Wynford Dewhurst
Encyclopedia
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and important writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
on art. He spent considerable time in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and his work was profoundly influenced by Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
.
Biography
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
in 1864. He was educated at home by a private tutor and later at Mintholme College. Although he originally trained to enter the legal profession, he showed artistic flair and decided to pursue a career as a painter after some of his drawings were published in various journals.
He gained artistic training in France at the École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
, in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he was a pupil of the renowned French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects, bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax.-Life:Jean-Léon Gérôme was born...
. Despite his teacher Gérome's rejection of the radical Impressionist movement in favour of a highly finished academic style (Gérome continued the development and conservation of French Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
), Dewhurst was heavily influenced by the Impressionists. It is well known that he first encountered Impressionism, to which he was instantly attracted, in the work of Emile Claus
Emile Claus
Emile Claus was a Belgian painter.- Life :Emile Claus was born on 27 September 1849, in Sint-Eloois-Vijve, a village in West-Flanders , at the banks of the river Lys. Emile was the twelfth child in a family of thirteen. Father Alexander was a grocer-publican and for some time town councillor...
in the Maddocks Collection in Bradford. However his most important mentor would become Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
.
It was Monet to whom Dewhurst dedicated his pioneering account of French Impressionism, Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development, in 1904. This was the first important study of the French painters to be published in English. As well as helping to reintroduce British artists to this style of painting, Dewhurst's book called attention to the French Impressionists' debt to the British artists John Constable
John Constable
John Constable was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection...
and J. M. W. Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
, claiming that the Impressionists simply developed their existing painterly techniques."(By the turn of the century) British painters, if not the British public, had reconciled themselves to impressionism."
According to Dewhurst, artists who, like himself, painted in an impressionist manner, were often "sneered at for imitating a foreign style", and he was keen to justify their position. "French artists simply developed a style which was British in its conception", he wrote, a view that was dismissed by some French painters - such as Pissarro - who revealed his national bias when he acknowledged Constable and Turner but identified instead French influences like Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
, Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, , dit le Lorrain) Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French...
, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre paintings which depict kitchen maids, children, and domestic activities...
and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape painter and printmaker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century...
. However, Pissarro had earlier told an interviewer: "It seems to me that we are all descended from the Englishman Turner. He was the first who could make colors blaze with a natural brilliance." The thesis that Dewhurst put forward in Impressionist Painting was controversial for it dealt with the debated question of whether Impressionism was French or British in origin. However, it found much support in Britain: Kevin McConkey informs us that Dewhurst's theme "was taken up by others as various as Clausen, John Rothenstein and Kenneth Clark" Nevertheless, Dewhurst's "detailed biographical notices of the most prominent artists associated with the rise of impressionism in France...leave little to be desired from the historical point of view". It is worth noting that Impressionist Painting also included an entire chapter on female artists, since "modernity is the note of Impressionism, and that movement was the very first artistic revolt in which women took part". Indeed, Dewhurst thanks the celebrated female painter Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...
(who worked within the Impressionist circle) for her assistance in the preface of his book.
"I remember distinctly, during the summer of 1901, at Les Andelys-on-Seine, that upon two days and for two hours in the afternoons of those days all Nature, animate and inanimate, bore the aspect of things seen under a strong glare of violet light, exactly as though a tinted glass were suspended between the sun's rays and the earth. The effect was most curious and disturbing. Nature appears to be toneless and flat. Highlights and shadows are attenuated almost to extinction, whilst in this dull purple glare the heat became more intense than ever, possibly through lack of wind, for all was still".
Throughout his life Dewhurst exhibited frequently at the Royal Society of British Artists
Royal Society of British Artists
The Royal Society of British Artists is a British art body established in 1823 as the Society of British Artists, as an alternative to the Royal Academy.-History:...
, the New English Art Club
New English Art Club
The New English Art Club was founded in London in 1885 as an alternate venue to the Royal Academy.-History:Young English artists returning from studying art in Paris mounted the first exhibition of the New English Art Club in April 1886...
from 1909 to 1910 and at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
(where he also lecture
Lecture
thumb|A lecture on [[linear algebra]] at the [[Helsinki University of Technology]]A lecture is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical information, history,...
d on art) from 1914 to 1926. He held two one-man shows in London; the first was at the Walker Galleries in 1923, and in 1926 he held a significant exhibition of his pastels at the Fine Art Society. He also exhibited several times in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
in 1910, in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
in 1911, and held a series of solo exhibitions in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Examples of his work can be found in public collections: Three paintings, including Summer Mist, Valley of La Creuse (c.1920), are in the collection of the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. The Picnic (1908), a celebrated picture which exemplifies the influence of Monet in its use of small dabs of colour, resulting in an optical blend of hues when seen from a distance, is in the collection of Manchester City Art Gallery.
Later years
Dewhurst's mature work demonstrates a more expressive handling. This is especially evident in a series of paintings he produced in the valley of La Creuse, where the bright, almost garish palette again recalls Monet, although in some instances they achieve "an unintended Fauvist intensity."In 1995, Dewhurst was included in an important exhibition called 'Impressionism in Britain' at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, which demonstrated that the proliferation of Impressionism was not, contrary to popular belief, exclusive to France, but flourished in Britain as well where Dewhurst played an important role.
Writings by Dewhurst
Books:- Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development. London: George Newnes, 1904.
- Wanted: a ministry of fine arts. London: Hugh Rees Ltd, 1913. (Reprinted in The Art Chronicle.)
Articles:
- 'Claude Monet, Impressionist' in Pall Mall Magazine, June 1900.
- 'A Great French Landscapist' in The Artist, October 1900.
- 'Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development', part 1, in The Studio. vol. XXXIX, April 1903.
- 'Impressionist Painting: its genesis and development', part 2, in The Studio. vol. XXXIX, July 1903.
- 'What is Impressionism?' in Contemporary Review. vol. XCIX, 1911.