CLIFFORD HALL'S JOURNAL ~ 1943 - 1947 Page 2
July 18 1943
Looking at what I did yesterday. It is not so bad, In fact, better than I thought. There must be a sharp difference between work painted direct from nature and work painted from drawings. The latter inevitably loses a great deal, on the other hand it should gain in significance. The thing has had time to distil. It will be more a product of the intellect than of the emotions and as such will not be so attractive to many people. To sketch always from nature and never to work from drawings is to run the risk of coming to rely on accidental qualities. Nature changes too quickly for us and all painting from nature is necessarily sketching.
These are figures, solid figures contained in a box. They are removed from one another and there is space around them. And the whole affair is set back within the frame.
At the moment I think it has these qualities. When I look at it again I will probably decide it hasn't and will have to be repainted.
July 24 1943
Sketched on the common* - a little of people going to the Fair. A sweet light.
*The Common in question was probably Putney Common.
July 27 1943
After an interval of a week, no, it must be two weeks, went on with head of Hanna. Behind her a mirror reflecting her hair, on the right a vase with a rose in it. I had a fair amount of difficulty to get this going again, but I think it is now set in the right direction.
July 28 1943
A day at the sea!
Painted Southsea pier from drawings made years ago. Enjoyed myself doing it.
Evening at the Player's Theatre with Peter - and I enjoyed myself again.
Tomorrow Reg Reynolds comes for me to go on with his portrait - the one I commenced weeks and weeks ago. It will be a tussle.
July 29 1943
Not so bad, but a great deal to do yet.
Portrait of Reginald Reynolds, author and poet, by Clifford Hall.
September 1 1943
Made a large drawing. Did not feel it was right. Tore it up.
September 3 1943
Having difficulty with the head of the nude. Wiped it out. Will have another go tomorrow.
September 4 1943
Well, I have got it going at last. I should be able to do something with it. I have paid for seven sittings in advance. A very good plan. Doling out money at the end of each sitting puts me right off.
Spent yesterday evening with Marion. I think perhaps we could succeed if we lived together again. I still cannot make up my mind. I cannot make promises I know I am incapable of keeping. It seems the worst sort of dishonesty.
In the dressing gown, foreground, I must introduce some chroma, to kill the yellow of her hair. And the purple cushion should be echoed with more purple. Say, on the sash of the dressing gown.
September 5 1943
Repainted a little of a large picture of Lac des Cignes that I commenced in 1938.
Started, roughly, a 24" x 18" of two boy dancers resting.
September 6 1943
Went on drawing in yesterday's composition which interests me very much Later had three hours painting the nude. It advances slowly, slowly. It is one of those complicated things that won't look right until after hours and hours of work.
September 7 1943
Worked all day at the nude. It is better.
September 8 1943
Rubbed in the composition of the two dancers - also made a sketch of some drapery for the background.
September 9 1943
Still working at the nude. The reflection in the mirror - a sheer cow.
I really must leave it alone for a few days and come back to it with a fresh eye.
September 11 1943
Painted a little panel of Hanna in the open air. I am pleased with it.
On reconsideration I find that the nude is better than I thought. It is the background that, at present needs entirely repainting, also the reflection in the mirror. When that is done we will see. Her arm must be repainted too.
September 14 1943
Repainted most ot the background of the nude. The whole thing is at last beginning to hold together properly. I will repaint the figure itself on Thursday, then maybe if that is successful one more sitting will do it. The reflection must be reconsidered and the dressing gown in the foreground. Yes, I really have hopes of it at last.
September 15 1943
Saw a good exhibition of paintings by Harold Gilman at the Reid & Lefevre Gallery. There are some really fine things there. Most of the pictures were covered with a perfectly horrible shiny varnish. It was explained to me that the pictures had had to be cleaned. Clean them by all means but then, wax. It is the only thing for his heavy impasto. It is wicked what they have done. These restorers and dealers really should learn a little more about pictures and how to treat them.
