James Holland, 20th Century Artist

The Penny Wet

This painting comes from Holland’s post-War period in the late forties and fifties, when he was still attracted by social realism, but had the opportunity to use larger canvases and more colour. The subject is a dock area, and could be anywhere around the British coast – Hull and Lowestoft are possible sources of inspiration. The impression is of an early morning, once work has started at the docks but before wives and school children are out and about. The composition invites the viewer to walk on round the corner, to see what is beyond the pub.

This is a large painting and consequently spent time in Holland’s garage, subject to extremes of temperature and humidity, which hasn’t helped its condition. When I unearthed it from a pile of other works and asked if I might be allowed to take it away and give it wall space, Holland cleaned it up with his patent mixture of “terps and linseed” and signed it, and then looked at it for a long time. “I’d forgotten about this one – it’s good but it’s a bit bare, let me add some people.” I made a deal with him that he could add some people if he travelled to my house to do it – in some ways it is a shame he didn’t make the journey, on the other hand I actually like the lack of people. Here’s why.

For a few years I lived in Wallsend on Tyneside, near the Swan Hunter shipyard. The pub on the corner looks very like the one that used to stand just south of the Metro station, called the Carville Hotel. This (in my day) rather unpleasant dive always put me in mind of the yard workers’ pub known locally as the Penny Wet. That was actually the Station Hotel further up the hill (demolished in the 1960s to make way for the Forum shopping centre). The name was given as it was where dock workers got a penny tot of rum or similar before heading into work in the shipyards.

The painting does not show Wallsend – there is no steep slope down to the river for a start. However the traditions would have been the same up and down the coastline, even if the names of the pubs were different, and this would still have been the place of the shipyard workers.

The Penny Wet, oil on board, c1960, in a private collection

 

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.

 

Birmingham before it was regenerated

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Holland was Head of Faculty, Visual Communication at Birmingham College of Art (then Polytechnic from 1971).  Of course all things change, and Birmingham Poly morphed into the University of Central England in 1992 and then into Birmingham City University in 2007.

Holland lived in digs with the artist Bill Gear with whom he had much in common - both had experienced Bergen-Belsen after the War, both had worked on the Festival of Britain and both now worked at the College of Art.

In this period, Holland produced a number of paintings in oil on board and on a large scale - many pictures were at least 3 feet wide - and in black interspersed with vivid colours not always associated with Birmingham and the Black Country.  A number of these will be shown on the website, but if looking for similarities with the area today, you will be challenged.  The picture below shows one of the many canal junctions in Birmingham, not at all the image the city would now like to project.

[Canal Junction, oil on board, unframed, available for purchase]

The University was invited to the private view of Holland's retrospective exhibition in London, and the representative that attended not only held Holland's old post, but had also been a student of his as well.  He said he had once had the temerity to draw a boat during class, and then spent a long time with Holland who explained exactly where he had gone wrong!

 

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]

 

Amsterdam, 1954

In 1954, Holland and his wife, Jackie, travelled to Amsterdam to visit their friends Royston and Marie Cooper, who were spending time there.  The resulting sketches and paintings provide more evidence of Holland's love of ships and ports.

This study of a crane is a case in point, as is the following image of boats in port.

There are a number of sketches of Ijmuiden including this one.

While this image shows Dutch men in what we might now think of as traditional costume.

The countryside outside the city and port was less captivating however, and in the sketch book, Holland only included this image.

Finally, among the sketches of local scenes, there is also a stolen moment, showing Royston Cooper.

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.

 

A London scene

Holland lived in London off and on throughout his life.  There are notes about his time as a student in London, as a young advertising executive, the Festival of Britain, and until the mid-60s, when he moved to Kent full time.  John Mortimer recounts swapping a farmhouse in Essex for Holland's house in Swiss Cottage (there are also rumours that John never finishing paying the outstanding monies owed from this swap).

Despite this, there are few paintings of London.  There is one of Piccadilly in a private collection (I hope to obtain a photo of it for this site), and another of the view to Primrose Hill from a flat he rented with his wife Jackie (to follow).  This tiny dark painting says it all about a wet night in London however.

 

London Street Scene, undated - likely to be 1950s, framed, available for purchase.

Lichfield Cathedral

An aunt of mine bought a flat in Lichfield in about 1980 - I helped her to move in.  It was a nice flat in a modern mews block, but not a building that was interesting in itself.  It did however have a rather fabulous view over gardens and rooftops to Lichfield Cathedral - far enough away to not be disturbed by bells, but close enough to make an interesting feature.

This oil painting done by Holland in the early 1980s shows this view from the window of the sitting room of the apartment.  Here Holland goes back to the colour palette he used so much in the 1960s to describe the murk (either real or spiritual) he associated with Birmingham and the Black Country.  This is rather unfair on Lichfield which is a charming and rather middle class Cathedral City.

 
View to Lichfield Cathedral, c1985, oil on board, unframed, available for purchase.

 

Towards the abstract

In the early 1960s, Holland was Head of Faculty of Visual Arts at Birmingham Polytechnic. In those days, Birmingham and the Black Country, where his wife's family lived, were rather bleak and industrial areas, much in need of regeneration. Holland was weekly commuting between Birmingham, London and Kent, which cannot have been easy in those days. In addition, and perhaps influenced by his students, he tried his hand at the more abstract. All these influences combined to give Holland's work at the time a rather dour, yet highly impactful tone.  In later posts I will explore the inland industrial views that were typical of this time, but the following three pictures show this evolution in his favoured shipyard scenes.

 

This study of a ship in dock is fairly typical, in that the colour palette is minimal and little colour or attention is given to the background detail, however the work is still figurative and true to his social realism roots.  This is quite a large work, and there is a similar image on a bright blue background - the background colour was often reliant on what colour paints Holland was using for priming the board and for decorating Romford Cottage.

 
[Ship unloading, oil on board, framed, signed, available for purchase.]

 

This image of ships through a metal bridge is rare for this style in that the picture is relatively small – less than an A4 piece of paper including frame, but at the same time, the viewer needs to stand back from the work to appreciate the subject.  The framework of the bridge and the view beyond framed by the bridge construction was another theme that interested Holland at this time.

 
[Ships in Dock, unsigned, framed, oil on board, available for purchase.]

This work is perhaps the most abstract that Holland undertook and was not highly regarded by him in later years.  The ship funnels can be clearly seen, but for the rest of the image, one could say that Holland had had a fit of the Mondrians and the Jackson Pollocks!

 
[Abstract Shipping, oil on board, unframed, unsigned, in a private collection.]

 

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.