CLIFFORD HALL'S JOURNAL ~ 1943 - 1947 Page 4
February 17 1944
Went with Lillian to see Sir Wiliam Nicholson at his studio in Dover Street. Charming. Told me a few stories about Greaves and let us take away a small painting by Greaves to be photographed. This painting shows Whistler at work on the portrait of his mother. The figure of Whistler is full of vitality.
Here is a copy of the notes I made after the visit.
Nicholson did not agree that Greaves had a rich cockney accent (Schwabe said he had). Greaves might have dropped an H now and again. Greaves did not work in Nicholson's studio as Rothenstein suggests. Greaves was in the studio simply because Nicholson was painting the portrait now in Manchester.
Nicholson asked Greaves to meet General Smuts. Smuts suggested that Greaves should go to South Africa -much bright colour, unlike England. Greaves was doubtful. ' What do you want bright colour for? Jimmie Whistler always turned away when he saw bright colour. No, quiet colours were the best.' Nicholson took Greaves to an exhibition of contemporary paintings. Greaves was not very impressed. 'Those bright colours. Blues, yellows, purples, reds. All one wanted was a little white, some black, ochre and so on. No more. Far too expensive all those bright colours, anyway.'
Greaves apparently never looked at any but Whistler's paintings. Always spoke of Whistler as the only painter that mattered. Nicholson thought Whistler had once been rather gone on Greaves' sister, Tinnie. He remembered Tinnie at her brother's show in the Goupil Gallery. She had dressed up for the event and seemed to have made use of some old lace curtains. Greaves was somewhat overcome with the initial success of this exhibition and Nicholson helped him interview the reporters.
At Cremorne* where Greaves used to go with Whistler they had great times. Whistler enjoyed himself immensely, always with several women. One would sit on his knees. The others hung about him. They adored him.
Nicholson said Greaves looked on his painting as a job to be done. He gave the impression of knowing exactly what he wanted to do, and he did it without any fuss. 'I take what I can get for 'em.' He remembered old Chelsea so well he could paint and draw it from memory. Greaves was a contented person, but, thought Nicholson, he didn't like going to the Charterhouse. They made him take baths and leave off blackening his hair - and that killed him.
Nicholson also spoke of Whistlers kindness and charm. Remembered seeing him sketching out of doors somewhere up the river not far from Hampton Court. Whistler was surrounded by children and a few grown-ups. Someone advised him to get his hair cut and they were very much in his way, but Whistler took it all with great good nature and went on with his sketch of an old woman sitting in a doorway.
* Cremorne Gardens. The following are some extracts taken and listed as appendix notes by Julian Hall from the now lost long version of 'Strange Echo' by Clifford Hall:
Cremorne had been in existence for three years when Walter was born. Named after the Viscount Cremorne who had acquired the property in 1803, it spread over twelve acres, with an entrance in the King's Road, and another from the river; its pleasure gardens recalled the more famous Vauxhall of Regency days, but Cremorne catered for the populace. All kinds of amusements were to be found there and it soon became an unending source of attraction to the Greaves children. It was fun just to hang about outside. In 1852 a Monsieur Poitevin was the sensation, making a successful parachute descent on Clapham Common, having jumped from a balloon released at Cremorne. His wife, known as the Parisian Aeronaut, later ascended from the gardens as Europa carried away by Jupiter. Seated on a live bull, slung beneath the basket of her husband's balloon, she sailed up into the air above Chelsea, but the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals prosecuted Poitevin and finished further exhibitions of this kind, for, on coming safely back to earth Europa's ravisher was discovered to be in a dying condition, and had to be slaughtered; and further, it turned out to be a sick beast bought at Smithfield for the ascent, and not even a bull but a harmless heifer…..During 1858 Cristofero Buono Core, billed as the Italian Salamander, delighted huge crowds by walking unharmed through a fiery furnace. As a young man, Walter spent many of his evenings there, sketching and making notes for pictures to be worked out during the day…..The Gardens at Cremorne were closed in 1877 and never opened again.
February 19 1944
Miserable. Made a little drawing.
February 20 1944
Started a painting and worked some hours at it. Got more and more depressed. Wiped out all I had done.
