James Holland, 20th Century Artist

Getting it right

In developing a painting or a study, Holland could work very quickly, or he could be meticulous and picky, producing a number of versions until he was happy with an image.  There are for example at least three versions of Approaches to Birmingham, which will feature later in the year when we look at his work from the 1960s.

In 1976, Holland produced a number of small images of boats he remembered from his childhood in the Medway towns.

 
[From a sketch book, 1976, watercolour and pen, in a private collection] 

He then built up an image of smaller boats loading their goods onto a larger vessel, ready to head out to sea.

 

[From a sketch book, 1976, watercolour and pen, in a private collection]

This was finally worked up into this magnificent oil painting, of which he was justifiably proud.

 
[Coaster loading cement from barges in the Medway c 1920, oil on board, signed, framed, 1976, exhibited at the Art Connoisseur Gallery, London, 1997, available for purchase.]

 

 

His god daughter remembers...

When she spotted this website, trawling for links for Jim Holland and Jim Boswell, Sal Shuel got in touch and offered to write a contribution [below].  I found this photo of Sal among my father's things when we were clearing his studio a few years ago.  As with many things in the studio, time had taken its toll a bit!

 

James Holland was my godfather; a really nice godfather who didn't bother with my catechism and treated me like a Real Person. There were three Jims - James Fitton, James Boswell and James Holland. James Boswell was my father. They were all good friends but the Hollands and the Boswells were close. When he married Jackie I went to the reception. I always thought her one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen – beautiful when young and still beautiful as she aged. She had eyes which crinkled up when she laughed which she did a lot! I babysat for young James occasionally. When I married, Jim Holland supplied his own car – an aged, white Rolls Royce and when my first son was born, Jackie was his godmother.

The three Jims met in the late twenties as students and produced astonishing work, particularly to anyone interested in the politics of the Thirties. They worked together in the lithography evening classes which Jim Fitton taught at the Central School of Art and the three of them produced a constant flow of brilliant satirical cartoons. Occasionally it's not easy to decipher who did what. They tended to live in each other’s pockets and they didn't have much money. Eventually they all married and settled down in order to support families and the lifestyle they fancied.

The working lives of Jim Holland and Jim Boswell in particular followed a similar pattern. They both belonged to the same groups, clubs, and organisations. They supplied illustrations for the same publications. The war took them off in different directions but they remained friends. Jim Fitton became a respectable RA. Jim Holland worked miracles with the Festival ship Campania in 1951 at a time when resources were limited and then helped to put the Society of Industrial Artists onto an economic and professional footing. He and Jim Fitton both worked in advertising. Later he took to teaching like a duck to water. Jim Boswell worked for Lilliput for five glorious years, was heaved out along with a lot of the staff for enjoying himself too much and being subversive, painted a mural in the Sea and Ships Pavilion at the Festival of Britain then bit the bullet and edited a house magazine for Sainsbury's - which gave him the freedom to take up painting again.

Jim Holland had a great love of anything connected with the sea and his paintings of harbours and working shipping are second to none. We have a lino cut of Polperro which was his Christmas card sometime in the distant past. It's framed on our crowded wall and we won't shift it.

I loved Jim Holland. He was kind and understanding and fun and cared deeply for all the things in which he found himself involved. When my parents parted company in the mid sixties, he was desperately torn between the two of them but he was one of the few people who understood that I was as torn as he was. A nice man. A really nice man.

 
Sal and Jim Boswell and the infamous Rolls, photo courtesy of Sal Shuel.

 

Two Jameses - Holland and Boswell meet

Today's post is the first of a number dedicated to the Three Jameses, and describes in Holland's own words, how Holland and Boswell met while both at the Royal College of Art.  The illustrating photograph was very kindly supplied by my godmother, Sal Shuel, who was herself the daughter of Jim Boswell and the god daughter of Holland.

SECOND YEAR OF ART COLLEGE

The first year of university and college is usually interesting enough, new influences, new friendships, new values.  The student returns after the first long vacation, to a now familiar scene from which some familiar faces will be missing, and there will be an influx of newcomers to be looked over with the critical eyes of a year’s experience.

