James Holland, 20th Century Artist

Inspiration from the Avignon Festival

The summer of 1977 Holland spent time at Mas Gouge with his family - I remember it not least as the news that Elvis had died had to be gleaned from the Midi Libre.  Rather than drive all the way through France to get back to Pembury, Holland decided to put the car on the train, so our final evening in the South was spent at Avignon, waiting for the time to meet up with the train as it came up from Italy.

The Avignon Festival didn't seem to be the major event it is today, or perhaps we were not so well tuned in to the French cultural scene at the time.  In any case it was over in August, but the Fringe goes on for weeks after, which is why our final meal, in a restaurant near to the Pope's Palace turned out to be quite so memorable.  We sat out on the terrace to enjoy the balmy evening and watch the people go by, and were rewarded with an amazing array of street performers throughout the meal.

The Fire Eaters were perhaps not what we needed when tucking into our first course, as the accelerant they swilled around was very pungent.  They were however particularly dramatic and made a great impression on me, not least as I was only 13 at the time.  There were also singers, jugglers and a trick cyclist of varying ability, but the most inspirational for Holland were the Comedia del Arte clowns.  Their costumes were vivid, their act more suited to an adult audience, their make up very stylized and with the fading light, made a truly dramatic final evening of our holiday.

Holland made a number of "napkin" sketches, and once back home set to work, driven by what he had seen.  There are lino cuts of fire eaters, dingy Spanish singers, a trick cyclist and a "normal" clown, but the Comedia del Arte clowns/dancers inspired a dramatic painting.

This oil on board painting has not been properly framed but mounted on a piece of white board, with a fine pine outer frame, and is in a private collection.  However it was so admired and discussed that Holland did do a lino cut version, with a limited print run done at home.  This does not have the range of colour of the original, but retains the liveliness and drama of the original.

Three colour lino print, limited run, some copies still available.

 

le Mas Gouge

It was in 1969 that Holland first visited le Mas Gouge in the Gard department of France.  His friends, the architect Joe Chamberlain and Christoph Bonn and Joe's wife Jean had bought a semi-ruined fortified farmhouse in the South of France and kept saying to Holland that he must visit it.  That year he said he might, and while the initial stop on the family holiday to France was in Normandy, the weather was so foul that as a family we decided that heading south seemed like a good idea.

After a dodgy stop at the Pont de Menard on the way down, we arrived at what became our idea of paradise - why did we even spend a weekend in Normandy before making the acquaintance of our spiritual home?

The instructions that came with the house and the trousseau of keys were impressive.  Much was written about the electrics, but as the Mas was not then and still has not been connected to the mains, electricity was via a generator that refused to work for us.  However the place was well equipped with gas lights, a gas cooker, a gas fridge and candles, all serving to make it that much more special.

We visited many times after that - we were there when Elvis died for example, but have not been back since Jean died in 1997.  If you google Mas Gouge, you turn up some images that other artists have been inspired to make of the Mas, but I think the following images are better (well I would) and give a hint of the magic of a very special place.

[Mas Gouge with vines, oil on board, 1970, in a private collection]

[Approaching the Mas, ink sketch]

[Mas Gouge through the great gates, watercolour sketch]

[Mas Gouge, la maison d'entree, ink sketch]

[Mas Gouge, in the courtyard, ink and monochrome wash sketch]

[Mas Gouge from within the vines, ink and watercolour sketch]

 

Images of Normandy

Today we have another article from our Australian correspondant, looking at Holland's love affair with Normandy.

As has been acknowledged many times in this series of articles, my father was an ardent Francophile, a trait that he engendered in his family. In the early 1960s we holidayed at Ann Duveen's beautiful house, Capricorn(e?), just outside St Paul de Vence. However, the austerity years of the mid 1960s, when Sterling was devalued and a limit of 50 Pounds per person for overseas consumption was introduced, meant that the South of France became an impossibility. The Hollands, augmented by my aunt Kay, therefore chose to visit Normandy. Based a few kilometers outside Dieppe in the tiny village of Ste Marguerite sur Mer, then celebrating the 25th anniversary of the "Dieppe Landings" of August 1942, Holland proceeded to explore the rugged coastline of Vasterival whilst my sister and I yearned for the long sandy beach of Veules-Les-Roses. 