February 23 1944
Raid last night. I stayed in the studio and watched the flashes through the big window whilst the whole building rattled. I worried about Marion. My instinct says go back, then I think how wrong it is to make decision now the raids have started again when the whole situation is coloured by emotion. I do not know.
The school was hit last Friday and it's in a hell of a mess. We open again tomorrow. I do not know how much patching up will have been done. Yesterday most of the windows were still missing, ceilings down, doors blown off.* My room was one of the few that escaped serious damage. One thing is certain, my nerves are not what they were. I can hardly believe I am the same person. Why I used to be out most of the night in bad raids, and the recent ones only last an hour at most. But they are too much for me. I was frightened last night.
* "Following a lull in German air raids, 1944 saw the era of V2 raids. On 18th February 1944, a bomb exploded on the Convent of the Sisters of Mary in the Downs. Five nuns were killed, with several others wounded. The shockwaves were so great that several of the College's windows were shattered, doors were broken, and the ceiling of the swimming pool caved in." Source - The College during the Interwar Years and World War Two
Elizabeth posed until 4 o'clock and I got the picture started. It went very slowly but I think I can do it. A night like the last one is not the ideal preparation. The sirens have just gone - 10.5 pm.
February 26 1944
Elizabeth. Did some more work to her picture and I really think I like it.
Very tired. But no raid last night and so far, it is past midnight, nothing has happened.
I have got a bad chill caught in that beastly school. Not surprising as I spent a day in a room with one skylight minus its glass - in this weather!
Saw Rex this morning, He had been digging out more bodies from the block of flats that was hit on Wednesday night. Yesterday at school a request from the H.M. That all the staff make a point of attending prayers. Said I would not. Failed to see any connection between God and the things that were going on. Best leave Him out, make the best of it, and finish the war.
Probably hundreds killed in Chelsea on Wednesday last. Churchill inspecting recent raid damage in London makes a vulgar gesture with his fingers, a V sign they call it, and remarks: 'It is quite like old times'! It bewilders me. I can only see sense and order in painting.
Elizabeth told me a story she heard from someone who got out of France not long ago:
It was the year 1960 and the three prizes in the State Lottery were, first, a gramme of butter, second, a few grammes of potatoes, and third, five minutes use of the electricity.
The prizewinners met and discussed what they had done with their prizes. Said the first - 'I managed to steal a bit of bread. I spread my butter on it and it tasted almost like a pre-war tartine.' The second saved up a little fat and made pommes frites. The third admitted he had used the electricity to listen in to the broadcast from England to France. 'And what did it say?' asked the other two prizewinners eagerly. 'Oh', he replied, 'it said: Courage! Patience!'
February 27 1944
Cold much worse. Wrote over 2,000 words about Greaves.
February 29 1944
Sketched in a painting of Elizabeth yesterday. Still not feeling very strong.
Late last night took a letter to Marion. Not the one I originally wrote but the same in substance and much shorter. I told her I was willing to try and live with her again but I could not make her promises I knew I would be unable to keep. That I did not want to lose her and Julian. We could not go back and find what we had before. We would have to make something entirely different. I also said that I could not live up to a great love. It was a burden to me, made me over sensitive, imagine things that probably did not exist, and sooner or later behave cruelly and hate myself for it afterwards.
I think that sort of love is a disease and I can well understand anyone running away from it.
I know that I have not been very generous, I have tried to be honest and I cannot pretend to feelings I do not possess. I do not love Marion anything like she loves me.
Something has gone quite dead in me and I think I will never feel intense love for a woman any more. In my heart I believe I still love Celia, but I do not want her.
I feel love for Julian but that is quite a different kind of love.
And I would be very sad if I lost dear Hanna because in some strange way she has made me happier than anyone else ever has. Happy in a funny secure kind of fashion.
This afternoon a note from Marion asking me to see her tomorrow evening. That must decide.
March 1 1944
I went to see Marion this evening and we have agreed. We start together again.
March 4 1944
Made a sketch, mostly from memory, for a painting I have in mind of Elizabeth.
March 5 1944
Went on with painting of the Polish Ballet. A group of four figures, backstage. Spent the morning making a careful drawing of drapery for the foreground, then worked from the drawing, and went on over the rest of the picture. A good day. Must keep this picture very dramatic, over dramatic a fault on the right side with such a subject.