Did not feel a bit like work this afternoon. Rehung my pictures in the studio.
Robert has done a frame for my little Whistler. It is not a success and I have asked him to alter it. So often the best paintings are the most difficult to frame. Most of the frames on the Gilmans were diabolical.
The school starts again on Friday. I have done during the holidays:
Oils:
Clowns (Agricultural Hall Circus)
Portrait, Reg Reynolds
Hanna (with mirror and flower)
The Pier
Hanna (asleep, in a pink dress)
Hanna (a sketch in the open air)
The Tailor's Shop, Marseille
The portraits of Reynard Cooper's children. Three.
I am still working on the Nude and the Two Dancers Resting.
Also:
Celia (Resting)
Celia and Jenny
Celia (profile in red)
These three are in charcoal and pastel. Average size, 22" x 17" and I forgot: worked at the picture of Lac des Cygnes, a little.
All this represents seven weeks' work and I feel it is not enough. Of the above works, however, only three are direct paintings.
Sales:
To Reynard Cooper - Three Family Portraits £45
To Peter Stone - Nude of Celia £15
To A Gumb - Contre Jour & Elizabeth £15
To Leo Kersley - Drawing of Hanna £4__
__£79__
I have spent a lot on materials: canvas, frames, paint, brushes, and bought a ton of coke for the winter. I did mean to buy an overcoat but one way and another I have not been able to. The old one will have to do again. I might get it repaired.
September 16 1943
The model sat for five hours today. I repainted the entire figure and parts of the background and I am fairly satisfied with what I have done. Another sitting on Saturday, for there is still the mirror reflection to be done.
September 17 1943
School reopened today. My timetable is crazy and forces me to waste a lot of time, a whole day, however, I still have 2½ days a week to paint; that means working on Sundays. But what else could one do on Sundays?
September 18 1943
Perhaps I will leave it now, after today's work. It satisfies me much more than it did. I am inclined to blame the canvas for some of my difficulties. It is a war time canvas, excellent if it were allowed time to mature, but the piece I have feels far to0 new and I am afraid the painting will crack.
The fear of cracking in my paintings has always haunted me, yet hardly any of them have cracked, not even those I have repainted over and over again with only a day or two between the separate layers of pigments. It may be too early to say; however I am thinking of works that are the best part of twenty years old.
September 20 1943
I am thinking again of working out a picture of women by the side of the Thames. Worked a little at a sketch of the composition. I would like to paint it about 40" x 50" size, but it will need a great many more studies, and models. It is about time, I think, I got something larger on the move.
Evening with Peter Stone. My nude of Celia that he now has is far better in feeling than
the one I have just finished, but this one has its qualities and it has done me a lot of good. I think I could paint a really fine nude of Hanna. I wish she was home.
September 25 1943
I have stretched an old piece of cartridge paper on a 40" x 50" stretcher and started to draw the composition of Women by the Thames. I have written to Pauline to come and pose for some of the figures, but I will need another model as well.
September 26 1943
When I have got the studies for each of the five figures I think I can safely make the figures, as I now have them in the composition, rather larger. Only the heads must stay as they are in relation to the distant bank of the river.
Colour. Blue, grey (a grey with a suggestion of violet) flesh colour, notes of pink, of Indian Red and of white.
September 27 1943
Did some more to the composition.
October 2 1943
Painted a sketch of Pauline undressing. Quite successful. Just recovering from a truly ghastly cold caught at that precious unheated school. I'll stick there until the war is over, then I must find some other job. The place is far too arctic, and takes up too much time. I will try to get on with the two dancers tomorrow.
October 3, 1943
Sunday.
Commenced painting 10.20 and left off at 6. Had half an hour for lunch. I am very tired.
October 4 1943
Got up at six and got an hour of daylight. Worked until I had to go and teach. Worked again in the afternoon.
Hanna came and told me to alter the pink in the left of the picture I did and it was just what was needed.
October 9 1943
Pauline here all day. Made five drawings for my large painting.