 

 
Vasterival, Normandy

 
Dieppe

 
Duclair Ferry

This visit renewed Holland's interest in Northern France, and subsequent years found him touring Normandy to places such as Domfront and Duclair, where he painted several scenes involving the charming ferry that crosses the Seine there. He also returned to Brittany and painted several characteristic views of St Malo and the surrounding countryside. To my immense pleasure on one of these subsequent trips, I was able to show him a place that he had never previously visited, the ruined Abbey of Jumieges. This former Benedictine Abbey, home to one of the chroniclers of The Norman Conquest, became one of Holland's favourite stops on any visit to Normandy and was the subject of many sketches and paintings.

 
Jumieges Abbey

 

 
Jumieges Church

 

 

 

Jumieges village

 

Views of St Malo

Holland visited St Malo on the Brittany coast many times, and was fascinated by the town and its surroundings.  On early visits, he was mainly restricted to St Malo and Dinard towns, but when in later years he and his wife took a car with them, they could also explore the coastline to Cancale and St Cast.  He was never particarly keen on the Mont St Michel however, due to the numbers of tourists that went there, and the consequent crowds and elevated prices in the village itself.

A favourite hotel was the Chateaubriand, and this sketch of the square outside shows why - a constantly changing vista to sketch.

 
This was used on his return to Pembury to develop a number of oil paintings of the same view.

 
St Malo was heavily bombed during the War, and the stone tenements had to be rebuilt in the 40s and early 50s to bring the town back to its former glory.

 
As befits a town not far from the bay of Mont St Michel and its legendary tides, St Malo also has significant tides and a bay dotted with islands, many of which have been used over the years for prisons and forts.  You can reach some at low tide by foot, but others have to be visited by boat.

 
The coast road from St Malo to Mont St Michel takes you past another small bay with this island - the isle du Guesclin - before reaching Cancale and its renouned oyster beds.

 

Fox-Amphoux: a village in the Var

Holiday photos are tricky things - unless you were there or really, really interested, they are something that you comment on and forget.  Holland didn't take holiday photos - he took a sketch book with him and drew his surroundings, often creating more considered works in oil or in watercolour on his return home.

For me, these sketches can be rather like holiday snaps, but then that is how I was brought up.  There are images of places we went together or are well known, where the sketches take me back to places that we loved.  Inevitably there are also holidays that I did not go on, places that I never visited, which are perfectly picturesque, but do not grab me in the same way.

Fox-Amphoux is one of those places.  I have never been there.  My parents went together once, and Holland went with his art class, as part of his recuperation from bowel cancer.  The following selection of sketches are charming, but mean little to me.  Severall were used as the basis for further works, and reactions from those who know the village and the area would be particularly welcome.

 

 

 

 

Provencal views

While Holland spent a lot of time at the fashionable end of the French Mediterranean coast, particularly in the early 60s and early 70s, he also had a soft spot for the Nimes area.  He always said the Maison Carree in Nimes was the most perfect Roman edifice.

His friends Jean and "Joe" Chamberlain and Christoph Bon bought a ruin near Uzes and converted that into the most wonderful holiday home you can imagine - le Mas Gouge.  The main building had its foundations in the roman era, but for those who knew the work of Chamberlain, Powell and Bon, there were similarities too with their chef d'oevre, the Barbican Centre.

We first went there in about 1969, after a soggy weekend in Normandy and a rather eventful drive south.  As you leave the Massif Centrale finally at Ales, Provence opens out before you and we couldn't work out why we had stayed in the North for so long.  In those days, the Mas had a generator for use by guests, but it resolutely failed to fire up for us, so we relied on camping lanterns, candles and a cooker and fridge powered by bottled gas.  In later years, the generator was kept exclusively for pumping water when the Mistrale didn't blow, while all other needs were supplied by a massive gas tank beyond the walled structure.

The provencal light, the historic and/or timeless buildings and the gentle mediterranean landscapes provided endless inspiration for Holland as these paintings show.

 

Bourdic, oil on board, framed, available for purchase.

 

The Church at Dion, oil on board, framed, available for purchase.

 

Lussan, Gard, oil on board, signed, home made frame, available for purchase.

A summer in Vence, Alpes Maritimes

We spent the summer holidays (half of July and most of August) of 1974 staying in the town of Vence and looking after a flat and a dog for an ex-pat children's author. 

In those days, the Cote d'Azure still had a faded grandeur, and during a very social period, we rubbed shoulders with the artistic and the aristocratic including a member of the Esterhazy family, the Dowager Countess Karolyi, the artists Terry, Ruth and Ros Freeman and the composer Leslie Bricusse.  We went to parties at the Negresco in Nice and dinners in provencal restaurants, and saw the model Suzy Solidor on the beach near Cagnes sur Mer.