Rowley. Bill told me last night that the Tate had acquired one of Rowley Smart's watercolours, presented, I believe, by Dr Stross. John Rothenstein, the curator, was asked to see the Stross collection and was surprised (!) at the quality of Rowley's work. How irresponsible these people are. The curator of the Tate really should make it his business to know what is going on. There were three exhibitions of Rowley's work in the West End before the war and one critic, in the Referee I think it was, wrote that Smart was one of our finest watercolourists. And so he was, but no one took much notice.
March 6 1944
Went on with the painting.
March 11 1944
Did a lot more to painting of Anglo-Polish Ballet.
Last Thursday saw Tod Slaughter, for the fourth time in Jack The Ripper, Metropolitan, Edgware Road.
March 12 1944
Worked on yesterday's painting.
When I can spend a couple of days here painting, I feel so far away from the boredom and stupidity of the rest of the week at the school.
If I can hang on to this I will not mind so much. Just suppose I have to go on teaching until I am 60! Then I will get a pension! And another ten years in which to paint, or perhaps twenty years, or even longer. As long as I can go on painting give me a hundred years.
March 13 1944
Prepared five boards and three small canvasses with a mixture of Indian red and white. The same colour underpainting that the house painters use. They should be all right to paint on about the end of June.
March 15 1944
I read they have selected Munnings President of the Academy. Another triumph for mediocrity. The new president is reported to 'have decided views on modern art'!
March 18 1944
Made a drawing of naked women by the sea shore, with a stormy sky.
Two weeks since I went back to live with Marion. And I am still as miserable as I was before. What a hopeless brute I am. Marion is truly magnificent and yet I feel like a stranger in her house. I do hate myself today and I feel I would like to kill myself but I know I won't.
March 19 1944
Slept abominably last night.
Morning. Worked at a painting of some clowns.
Afternoon Went to look at a view in the Kings Road that I want to paint. Made two rough drawings. Pretty bad ones, but I rather like what I did this morning.
March 20 1944
A sketch in oils of the women by the sea.
March 21 1944
Another drawing of the same subject.
March 25 1944
Hyde Park with Hanna. A lovely day. Made a few panel sketches. Nasty raid last night.
March 26 1944
A head of Hanna. She has her turquoise necklace and earrings.
March 27 1944
Afternoon. Coloured one of the little sketches made on Saturday, in watercolour.
'Anglo-Polish Ballet, Dressing Room' 1943, pen, ink and wash drawing by Clifford Hall
April 1 & 2 1944
Worked at a large drawing from the sketch of the women by the sea. The drawing now measures 27" x 22". I am trying to do this without models. Models seem to get in the way of ideas.
April 9 1944
I have been working most of the time since last Sunday on the large drawing and I got it on a canvas and painted yesterday for nine hours at it and very nearly got something good and this morning I wiped it all off and I have started again.
It's a terribly difficult job.
I am still very miserable and sick of everything and I suppose that is why my work won't come right. Marion has gone to East Meon and I am by myself for the weekend. I am frightfully worried about my attitude towards her. I am just miserable and frustrated when we are together. I hate myself.
April 10 1944
Spent the whole day at the picture and had another hard tussle with it - something is slowly emerging, I think.
After three days here , back in the studio, I feel much calmer but I do not want to leave.
Reg brought a girl he thought I might like to paint. I would - and Henry came and stayed about an hour.
No doubt about it, I was happier when I was here by myself with Hanna staying a day or two now and again. I have nothing to give Marion and I should have been brave and not gone back, but then I would have asked Hanna to live with me. I really need someone and we got on perfectly. But it might not have lasted., turned out like a marriage, and I was afraid. A selfish brute, I suppose.
I do not know where my duty lies, it is to Julian especially. I know it but I don't feel it.
April 11 1944
Another day at the painting. Amazingly incomplete yet it is getting something my more accomplished ones lack. I am beginning to rather like it.
April 12 1944
Worked on the painting filling in the portions of canvas I had not previously touched with solid paint. I will not do any more to it for some time, if ever, for I think I have got something here worth keeping.
April 13 1944
Painted a little panel by the river.
April 16 1944
Another little panel - this time of dear Hanna, a bed and a chest.
