the Beaux-Artes approach of beautiful facades and hand-drawn methods favoured by the BSR. The work of architecture award-holder Frederick Lawrence (1893-1971) for example, contrasted with the modernist leanings of Amyas Connell (1901-1980), who went on to design modernist house High and Over of BSR director Bernard Ashmole.
There are several other elements which influenced the environment the artists worked in: Lutyens’ building and the surrounding Villa Borghese gardens, the library, the classical research interests of the directors such as Ashby and Strong, Ashby’s collection of imagery including unique Renaissance engravings and equipment from the school’s longstanding tradition of photographic innovation. Materials and facilities could be quite limited, sculptors such as Alfred Hardiman (1891-1947),for example, often found themselves fundraising for more expensive materials.
Imperialist power relations had an impact on the early years of the school. Several award holders left their studentships to be drafted into military service in World War One. Then, as the 1920s unfolded, the School tried to stay amelioratory or apolitical towards the growing fascist politics which reached a head in the early 1930s. Artists often left the metropolitan centre of Rome, under the growing power of Mussolini, to work in the countryside in villages such as Anticoli Corrado. Here they could focus their attention on what they saw as the primitive romance of the peasantry, following the tradition of the European artists and imperial travellers of previous decades.
As well as volatile political conditions, other trends and tensions can be traced in this pivotal moment. The artists were also often torn between functional commercialism and art for art’s sake and between rebellion, social conformism and patriarchal expectations of gender roles. Artistic and design education and culture was changing; British municipalities required artists to make monumental art for the public and new buildings to demonstrate their wealth and power.
The idea of what an artist should be was also changing in this period. Technical training institutes were beginning to verse artisans in aesthetics and working class arts were developing and changing British culture. Winifred Knights, Lilian Whitehead (1894-1959) and Eugénie Sellers Strong were just three of several women artists and researchers making their mark at the BSR and beginning to carve out their practice on their own terms, despite numerous challenges.
The BSR archive holds correspondence and other materials that attest to these histories. Letters, application forms and works in process hint at the conversations over how new methods and ideas in education and professionalism would develop. New artistic approaches, subjects and relationships are found in these collections and one can find several stories and insights into how British artists and cultural leaders interacted with the rest of the world and made their work.
BSR scholars, artists and staff in the early 1920s. Back row: Unknown, Unknown, Unknown, Eugénie Strong, Colin Gill (Rome Scholar in Painting), Mrs Hardiman, Alfred Hardiman (Rome Scholar in Sculpture), Unknown. Middle row: Miss Jamison, Miss Makin, Winifred Knights (Rome Scholar in Painting). Front row: F.O. Lawrence (Rome Scholar in Architecture), Job Nixon (Rome Scholar in Engraving), Unknown. BSR Fine Arts Archive
Sources and Further Reading
Wiseman, T.P. (1990) A Short History of the British School at Rome. Rome: BSR.
Wallace-Hadrill, A. (Ed). (2001). The British School at Rome: One Hundred Years. Rome: BSR.
Life at the British School Rome: blogs https://britishschoolatrome.wordpress.com/category/library-archive/
For a full bibliography and further reading, see here.
There are several intriguing black and white images relating to the sculptor Alfred Hardiman (1891-1949) at the BSR archive. These images show him working in his studio and several works in progress.
Many images also document Hardiman’s busts, including studies he made for busts of Thomas Ashby (1874-1931) and Winifred Knights (1899-1947).
Alfred Hardiman collection, Bust of Winifred Knights (BSR Fine Arts Archive))
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
The archive also holds Hardiman’s Rome prize medal and application form and correspondence he made with with BSR Honorary Secretary Evelyn Shaw and other staff members. One can also find Hardiman’s recommendations for the BSR library such as books on Rodin.
There are several images relating to Peace (Piccadilly Gardens, 1926) of which there were nude and other versions made before the piece that now stands in Piccadilly Gardens as Hardiman’s own memorial.