October 10 1943
Worked on the cartoon from yesterday's drawings. How difficult it is to get nature to fit in with one's ideas.
October 11 1943
Two more drawings from the model.
October 16 1943
Painted a sketch of Hanna (18x14) with a table in the background.
October 17 1943
Worked at yesterday's sketch and the large cartoon.
October 18 1943
Studies from the model and work on the cartoon. I have now decided how the flowers can be introduced. I think white and yellow narcissi with a few of their long, thin, dark green leaves.
Use the white bathrobe in the foreground.
October 21 1943
Talking to Percy Gidney in the Nelson this evening. He described Walter Greaves, as an old man living in Church Street before he was admitted to the Charterhouse. His hair dyed, clumsily, so that the dye blackened his ears. Wore a shiny frock coat, large black hat. Big yellow tie, in a bow. Always a portfolio of drawings under his arm. He was terribly poor and was glad to sell a large drawing for ten shillings. Percy had known him exchange a drawing for half a pint of milk.
He spent most of the little money he made on beer, added Percy. Also said that the sister of the present landlord of the Black Lion in Old Church Street had a good deal of Greaves' work in her pub at Newmarket.
October 23 1943
Did not do much work. Made a study of the drapery in the foreground of my large picture. I am not particularly pleased with it and I will make another tomorrow. After tea went to the river and sketched a few barges. Watched the gulls flying.
I have got my large Lac des Cygnes back from the framer. It looks well in the frame which is an old carved wood one I got from Ted.
Although it is not one of my best paintings yet it satisfies me more than any of the oil paintings I have done from life at a single sitting. I want finish, more and more. It has for years been my desire to paint from my drawings, and I am at last doing a fair amount of work in that way.
Ingres, for example, will always be a great master to me. He had a classic feeling, yet when I saw Whistler's Lady Meux, in black, I realized he too had it. I am reminded that Whistler once said he regretted not having studied under Ingres. I think I know what he meant.
Ingres seldom had good colour, but what does a little thing like that matter in the face of his other magnificent qualities.
October 24 1943
Another study for the drapery. Worked at the cartoon. In the late afternoon went to the river and made a number of little pencil sketches of details I need.
October 25 1943
Made some alterations to the big picture, chiefly in the background, but I also moved the woman and child on the right further in towards the centre, This has, I think, improved the design. The buildings have commenced to look a little too real, but when I get them in paint I should be able to get an effect of mystery, Colour and edges.
October 28 1943
Worked this evening on the river picture, drawing some gulls. Didn't get on particularly well. I suppose I was too tired.
Earlier saw Lillian at the National Gallery. She told me she was getting a divorce. I do not know of a single truly successful marriage.
October 30 1943
Commenced a painting of Pauline - a 24" x 13½" - the tall narrow size of which I am very fond.
At tea time Pauline tells me about an artist for whom she is sitting. He is painting such a lovely picture of her. She is wearing a bathing dress and she is lying on a rock. The background is made up of more rocks and sea and caves - 'and the sea sort of runs into the caves you know.' He is doing this part from a photograph he once took at the seaside. Such a lovely picture. What antics some people will get up to. I wonder if he is an Academician?
October 31 1943
Spent the entire day working at the cartoon of the river picture. I think it is improved. I must get a model for the other two figures.
August 2 1943
Have been working hard to put as much as possible into my painting of Hanna; for she is really going this time. Repainted entirely. Also a little sketch of her in a pink dress. I do wish she wasn't going away.
August 3 1943
Morning with Lillian at the National Gallery. Final corrections to article on Guys. We went to the Wilson Steer exhibition. It did not disappoint me for I have never been able to think a great deal of him. He seems to have done nothing out of the way since the 1890s; of which period the 'Boulogne Sands' is a minor masterpiece*. I conclude that Steer always knew the right people. Even then it is almost incredible that he could have been, and still is apparently, taken so seriously as a painter. 'Steer was beyond doubt the greatest of our landscape painters since Turner or Constable -' says D.S. MacColl in the foreword to the catalogue. Balls. Just balls. Steer was a poor imitator, limping far behind those masters. And what sense is there in being only an imitator? The landscapes of J.D.Innes and the last landscapes of Rowley Smart are a thousand times finer than anything of Steer's. As a figure painter he is weak. His watercolours, in their way, are perfect, yet one watercolour by Whistler, from whose work in that medium Steer's technique is derived, is worth the lot.