April 19 1944
I have spent the last three afternoons on a very careful pen and wash drawing of Cheyne Row, one of the few remaining streets in Chelsea that have not been made hideous in one way or another.
April 21 1944
I made a careful tracing of the Cheyne Row drawing and marked it through onto a panel. I am really quite pleased with it. It doesn't look as if I was worried when I did it, and neither was I, but now I have left off all this terrible business of Marion crowds on to me again. She keeps telling me I had better go if I am not happy. I don't know what to do. I am torturing her and torturing myself. It is only the thought of Julian that stops me. I must make up my mind. What a coward I am.
April 22 1944
Painted an 18" x 14" panel of Lawrence Street looking towards Upper Cheyne Row. Drew it in very carefully this morning and worked freely over it in the afternoon. Four and half hours. Very tired. Only fairly successful. I think, but I will know better tomorrow when I am fresh to it.
I have been able to keep the problem out of my mind most of the day - when I am working, only. Marion is away to see Julian. I wish she hated me. It would make it so much easier for each of us. On my side, she told me last night, is indifference which is worse than hate. But that is only partly true, for if I were completely indifferent I would bolt, at once. I have too much imagination. And all this is getting nowhere, nowhere.
April 26 1944
Started a nude of Elizabeth, yesterday.
I had a struggle with myself about Marion. It's no good, I can't leave her. Things are going much better and I must do my part towards making them successful.
April 27 1944
Elizabeth posed all the afternoon and on until seven o'clock. I will leave this sketch for its freshness of feeling.
April 28 1944
Four clear weeks to myself and what have I done?
1. Women by the Sea 27 x 22
2. Cheyne Row 13˝ x 12
3. Lawrence Street 14 x 10
4. Nude (Elizabeth) 22 x 15
5. x2 panels (river and bedroom) 8˝ x 6
6. Pen & wash drawing of Cheyne Row 14 x 10
Not enough, and three more days left. Elizabeth sitting tomorrow and Reg's friend on Sunday.
Sketched by the river this afternoon. How the light kept on changing! Quite a passable little panel.
I have , these last few weeks, done the first chapter on Greaves and started on the second.
April 29 1944
Afternoon. Made a drawing of Elizabeth lying back in an easy chair. Pencil, pen and ink, wash, retouched with white and finally worked all over with black chalk. Indirect wish I could get something of the same sort of feeling in an oil painting.
April 30 1944
Resi Weltlinger,* Reg's friend, posed for a drawing. Had intended to paint but she had been sitting in the sun. Lee Hankey asked me in for a drink before lunch. He had just been altering a painting. Taken a whole house away with some patent paint remover, and covered the space with sky, daubed on with great jabs of a loaded brush, a square brush, I should say, full of sticky paint. Such methods positively horrify me, yet he is such a nice man, and works largely from drawings.
* Resi Weltlinger was a German Jewish refugee and an associate member of the Lennist League, who later in 1944 was arrested for the forgery of two National Registration-stamps which had enabled two British Trotskyists to avoid military service. She was convicted of larceny and forgery and subsequently interened.
'Cheyne Row, Chelsea, April 1944' by Clifford Hall
May 1 1944
Painted by the river and had a job with it. Evening. I saw so much colour. Teaching starts again tomorrow.
May 8 1944
Saturday. Wrote up my notes on the visit to Streatham Hall (Greaves's decorations)
Mounted a drawing.
Sunday. A few sketches of Hanna. Only kept one, as an idea to paint.
Monday afternoon. Black and white chalk drawing of Upper Cheyne Row. Trees and sunlight. Turned out rather well.
May 13 1944
Started a drawing of Kings Road from Oakley Street.
May 14 1944
Started a head, canvas 16 x 12. Did some more to Greaves. Yesterday's drawing is very interesting and I will go on with it on Monday. Today's head I enjoyed after a difficult start. Funny I can't see her as pretty as she looks.
May 15 1944
Went on with Saturday's drawing.
May 20 1944
Painted in Oakley Street - same subject as the drawing I did last Saturday.
May 21 1944
Worked at the head I started last week. Dull. I can't get hold of it yet. (16 x 12)
May 22 1944
Afternoon. Started a careful drawing of Upper Cheyne Row - as a study for a painting.