Alfred Hardiman collection, Peace (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman working on ‘Peace’ (1926) in the BSR studios, early 1920s (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection, Peace (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection, Peace (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection, Peace (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
There are also images of other baroque sculptures exhibited in Rome which Hardiman may have used as inspiration or ideas for developing his works.
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Alfred Hardiman collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Where would you like to go next? Who would you like to meet?
Meet Alfred Frank Hardiman (1891-1949)
Learn more about Sculpture at the BSR, 1913-1930
Learn more about Photography at the BSR, 1913-1930
For a full bibliography and further reading, see here.
The Rome Scholarship offered promising artists the opportunity to practice and hone their craft. In doing so, the BSR was left with a collection of archival materials which are testimony to their work in Rome. These offer an insight into the development of their artists’ capabilities, and range from studies to fully fledged works. The BSR photographed these records for posterity, and the images themselves reveal as much about the process of archiving art as it does the artists themselves. Notice how this small set of photographs in black and white – unfortunately the BSR does not possess the original pencil drawings by Winifred Knights – is reflecting the technology of the time. The photographer also experimented with a number of different plates, which affected how the intensity of the lines and shading appear in these representations.
Winifred Knights (1899-1947) used her time at the BSR to practise her drawings of people. She showed an interest in depicting individuals sleeping. This photograph in the Winifred Knights collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive), entitled Pencil Study for decoration (c.1920-1921), shows a man lying asleep on the floor, resting on what might be some cloth, and perhaps against a wall. It shows her attempts at capturing the intricacies of his clothing, and the spatial positioning of the body.
These images, both untitled, depict a sleeping girl from two angles. They again reveal Knights’ interest in the details of clothing as they fall about the person laying down.
Photograph of a drawing, title unknown (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection, (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Photograph of a drawing, title unknown (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection, (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Knights also practised her landscape drawings. These two images show her depictions of a town and of some farmland. It reveals the intense rural setting that she was imbedded within, and was probably produced at her time in Anticoli Corrado.
Photograph of a drawing, title unknown (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
Photograph of a drawing, Landscape (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection, (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
These studies contributed to Knights’ understandings of the Italian landscape, and helped her develop the skills that are demonstrated in her more notable works. This photograph of an oil on canvas, named in the BSR’s collections as The Tiber, was finished in 1921. The painting itself was sold to the Tate in the year it was painted, where it bears the name Italian Landscape (Tate, 1921).
Other records show the development of The Marriage at Cana (Te Papa Rongarewa Museum of New Zealand, 1927), one of the more famous of Knights’ paintings from this period. This photograph depicts a sketch version of the work, which reveals the painting as it was at this particular stage in its development.
This image shows The Marriage at Cana in its installation.
Where would you like to go next? Who would you like to meet?
Meet Winifred Knights (1899-1947)
Visit Anticoli Corrado
Visit the Borghese Gardens
Learn more about Photography at the BSR, 1913-1930
Please click on an image to enlarge it.
The Tiber (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection 02, BSR Fine Arts ArchivePencil Study for decoration (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection 03, BSR Fine Arts ArchiveMarriage at Cana (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection 04, BSR Fine Arts ArchiveLandscape (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection 05, BSR Fine Arts ArchiveTitle unknown (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection 06, BSR Fine Arts ArchiveTitle unknown (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection 07, BSR Fine Arts ArchiveTitle unknown (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection 08, BSR Fine Arts ArchiveMarriage at Cana (c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection 09, BSR Fine Arts ArchiveTitle unknown (Photograph of the Deluge, taken c.1920-1921), Winifred Knights collection 10, BSR Fine Arts Archive
For a full bibliography and further reading, see here.
Winifred Knights (1899-1947) arrived at the BSR as the first woman to be awarded the prize, and one of the few British women in the interwar period to be recognised by the awarding committee for her artistic talents. She had been a student at the Slade School of Art from October 1915 to July 1920, and entered the competition for the Rome Prize in January 1920. She made it through to the final round, and won with her depiction of The Deluge (Tate, 1920), an interpretation of the Biblical Flood. The painting was commended for its contemporary aesthetic, with the figures depicted in modern-day clothing, and the ark in almost concrete-like form. The apocalyptic tones reflected Britain’s recent experience in the First World War, and were possibly influenced by Knights’ own experience as witness to the Silvertown explosion in 1917, where a munitions factory was destroyed after a fire broke out. The painting earned her the Rome Scholarship in Decorative Painting.