* Influenced by Toulouse Lautrec and the Impressionists, but fine, for he has put something of himself into it C H
Some of his landscapes in oil would be acceptable if painted on little panels about 9" x 6", but he paints them on 24" x 20" or even larger canvases and only succeeds in getting them empty.
What a contrast to the Sickert exhibition in the same gallery some time ago! There was something fine. There is practically nothing in the mature Steer.
Afternoon. Went on with the portrait of Reg.
Evening. Sketched at the Anglo-Polish Ballet. Later strolled up Shaftesbury Avenue. Jennette was leaning in her doorway. Talked for a few minutes. She looked most attractive. She kissed me 'goodnight' on the cheek. She smelt lovely. A most attractive perfume and I felt it hanging about all the way down the street until I lost it at Piccadilly Circus.
August 4 1943
Last night a most lovely girl spoke to me near the Regent Palace. She reminded me of Celia - the same type of head and figure - not so beautiful, but still she reminded me. I wanted to ask her to let me paint her but of course I didn't - wish I had. Still I expect she is there every night. I saw her go into a house opposite the entrance to the stage door of the Piccadilly Theatre.
August 6 1943
Worked at a little oil painting I had commenced yesterday. Said goodbye to Hanna. Not a very happy day.
I hope to finish the portrait of Reg next week. Then I must go to Guildford and paint two portraits. Get them done and with the money I make pay models and start at least two fair sized pictures before school starts again.
August 7 1943
Wiped out everything I had done to yesterday's painting. Commenced a charcoal drawing, 24" x 20" from a painting of Celia.
Hanna came in the afternoon and we said goodbye again.
August 8 1943
Guldford to arrange about painting the portraits of Reynard Cooper's children. Start there on Monday week.
August 9 1943
Morning. Went on with drawing an added some colour with pastel. Afternoon Reg sat again. I hope to get his picture done this week.
August 10 1943
Morning. Started a painting of a street in Marseilles from a drawing made in 1935. Afternoon. Repainted the coat and various other portions on Reg's portrait. I think I must leave it now. Satisfied? Yes and no.
Immediately after they are done I always get more pleasure from my sketches than my pictures. But in time a sketch grows thin, its impact slowly loses force, whereas the picture gradually reveals qualities the existence of which I had not at first perceived. Not always, alas! Will this one be one I will like more and more? I cannot say. It is too soon. At the moment I am in a state of complete reaction. He likes it.
When all is said, painting is a damned unsatisfactory business, and yet I love it, and cannot leave it alone. Like love. That's damned unsatisfactory too, and I must have it. What can you put in its place?
The fact is I feel rather dull these days. No, not dull, inexpressibly sad. I have faith in my work, only I realize now that kind of faith is not sufficient. More, far more is needed and I have not got it. That is why I am so sad. And I have made him look sad too. He takes life seriously, that is why.
At Guildford last Sunday I saw two of my paintings. 'The Bar, Café du Dôme', and a 24" x 20" of the Place du Tertre. Painted, the first about 1929 and the second in 1935. It seemed to me that I had not improved at all since those days. The café is certainly uninteresting in colour but it has atmosphere, character and good design. The other one surprised me. I found it had qualities that I now try to get, and I had got them then without trying, as a matter of course, as one should. All this is very depressing.
Perhaps it is true. All through life you are only able to say the same thing. As you advance, you say it all more carefully. Your first picture is your last.