In my second year there was, among the new men, a stockily built and raw-boned New Zealander who made it apparent that he had not arrived in any mood of colonial humility, rather as an aggressive Gaul, or perhaps Scot, in an effete Rome.  James Boswell, like his namesake and distant kinsman, to whom he bore a facial resemblance, came from a Lowland Scots family, which like many others had settled in New Zealand.  We took an instant dislike to each other, a dislike that in a matter of weeks changed to considerable enjoyment of each other’s company, perhaps chiefly because our backgrounds and experiences had been so different.  In spite of his assumed role of the wild colonial boy, he brought with him more knowledge and a greater understanding of European culture, with a wider background of reading in both English and French, than all but the rarest native student, and it was possible to understand something of the intensity of the urge to get to Europe that had persuaded his most tolerant mother to leave Auckland with him and his sister to set up a home in a Kensington flat.

They had arrived during the vacation, in the dust and heat of a London summer, and Boswell, a powerful swimmer, had soon discovered the YMCA baths in Tottenham Court Road, and there fortunately met up with a group of lively men of his own age, who though diverse in occupation, shared a studio flat in Kennington.  One of them was George Coulouris, so well-known for many years both here and in the States as an actor of character, and then the most extrovert of Greek Lancastrians.  A pianist and journalist, a student of French as well as two or three, more conventionally employed at least during working hours, made up this explosively argumentative group.  Mrs Boswell was happy to feed her son’s many friends at whatever hour they might unexpectedly turn up.  What was more, she was prepared to endure with every appearance of mild enjoyment, their endless flights of intellect.

Boswell thus started his college life with a wider range of London contacts and interests than did most students, and the College never became for him the focal point that it was for his contemporaries.  His painting was frankly theatrical and lacked the controlled drawing that might have made its flamboyance more tolerable.  Rubens, the young Cezanne and the brushwork of Vlaminck might have been the recipe.

In his company and that of his companions I became more aware that beyond the Yellow Book and the Georgian poets, beyond Mansfield and de la Mare there were the Symbolists, there was Baudelaire and les Fleurs de Mal, there was Eliot and the Waste Land, there was Lyndham Lewis and The Enemy.  I came to know pubs other than those around South Kensington, the Fitzroy, the Plough near the British Museum and the notorious haunt of Harold Munroe, the Swiss pub and the York Minster in Soho, not that I was a copious drinker, my limits in entertainment then being soon reached and exceeded.

During my second year I became secretary of the Students Sketch Club which existed only to stage competitions and an annual exhibition in the V&A of work produced outside the College supervision in the summer vacation.  Awards were offered in various categories and distinguished or at least compliant Academicians and others were invited to judge these categories.  Being all for progress and the young idea and with the support of my contemporaries, a number of the judges who had served for many years were dropped and I approached artists who had not been connected with this feature of the College.  Among these were Wilson Sheer, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, all of whom agreed to act and brought a less predictable aspect to the occasion.  In addition we invited the Minister of Works, Sir Philip Sassoon, more significantly known as a gilded leader of London Society to open the show and he rose to the occasion by buying a selection of work that I doubt ever found its way into his collection.

During my final and post-diploma year I was offered a share in a small exhibition at the Warren Gallery in Conduit Street.  Opened by Dorothy Warren, a lively young girl about town that later was to become notorious for exhibiting the D H Lawrence drawings and watercolours that were seized by the Police on the orders of the Home Secretary Johnson Hicks, while Dorothy Warren’s prosecution on obscenity charges was to follow.  I produced enough work to make up my share although I have never ceased blushing when I recall its immaturity and effrontery.  An unexpected outcome was that the participants were invited to visit a Mr Jack Beddington at Shell Corner Kingsway to discuss perhaps doing some work in the company.  I believe I was the only one to respond. 