Winifred Knights (right), with Barbara Hepworth, J. R. Skeaping, and Tom Monnington (left), BSR Courtyard, 1925 (BSR Photographic Archive, BS Collection)
Knights began her three-year scholarship in November 1920. Her letters home, of which copies are stored in the BSR archive, reveal her curiosity, delight and surprise at her new surroundings and companions, as well as the attention she received, especially from potential suitors. She made her own garments and her singular sartorial sensibility has, in recent years, been recognised as part of her artistic practice.
With a careful methodical process of drafting, planning and sketching, her large-scale paintings took considerable time to compete. Whilst in Rome, she produced studies and several oil paintings, one of which she sold to the Tate in 1922. This painting, called Italian Landscape (Tate, 1921), carried a similar aesthetic to The Deluge, though is notably more serene. The sharp, angular lines of the buildings are contrasted against the smooth curves of the River Tiber and its surrounding fields, indicating a distinction between the human and the natural. Other sketches and drawings left by Knights at the BSR show the evolution of her style, and growing maturity, as she recreated what she observed. They show a loving appreciation for the people living in Italy, several of whom she depicted sleeping. She also experimented with some nudes, as well as self-portraits.
The Italian setting served as her most telling inspiration, however. She spent a considerable amount of time living in Anticoli Corrado, a hill village in Lazio, which had a long-standing connection to the artists of Rome thanks to its picturesque scenery. Italian Landscape, and several other more realist sketches, are inspired by this setting. She returned to an exploration of biblical themes in the last year of her scholarship, with an oil painting depicting the Marriage at Cana (Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand, 1923). Like The Deluge, Knights gave her figures a simple, modern dress, and it displays much more subtlety than the vibrant recreations of the scene created in the Renaissance era. Knights shows how she developed her own unique style with the same angular aesthetic and distinction between the human and the natural. She used hard lines for the building, tables and benches, and softer lines for the trees and stream in the foreground and background of the image. The people have a similarly stiff posture, despite their various poses. She was inspired by the Borghese gardens in Rome, a place she visited regularly.
As well as being shaped by the place while at the BSR, Knights began to develop strong connections to the other scholars. When she arrived, she joined Colin Gill (1892-1940), Job Nixon (1891-1938), and Jack Benson, who had already taken up their scholarships. Knights stayed with Gill and Nixon at Anticoli Corrado. She was later joined by Alfred Hardiman at the BSR. She was, herself, a model for many of them, and they acted as models for her. Some of her sketches of these individuals survive. A study of Hardiman for Marriage at Cana shows her practising capturing the intricacies of his face, for example. A sculpture of Knights, created by Hardiman, shows how this was reciprocated. As well as forming new relationships, she cemented older ones. Another Slade artist, Arnold Mason (1885-1963), came to Rome with her, though he was not a Rome Scholar. He stayed with the other artists, and served as a model for Knights. One sketch depicts him as an Italian villager, in local clothing and posing as if in conversation. There are several portraits of Knights painted by Mason, again demonstrating the reciprocity of their artistic community. Such reciprocity had its limits, however — Knights and Mason were engaged, but the relationship was broken off and Mason’s was removed from the Marriage at Cana.
One of her most significant relationships was with Tom Monnington (1902-1976). Monnington arrived as a Rome Scholar in 1923 just as Knights’ scholarship was ending. She stayed in Rome until 1925 with Monnington, however, after the two had formed a relationship. They were married in April 1924, and later moved to London, Knights leaving Rome in December 1925, and Monnington in January 1926. In their studio, Knights carried on a painting she began in Rome, The Santissima Trinita (1928). She and her husband found public work, an expectation of both the Slade and Rome scholarships. Her first commission was a mural for the Demeter in Worcestershire, and her second was a painting for the Milner Memorial Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral. She also exhibited her works at the Imperial Gallery in 1927, 1928, 1929, and 1931. During the Second World War she stayed with her sister in Worcestershire, and later in Taynuilt in Scotland.