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Two weeks of holiday. Completed:
Portrait of Reg Reynolds, 23" x 19"*
Hanna (with mirror and flower), 20" x 16"
The Pier, 14" x 10"
Hanna (asleep in pink dress) 11" x 15"
Resting (Celia), charcoal and pastel, 24" x 20"
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And there lies the carnation, at her feet.
Peter Stone has bought my nude of Celia. I did not want her to go, but she haunted me, smiling from the wall. And if I took her down and put her away I was always getting her out again, to look and remember.
How lovely she was! I was never completely unaware, for long, of her bad characteristics. Her selfishness, her fits of aloofness, cruelty even; only her loveliness held me utterly, and even now I cannot forget it.
Faced with such beauty it seemed to me that I must give it some more permanent form. And I was only able to do so little.
She loved her work and that explains everything.
August 11 1943
Went on with the street in Marseille (15" x 24").
Afternoon Reg brought Ethel Mannin (his wife) to see his portrait. I think her reaction was somewhat mixed, but how delightful it is to paint a portrait that is not commissioned. You do it your way.
Letter from Hanna. She is miserable. Who wouldn't be? So am I. I have lost, for the time being, a real friend, a delightful model. This wretched war makes everyone unhappy.
And always Julian and Marion are in my thoughts. I wish I were with them. I want to be able to divide myself into several parts. That is the trouble. I am incapable, it seems, of giving all of myself in one direction. And one should be able to do that. Should one? Really I must get my life in order. I am beginning to experience loneliness. A new feeling and I don't like it at all. It's horrible. I still don't know what to do. One part of me wishes to go in one direction, another pulls me somewhere else, and another and another.
When I paint I forget everything and I am only conscious of my painting. Well, as long as I have that I should be thankful. It is not always, you know, that I am able to lose myself in my work. Too often my thoughts wander in a dozen different directions, and my work goes slowly, and without inspiration.
August 12 1943
Got up early and painted until 3.30. Then went to the Private View at the Leicester Gallery. Saw Brodsky, whom I like, and Nina* whom I don't like. Hanna's watercolours are both sold. Back here about 5.30 and worked again until the light went. I cannot make up my mind whether I like what I have done today or not - the Marseille street (15½ x 24").
* Brodsky refers to the Australian artist Harace Brodsky and Nina refers to the British artist Nina Hamnett, and in this instance Clifford is probably talking about liking and disliking the particular paintings he saw at the exhibition, rather than how he felt about the artists themselves. Nina Hamnett was an acquaintance of his whom he had known for a number of years.
August 13 1943
Early again, I retouched yesterday's painting. It was nice and sticky, on a course canvas. Just right for what I wanted. Now I think I may leave it. Putting a little girl in a white dress on the bottom left hand side of the picture seems to have pulled the whole thing together. I feel this is a great improvement on the last but one street scene I did away from nature (La Place du Tertre).
There are three other sketches of Marseille. One I gave away; the other two I sold. If only I had them back I could make paintings from them. You should never part with your sketches.
August 14 1943
Getting ready to go away. Made a few sketches at the Piccadilly Theatre.
August 23 1943
Back in Chelsea yesterday. Portraits successful. The one of the little girl in pink is a beauty.
August 25 1943
Working at a charcoal and coloured chalk drawing, size 17" x 23" from a little sketch I made of Celia in January 1941.
August 26 1943
Drew in a 30" x 20", a nude.
Evening - went to see Ted Kersley at Maida Vale. He cleaned the tiny Whistler panel for me with castile soap and warm water; also gave me a frame I can have cut down for it.
August 27 1943
Morning - started another large drawing in charcoal, from a sketch of Celia and Jenny. Afternoon, I went on with the nude.
August 28 1943
Another model, but it didn't go well, and after three and a half hours I wiped out all I had done.
August 29 1943
Worked on the drawing.
August 30 1943
Another sitting for the nude with the mirror in the background. It is not going to be easy. Also did a little more to the drawing I was at yesterday.
August 31 1943
Finished laying in the nude. The main values are now started. The next job is to complete it - a piece at a time. A big a piece each sitting as I can manage comfortably.