I emphasize that it was emphatically not done to flirt with commerce and industry and so risk prostituting one’s talents in the market place, however I needed money to pay my bills and so went to meet the tempter.  Entering his office confirmed my worst suspicions.  This suave, elegant, frock-coated figure, almost Sir Jasper of the melodramas, had clearly not invited me for anything that could be to my advantage.  However, having introduced me to his father and brother, who happened to be in the office and were obviously in the same conspiracy, he suggested that I should do a drawing suitable for reproduction, for the then generous fee of fifteen guineas.  This I did and posted the result to him.  By return came a cheque and an enthusiastic letter proposing I undertook a series of press advertisements.  Wealth untold!  My scruples were forgotten.  Perhaps I did bring a fresh eye to a skill that had become very conventional; certainly now looking at the one or two pulls that have survived more than fifty years; I am impressed by their ingenuity.

 
James Holland, James Boswell and Betty Boswell, photograph courtesy of Sal Shuel.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Lowestoft harbour

The scope for capturing lively scenes at Lowestoft fishing harbour was immense and Holland was particularly fascinated by all the angles from which boats and activity could be viewed.  This scene is a particularly active one - presumably the boats were unloading a catch given the numbers of seagulls depicted.  The image is very strong and very lively, and although quite dark in colour palette, it is a picture that is easy to live with because of that activity.

 

Oil on canvas and mounted on board, c1960, signed, framed, exhibited at the Art Connoisseur Gallery London 1997 and at Chatham, available for purchase.

 

Childhood Sunday

To give a slightly different perspective on Holland, I have decided today to put up a piece about his childhood.  In later years, Holland made many starts at writing up his life and work, although we are left with a rather patchy picture, as some elements of his life were recounted several times, while other bits are only alluded to or not covered.  It will take the family a while to put together a coherent story, but for Easter Sunday, this piece on childhood in the Edwardian era seemed appropriate.

For a child growing up in the early years of the 20th century in a southern industrial island, every day of the week had a distinct flavour, if only by reason of what one could anticipate in the way of meals.  Not surprisingly, Sunday stood further apart from the preceding and following six days - the Day of Rest.

However welcome it was to grown ups, I had no great liking for the Sabbath.  Breakfast would be late, games would be forbidden either outdoor or on the parlour table, midday dinner would include unwelcome vegetables that had to be eaten and horrors such as fat meat, though fruit pies and puddings adorned with thick custard which followed, were welcome enough.  Best clothes would be worn and once dinner was finished we were sent off to Sunday School.

From the age of 5 to 15, I disliked and finally despised this institution as I came to realise it was a device to get children out of the house on Sunday afternoons and allow parents to retire to sofa or bedroom for a blessed hour or two.  From the infant stage I remember the coin one was given for the collection, taken up while we sang this very mercenary chant:

            Hear the pennies dropping

            Listen as they fall

            Every one for Jesus

            He shall have them all

 

            (Chorus) Dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping,

            Hear the pennies fall

            Every one for Jesus

            He shall have them all.

I also remember a big girl called Vera - a name I have subconsciously since regarded with suspicion - who regularly dropped her penny down the gap between my Eton collar and neck, and I can still recall the sensation of the cold coin sliding down my warm back to tinkle on the floor, unexplained, at some importune moment.

It was just as well it was not my spiritual welfare that mostly concerned my parents, since as we moved house, it was the nearest Sunday School - Wesleyan, Congregational or whatever - that I was sent.  A dissenting tradition at first ruled out Church of England, while Roman Catholic or Quaker where held to be too extreme, but within these limits, everything was possible.  At a much later date we attended - at my father’s insistence - a town parish church, and I was then at an age to find some pleasure in the service, and more in the socially conscious sermons of an impressive young curate.  But this was in contrast with the puerile and ill-informed efforts of Sunday school or Bible class teachers, often prosperous, semi-literate, local tradesmen, whose platitudes one despised with all the superiority of grammar school fifth and sixth formers.