Recently I have found this an excellent method: make a good drawing, trace it on to a panel and paint the panel from nature and from exactly the same position as that from which the drawing was made. One is free to concentrate entirely on the painting. I find streets far too complicated to draw and paint in a sitting and I must paint them in one sitting as now my time is limited. I am almost a slave.
May 24 1944
Worked on my drawing of Upper Cheyne Row 4 - 5.30. Must pull it together and finish it next Saturday, if the light is right.
May 27 1944
A sunny afternoon so I worked at the drawing of Upper Cheyne Row, with black and white chalk, trying to get the feel of the light which was most exciting.
May 28 1944
Repainted the head (28 x 12) and improved it although there remains a great deal more to be done. Lighting for this, left hand blind down. Left half of window on right covered. Use smaller brushes.
June 2 1944
Evening. Painted a little panel of some houses in Dovehouse Street, very exciting in colour - the evening sun on them. I am quite ridiculously pleased about this sketch because I was able do it after a day's work at the school.
June 3 1944
Painted the panel of Upper Cheyne Row, 14" x 10", gentle sunlight. Prepared four more panels.
June 10 1944
Went to the Allied Circus at Wimbledon- two shows- made a drawing and painted a panel. Also did a drawing there last Wednesday, and last Monday a drawing of Hanna at 278 Kings Road.
June 11 1944
Repainted the head and made a shocking mess of it. Wiped it all out again. A blonde and I don't like 'em *
* This statement shouldn't be taken too seriously as Elizabeth was blonde. It seems Resi Weltlinger was as well.
June 17 1944
Raids have started again. Both last night (on firewatch) and the night before I only had an hour or so of sleep. This time we were attacked with so-called pilotless planes. I saw one not long after midnight. It rushed over the building with a great noise from its engine or whatever it is propels the beastly thing, flying low. It was held in a searchlight beam and from the machine's tail flew huge red sparks. Crimson tracer bullets raced after it, and golden shell bursts were all around, on either side of the searchlight, in the purple sky.
Today I feel very tired, and not really up to work, and all I have done is a watercolour sketch from one of the one of the drawings I did at the circus last week.
June 18 1944
These infernal things* go flying over at intervals all day. Yesterday, last night and again today.Did no work. Saw the R.B.A. Exhibition, mostly frightful. Two good drawings by Luard's.
* The V-1 flying bombs the Germans started launching against London in June 1944.
June 20 1944
An ill wind - Raids and half-term, so the school is shut for three and a half days.
Painted the figures by the sae. I never know whether what I do these days is good or bad.
Only one raid so far.
Worked on an Indian red ground. Palette - white, Indian red, raw sienna, ultramarine, cobalt. The red ground very nice to paint on after such a long while.
June 21 1944
Took a painting to the Leicester Gallery for the next show, this makes three they have to choose from
Went out sketching. Scraped it out when I got back.
June 22 1944
Sketched in Hyde Park (oils - 14" x 10") . Just tried to get the spirit of the scene. Raids continue. What a difference between the work done in the studio and a sketch painted out of doors. The thing I have just done looks almost out of place.
Afternoon: made a drawing - very rough - of Cheyne Row. I must get a painting started for this. I have been meaning to do it for years. It is most complicated. Must be painted in sunlight.
June 23 1944
Started a canvas, 20" x 16" of Cheyne Row. Worked morning and afternoon at the drawing. It must be painted when the shadows fall right across the road. Between 3 and 6.
June 24 1944
Painted a 14" x 10" panel of Old Church Street. The light was quite wrong for going on with Cheyne Row. Slight as it is I am very tempted to leave it, it has the mood, and if I repaint it I will only add facts which are really of no importance. I think there will be a thunder storm. I have a frightful headache and planes are making a horrible noise. It has gone on for two hours or more and still goes on.
June 30 1944
Made a drawing of Cheyne Row, looking north.
Raids continue. About 6.15 a bomb swished right over the studio and shook the place badly. I went to the window in the passage and saw a huge mass of smoke drifting away over Glebe Place; but the bomb must have fallen on the Battersea side, for I immediately went out and walked as far as the Embankment, but could see nothing.
Seven o'clock 'All Clear' has just gone.