Her painstaking process, the pressures of domestic, health and financial demands, war and the misogynistic nature of the art world may have hampered her ability to win commissions and stake out a confident career as an artist in later life. A letter of recommendation to Lord Esher from Eugenie Sellers Strong held in the BSR archive states that Knights just needed something like a commission to “wake her up”. Knights continued her practice of making detailed landscapes until her sudden death in February 1947.
BSR group shot: from left: unknown (Job Nixon?), unknown, unknown, unknown, Alexandrina Makin, Colin Gill?, Winifred Knights, c.1920s (BSR Photographic Archive, BS Collection)
Where would you like to go next? Who would you like to meet?
Explore Winifred Knights’ materials in the BSR Fine Arts Archive
Visit Anticoli Corrado
Visit the Borghese Gardens
Meet Alfred Hardiman (1891-1949)
Meet Sir Walter Thomas Monnington (1902-1976)
Sources and Further Reading
The Marriage at Cana (1923) by Winifred Knights. Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand: https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/39515.Llewellyn, S. (2016) Winifred Knights 1899 – 1947, [Catalogue]. London: Lund Humphreys.
Hebson, N. (2014). Moda WK: Work in response to the paintings, drawings, correspondence, clothing and interior design of Winifred Knights, (an expanded legacy). London: AND Public. https://nadiahebson1.xhbtr.com/moda-wk-publication.
Decorative painting – or mural painting, as it came to be known – was experiencing something of a resurgence in the early 1900s. The BSR, influenced in part by the Slade School of Art, was a significant driver of this development, despite the fact that the Fine Arts were never the main priority of the School. It suited its subsidiary mission, secondary though it was to advance the discipline of archaeology, which was to support the creation of aesthetically pleasing public spaces. This was achieved through the three initial strands of the Rome scholarships: architecture, sculpture, and decorative painting.
Artists, though left largely to their own devices with regards to their learning, were placed in Rome with the expectation that they would absorb the classical traditions that the space embodied. The artists were not taught, but rather learnt, studying the likes of Piero della Francesca (c.1415-1492), and meeting the School’s challenging re-enrolment requirements. It was the intention of the academy that the artists would, after the conclusion of their studies, be available for public commissions.
The Marriage at Cana (1923) by Winifred Knights on display (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
It was this renaissance tradition that the British academy, not to be outdone by the French, was trying to reinvent. Eugénie Sellers Strong (1860-1943),Assistant Director of the BSR until 1925, was an outspoken advocate for the documentation of murals extant across Britain, lest the art be forgotten. She likely had in mind, too, the legacy of the scholars under her care in Rome: Colin Gill (1892-1940), J. M. Benson, Winifred Knights (1899-1947), Tom Monnington (1902-1976), A. K. Lawrence (1893-1975), R. Lyon (1894-1978), and Edward I. Halliday (1902-1984). Later Rome Scholars in painting of this period include Glyn O. Jones (1906-1984) in 1926, R. C. Brill (1902-1974) in 1927, Alan Sorrell (1904-1974) in 1928 and H. A. Finney (1905-1991) in 1929.
Unlike other artworks, murals were especially at risk of being destroyed, painted over, or moved, given their stubborn adherence to the walls of public buildings. If the tastes of the time changed, or the art was recognised as being overly political, then the ephemerality of the artist’s work would be soon realised. The main irony here, was that these works were often the artist’s most ambitious, and at the same time were the most likely to be written out of the accounts of their lives. Another pressure came from restrictions on artistic expression, given that the art had to appeal to a particular interest, especially if it adorned the walls of a parliamentary building, and be as inoffensive as possible.