To return to the earlier period, after Sunday School came Sunday tea, and then we assembled either at my maternal grandmother’s little house or at one of my aunts’ homes or even at our own house.  A cold supper, roast beef, pork, mutton, pickles of all sorts, with cheese to follow.  Cards were not admissible on Sunday, so uncles and aunts, of whom I had my fair share, would gather round the upright piano.  The ballads thereafter rendered had to be suitable for Sunday evening: not “Any old iron”, or “My old Dutch”, nothing in the lusty music hall tradition.  “Where my caravan has rested”, “Little gray home in the West”, “Down the Vale”, these were admissible.  The mawkishly sentimental “Friend o’Mine” touched the emotions:

            When you are happy, friend o’mine

            And all your skies are blue

            Tell me your hopes of fortunes fine

            And let me join with you.

The pattern was consistent.  Two verses in a cheerful mood followed by one in a minor key:

            But when the light grows tremulous

            And the last lamp burns low

            And one of us - or both of us

            The long lone trail must go

            Look with your dear old eyes in mine

            Give me a handshake true

            What ever fate our souls await

            Let me be there!  Let me be there!

            There with you! (fortissimo)

Embarrassing these were (even more so the hearty “Drake is in his hammock” and other bluff Devonian shanties sung with great gusto), they now appear as perfect period pieces, sung by such accomplished artists as Benjamin Luxom and Robert Tear, who have the good sense to render them straightforwardly, without comment or condescension.

A history of a people might be written entirely in terms of its popular songs both vulgar and polite.  But to return to my own story, the escapes for me, from what I thought to be false and meretricious, was provided by a favourite aunt, who presented me every birthday and Christmas with a Dickens volume.  She possessed a gramophone and records which included as well as Gilbert and Sullivan, Tannhauser, the Ride of the Valkyrie, the Baccarole from the Tales of Hoffman, which I insisted on hearing before Sunday evenings drew to a close.

It was however, the constraint of Sunday that had the longest effect, and until I escaped into more tolerant and carefree environments, where Sunday counted little more than any other day.

 
[Holland with his little sister, Kathleen, Studio portrait c 1914]

 

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]

 

 

Estuary sketch

If Holland had art materials with him, you could be sure he would start sketching.  On french family holidays, table cloths would be covered with drawings of the food, waiters, the scene if I took too long finishing my dinner.  While others bought postcards or took numerous photographs, Holland would fill sketch books and any scraps of paper that were to hand with images of what he saw around him.

Not all of these sketches would then be turned into more formal paintings, but his studio would have these small drawings littered around and often mixed in with other correspondence if there had been a hasty tidying up session.  If I wandered into the studio and commented on something, if it wasn't in a sketch book or planned for a full painting, I would often be given the picture to put on the wall of my room.

This simple black watercolour sketch is one of my favourites of this genre - showing a river estuary with a number of small boats dotted around.  It could have been Cornwall, Brittany or Normandy, but is highly effective in depicting the scene.

 
Untitled monochrome ink and watercolour sketch on paper, unsigned, undated, in a private collection.

 

 

The South Bank and the Festival Ship

As mentioned in the Biography note, my father was one of the key designers of the Festival of Britain.  On the South Bank itself, he led on the Sea and Ships pavilion while he also lead the team that set up the Campania to be the floating exhibition that went round the key ports of Britain.

For years we had a box of stuff linked to the Festival in Dad's studio, including his Gold Pass and various documents and papers, but we have donated this to the Festival of Britain Society, as that seemed the appropriate place for it.  I do still have a battered lapel pin that must have done service on jackets over the years, and I do have a photograph of the model of the South Bank site, which is rather splendid.

We also have a number of artist's drafts and watercolours of the Campania, a monochrome version of which is shown below.

 

Perhaps my favourite bit of Festival memorabilia that we still have in the family is the photo below however - presumably a press or PR photo - taken when my father was showing the Royal Family around the site.  The King and Queen are talking to my father, although the former seems to be moving on a bit.

 
 
The Today programme is doing a special edition from the South Bank on Friday 22 April 2011 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Festival.

Lowestoft lino cut

As indicated in an earlier post, Holland was fascinated by the fishing port at Lowestoft, and did a major series of paintings of it.  He also explored showing the harbour in other media, including this study done as a lino cut.

 

He created three blocks for this print, one for black, one for red and one for green, and sent copies to his friends as a Christmas card.

Lowestoft Harbour, lino cut in three colours, one of a number of copies, c. 1973.