In amidst this social whirl, Holland found time to sketch and paint the scenes around him.  In particular he was fascinated in the view across the valley from our apartment to the pre-Alps behind, which at night were lit by wild bush fires in that hot summer.  During the day, the fires were tackled by the Canadair planes, scooping water up from the Mediterranean to drop on the fires.

The following three oil sketches show how Holland could work quickly, the paint applied with a palette knife rather than a brush, to create the sense of heat and perfume of a baking hot summer day near the Mediterranean.

 

 

 

 

 

Seagulls

There is an occupational hazard and a feature of sketching and painting by the sea which cannot be ignored - seagulls!  In later years, Holland generally worked outside wearing a floppy hat against sun and other things, so was spared some of the more unfortunate accidents that can happen.  However he did find that seagulls tended to pose rather.  In this painting of Cancale harbour, the seagull in the centre would apparently not move until he had been painted.

 
[Cancale, Brittany, 1986, oil on board, signed, framed, exhibited at the Art Connoisseur Gallery, London 1997, available to purchase.]

This earlier lino cut of a seagull was derived from sketches done in England, France and Holland.  The clever part of this particular lino cut is that it was designed to be printed on dark paper, so only the green, white and yellow blocks were made.  This was used as a Christmas card in the 1960s.

 
[Seagull with fish, 3 colour lino cut on black sugar paper, undated, unsigned.]

The final gull picture has something of a history attached.  When he finally took retirement in about 1980, Holland started an art class for friends in the Tunbridge Wells area.  When the weather was favourable, the group would visit gardens and set up their easels.  On a couple of occasions they went off to southern France, where some members had properties.  During the winter, finding subjects was less easy however.  People could be persuaded occasionally to sit for their portraits, although not always flattered by the results.  Sometimes class members worked from photographs.

Frequently Holland would resort to setting up still life groups as subjects, and anything was suitable for this - dolls, musical instruments, flowers, fruit, bottles, drapery.  Occasionally supper would be commandeered for the purpose - game in feather or fur, fish, on one occasion a very large Savoy cabbage.  One week a friend produced something that could only be described as road kill that he had found in his garden, thinking it would make a good subject for the class.  Sadly he produced the item on a Thursday, and that week there was no Friday class, only a Wednesday group, for which it was too late.  My mother refused to have it in the house for long, so Holland painted a loving portrait of the bird, and then with his friend, buried it away from the ravages of foxes and dogs.  The art class missed out on a memorable subject.

 
[Herring Gull, 1987, oil on board, signed, framed, exhibited at the Art Connoiseur Gallery, London 1997, available for purchase]

 

 

French beach

Not all Holland's paintings are dominated by the green and purple spectrum of colours.  Today's painting shows a sunny holiday scene, but with sea and boats as well.  When travelling with a car, it was easier for Holland to take an easel, a number of boards and different paints with him, so that he could chose the best media to capture what he saw before him.  This painting sketch of the beach at le Treport in Normandy, with fishing boats drawn up onto the shingle is a good example of one of his holiday snap shots.  The view looks east along the coast with its white cliffs to Fecamp in the distance.

In 1999 I spent a few days with my husband on the Normandy coast, and when we got to Fecamp, it seemed foolish not to carry on to see le Treport and the view along the coast, to compare it with this picture.  For anyone who tries the same, the road to le Treport is tiny and easily missed, but when you get to the beach the view is the same, but dependent on the weather!

 

Fecamp from the beach at le Treport, 1988, oil on board, framed, signed, exhibited at The Art Connoisseur Gallery 1997, available for purchase - price on application.

 

 

Duclair on the Seine in Normandy

From early visits to the country with Jim Boswell in the 1920s onwards, Holland had a passion for France and made many regular visits, normally with paints or a sketch book.  In October 1987, he and his wife had been on a tour of Normandy and a couple of days before they were due to return to Kent, on the 15th October, they stopped at Duclair on the Seine, where they loved to stay at the Hotel de la Poste.

My mother recalls that there was a sense of drama, and the colours of the sky and the countryside were different.  My father was particularly inspired and did a number of sketches by the river, that culminated in this painting - Before the storm 1987, the Seine near Duclair.  He was able to express the sense of foreboding and the arrival of the storm with his favourite colour palette - purple and green.  That night was a wild one in Normandy as well as in Kent, and when my parents returned home, it was to find the garage crushed by a tree, and they were without power for about 6 weeks.  While they were lucky to have an open fire, my father confessed he would be happy not to see another jacket potato for a number of years, once power was restored!!

 

Oil on board, unsigned, framed, with authentification on rear, shown at The Art Connoisseur Gallery, London, 1997.