The most significant failure of the BSR’s mission to educate its artists in the classical tradition, however, was that, while the artists were busily emulating the frescoes of Piero, the world around them changed. There is something romantic in this tragedy. While the Rome Scholars spent time in Rome, in a bubble of their own and shielded from the outside world, or in Anticoli Corrado, a picturesque hillside village where they could admire the elegant simplicity of ‘primitive’ Tuscan life, the world around them became more war torn, and more fascist. This is not to say that the School was unaffected by these influences. Colin Gill left the School in 1915 to join the war effort, and the School closed periodically from 1935 under pressure from Mussolini, caught up as it was in the grander disputes between Italy and Britain. The influence of this tension between the needs of the School and the broader diplomatic goals of the British state were felt when the British Ambassador in Italy vetoed the appointment of Aubrey Waterfield (1902-1944), an outspoken anti-fascist, as director in 1932. This had broader implications for the School, for Waterfield was recommended for his skill as a watercolourist, and was put forward in response to the observation that archaeologists had for too long remained the dominant force within the BSR.
Photograph of Piediluco by Tom Monnington, c. 1925 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
This shifting political landscape was accompanied by the shifting cultural landscape. The popularity of abstraction left the Rome Scholars in decorative and mural painting torn. Sweeping electrification, mechanisation, and the eventual advent of the nuclear world undoubtedly had its influences on the world of art. The School’s committee were well aware of the impact that “extreme ‘abstract’” ideas could have on the students’ views; the appeal of an artist as director in 1932 was that they might help students steer themselves around these ideas, “which”, according to Sir William Rothenstein, “settle like microbes in the students’ brains”.
Shifting cultural tastes, with the push of traditionalism and the pull of abstractionism, had its effect on the careers of the Rome Scholars. It is perhaps no surprise that their earlier works seemed to be their most impactful: Colin Gill’s Allegro, produced in 1927, was his most celebrated, while Winifred Knights’ legacy has been defined most by The Deluge, the piece she produced to win the Rome Scholarship. Tom Monnington’s career perhaps best demonstrates this push and pull, for he was able to shift with the times, allowing himself to be influenced by geometry and wartime experience in a way that others were not, Gill’s untimely death notwithstanding.
Colin Gill in his Studio at the BSR, c.1914 (BSR Fine Arts Archive)
The confluence of these forces – the traditional against the abstract, the shifting politics against the artistic bubble – means that we are left with a collection of works that have come to define British art of the interwar period. The murals and canvas paintings these artists produced speak to the changes of the time, demonstrate their talents, and offer parallels by which we may understand our own experiences. The Rome Scholars of the 1910s and 1920s were not, after all, the first to be caught amidst these forces, nor have they been the last.
Where would you like to visit next? Who would you like to meet?
Anticoli Corrado, a hilltop village in Lazio, has a long-standing connection to the artists of Rome thanks to its picturesque scenery. It was also celebrated for its people, who were known for being particularly attractive and often served as life models for artists in Rome. The reputation of Anticoli Corrado was developed in the nineteenth century through travellers writing about the town’s features.
The artist Percy Sturdee stayed there for a short while in the 1880s, and recounted his experience in The Scottish Art Review. It was the “aesthetic indigestion” of staying in Rome, coupled with “the approaching heat” of summer that would turn “the Eternal City into a temporary bakehouse” and which made him accept a friend’s invitation to stay at Anticoli Corrado. He was aware of its reputation, and it did not disappoint. Sturdee recorded that “nothing could equal the beauty of the scene which meets your eyes on this journey … it seemed as if I were arrived into the delectable country for which lovers sigh and of which poets dream.” And it was not just the village, set as it is against the dramatic Italian landscape. So too the people:
“If a model has not been previously engaged, they are easy to find; for every one one meets is worthy, either from beauty of type or picturesqueness of costume, of being reproduced on canvas. Indeed Anticoli, with the adjacent village of Saracenesco, is the mother of all the models that flood Rome in the winter months with their goat-skins, slouch-hats, knee-breeches and red waist-coats, and that give to the steps of Trinita del Monte a character all its own. When the summer draws on, and Rome empties, they usually depart too, and (like Cincinnatus) once more return to the spade in their own country till the next winter. And many a face does one begin to meet again in Anticoli that before one had seen in the Margutta or the Piazza di Spagna. And, which is always a consideration, they will pose for you here at half the price they will demand at the capital. Whereas in Rome they will ask 5 francs a day, here they will only ask 2 francs 50.”
The town’s architecture appealed not just to painters, but to others, too, for
“Every house is a wonder for a painter, an architect, or an engineer. For a painter, for obvious reasons, for its charms of tone and quaintness of form. For an architect, because many of these, poor and filthy as they are, are veritable specimens of fourteenth and fifteenth century architecture; one, indeed, I know to be of thirteenth century construction. While, for an engineer, the continual wonder must be that they do not tumble down.”
The town’s reputation persisted into the twentieth century. Frank Hyde, writing just before the First World War, noted its popularity amongst artists and its cosmopolitan atmosphere. Hyde, arriving through the old part of town, “found fifteen or twenty artists of all nationalities already installed.” There were “writers, poets, and sculptors”; “there must have been quite fifty or sixty artists and their wives in the town”. It was similarly the people who captivated him. He noted that “a sight also worth seeing are the girls who come at this hour to the fountain in the piazza, carrying their wonderful-shaped copper pitchers, each girl waiting her turn, laughing and joking with the artists who assemble there to choose their models.” It was the perfect place for an artist to work, for
“There is no begging, no pestering the artist as at other places. Most of the painters work out of doors, painting the nude in the open air under the vines; it is very seldom that a studio is used, although they can be got at a reasonable price — say 20 francs a month … The place is so small, however, that you prefer of an evening to sit outside and drink your glass of Protto, watching the endless procession of picturesque figures pass before you.”
This was emphasised again by Martin Birnbaum, recounting his meeting there with Maurice Stern. Birnbaum writes
“Anticoli is inhabited almost exclusively by models and all the artists in Rome rely on it to supply them with inspiration. It is a strange place, characteristically Italian, full of appalling tilth and inhabitants of great beauty. The women are like goddesses, carrying water on their heads from the public fountain in shining copper vessels resembling amphorae; the goatherds are ideals of masculine strength and grace and they all maintain their charm in notoriously dirty houses, mingling with squealing black swine, cattle, poultry and innumerable half-naked bambini.”
Anticoli Corrado, portrait of Colin Gill, Ducci and Helpes? sitting on the grass, 1920 (BSR Digital Collections, Thomas Ashby photographic collection, ta-LVI.052)
Anticoli Corrado, portrait of Colin Gill, Ducci and Helpes? sitting on the grass, 1920 (BSR Digital Collections, Thomas Ashby photographic collection, ta-LVI.051)
It was in this tradition of art and artistry that the BSR’s fellows joined. Colin Gill (1892-1940) is noted to have been the first of the Rome Scholars to visit Anticoli Corrado, embodying the tradition that the Rome Scholarship had been established to protect. There he was joined by Job Nixon (1891-1938) and Winifred Knights (1899-1947) , along with Arnold Mason (1885-1963), fellow artist and fiancé to Knights. There they enjoyed the scenery, practised their craft, and lived the Italian lifestyle, removed as they were from their comfortable British surroundings, that so many other artists had enjoyed before them. Jack Benson even married a woman from the village.
Where would you like to go next? Who would you like to meet?
Explore the Winifred Knights collection in the BSR Fine Arts Archive
Meet Colin Gill (1892-1940)
Learn more about Engraving at the BSR, 1913-1930
Meet Job Nixon (1891-1938)
Learn more about Mural Painting at the BSR, 1913-1930
Meet Winifred Knights (1899-1947)
Sources and Further Reading
James Sully, Italian Travel Sketches (London: Constable, 1912)
Percy Sturdee, “Bohemianism in Anticoli-Corrado,” The Scottish Art Review (Glasgow: E. Stock, 1888).
Frank Hyde, “Anticoli Corrado, A Town of Models,” The International Studio 47, no. 187 (1912): 219-23.
Martin Birnbaum, “Maurice Sterne,” The International Studio 46, no. 181 (1912): iii-xiii.
For a full bibliography and further reading, see here.
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