MEMORIES OF ART LESSONS AT PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL IN BRITAIN

DURING THE 1940s AND 1950s

JOHN A. WALKER (copyright)

I was born in 1938 so I must have attended Holme Hill primary school in Henage

Road, Grimsby from 1943 to 1949/50. As a small child I loved drawing and

painting and so the art lesson became my favourite. And since I demonstrated

skill and dedication, I became a favourite of the art teachers. Naturally their

praise and encouragement reinforced my passion for art and I soon decided I

wanted to be an artist when I grew up. My first art teacher at primary school

was a plain but feisty spinster called Miss Phyliss Gaine who produced, in her

spare time, some rather insipid watercolours of architectural subjects such as

Lincoln Cathedral and Roman street scenes.

Phyllis Gaine, 'Rome', 1927?, Watercolour, Franklin Trust collection, Grimsby.

At that time, I liked to draw with strong black outlines around my figures

and objects. I think I must have been influenced by the comics (like The Beano) I

read because they were one of the few examples of coloured imagery I saw as a

child. Miss Gaine disapproved and told me to desist. I could not understand this

rule and no sound reason for it was given. No doubt Miss Gaine would have

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been horrified by the 1960s pop art paintings of Roy Lichtenstein based on

American comics but when I saw them I thought - so, I was right all along.

At home in the evenings I painted on the kitchen table while the family

listened to the radio. I recall doing a kind of pop art - I copied coloured postcards

feauturing Norwegian fjords which my father had brought back from Norway

where he had served in the army.

The first recollection I have of making an abstract was a doodle involving

circular and looping lines that criss-crossed one another. I then coloured in the

spaces between the lines with different hues. This was a project set by the art

teacher to decorate a bookmarker. I enjoyed the exercise and was pleased by

the pattern that resulted but it did not occur to me that this could be a work of

art in its own right. Already, it seems, I had learnt that art and design were alien

categories.

One subject we were asked to depict was an ice cream seller with a tricycle

cart. Once I had drawn the cart in the middle of the paper, I surrounded it with

dynamic lines shooting off in all directions. I suppose I must have derived this

nimbus device from advertisements that used it to highlight objects. Such lines

of radiance probably derived from the religious imagery of the past showing

figures emitting heavenly rays of light. The other children in the class could not

understand what the lines signified but the art teacher did.

I cannot remember being taught about the conventions of perspective at

primary school but I do recall the first time I struggled to understand it. I set

myself the task of drawing the top deck of bus seen from the rear. I realised that

the front end of the bus looked smaller than my viewing position. However, I

also knew that in reality the width of the bus was the same all the way along.

How could this be? I tried drawing the bus with the width remaining the same

but then it looked wrong. (I was trying to do an isometric drawing.) This was

when I realised that there was a difference beween one's logical knowledge of

reality and how it appears to the eyes. (Knowledge versus perception.)

I managed to pass the 11+ exam and was thus able to attend Wintringham

Grammar School in Eleanor Street just round the corner from Henage Road. At

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that time the school was a mix of boys and girls but shortly afterwards the

school divided and moved site. It became Wintringham Grammar School for

Boys and discipline became stricter under an austere, grey-faced, dark- suited

Headmaster called Ronald Gill. The new school was on a green field site on the

edge of town. The building looked like a biscuit factory. A room was designated

as a library but for a long time it had few books especially illustrated art books.

The town also lacked a decent bookshop. The main bookseller was called Albert

Gait and the number of books he stocked about art was small. One Christmas I

spent five pounds of my saved pocket money on a large volume about Picasso.

Wilhelm Boeck and Jaime Sabartes, 'Pablo Picasso', (London: Thames and

Hudson, 1955.

My working-class parents were appalled I had spent so much money on a book.

(The only books already in the house were a bible and a medical dictionary.)

Once at school I was awarded an art prize in the form of a book token. I bought a

volume about drawing methods; it was one of the few art books then available

in Gait's. The book illustrated various techniques of drawing, such as pointilism,

which I tried out. I also experimented with scraperboard in which an image in

white was scratched out from a black ground.

Today we are deluged by coloured imagery from a spectrum of media but

during my childhood there was a shortage of such imagery. I have mentioned

comics and postcards, and there was also the cinema with its feature films

(mostly black and white) and Disney cartoons. In addition, I recall seeing

magazines such as Picture Post, Illustrated, Everybody's and the women's

weeklies my mother read. Woodcut illustrations in Radio Times attracted me

and I cut them out and saved them in a scrapbook. The arrival of a set of art

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posters in the grammar school classroom was a welcome sight. (I have not been

able to discover who distributed them.) The posters included Van Gogh's

'Sunflowers', Renoir's 'The Umbrellas', Jan Brueghel's 'Hunters in the Snow' and

a painting of a statue in a town square by Raoul Dufy. Day after day I studied

them intently trying to understand their different styles and iconographies. The

Brueghel clearly exemplified the characteristics of traditional, realist European

art while the others exemplified the innovations of modern art. My art teacher

at grammar school was called Ernest J. Worrall and I owe him a great deal. (1)

One thing he had asserted was that a painting should not consist of one colour

but this rule was contradicted by the Van Gogh which was mostly shades of

yellow and also by the Renoir which was mostly shades of blue. They proved

Worrall wrong. I was also troubled by the flatness of the Van Gogh, the lack of

modelling in representing the pot and flowers. Even so, it proved to be a

hypnotic image. My admiration for Van Gogh became life-long.

The Dufy was a cheerful, brightly-coloured painting that seemed

lighthearted in its style. I was surprised by the fact that there seemed to be a

dislocation between line and colour. It had an unfinished quality. I was also

puzzled by a zig zig brushmark superimposed on the blue sky. It did not resemble

a cloud. I realise now that Dufy's pictorial innovations were designed to call

attention to the means of representation, to foreground the devices, in order to

remind the viewer that the painting was a construct made by using certain

materials and instruments rather than being an illusionistic window on the

world or a mirror reflection of the world.

Although Worrall was familar with modern artists such as Picasso,

Matisse and Klee, he painted mostly landscapes plus some nudes in a traditional

representational style somewhat resembling John Constable's. There was a good

deal of vigour in his handling. He used both watercolour and oil. I particularly

liked his fluid, rapidly executed pen and Indian ink sketches with watercolour

washes added later. It was a method and style I sought to emulate and soon

considered that I was as good at it as Worrall. At weekends I used to ride out

into the countryside on my bicycle in search of picturesque motifs such as old

carts in farmyards to draw in pen and ink and colour with watercolour. I also

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sought out urban subjects. Once, for example, I drew a scene from inside a

half-demolished house near Freeman Street. In the distance was the massive

brick building of Spiller's flour mill. The result was included in the Lincolnshire

Art Society's annual exhibition, organised by Worrall, held in the Town Hall. This

was an honour but a bonus was the fact that someone bought it for around 20.

My first sale!

Another subject that appealed to me was the interior of a wooden bungalow at

Humberston where the Walker family used to spend summer holidays and

weekends. The bungalow had no electricity or gas and so we had to rely on a

black cast-iron, wood-burning stove for cooking and a oil lamp for illumination.

This pen and ink/watercolour is now in the collection of the Fishing Heritage

Museum, Grimsby.

My mongrel pet dog was also a subject that appealed to me.

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Walker, 'Lassie', circa 1950, 28 x 18.5 cm, pen and ink plus watercolour, Artist's

collection.

Walker, 'Still life', circa 1954 watercolour. Lost or destroyed.

Mostly the work we did in class was painting still lives in watercolour and

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designing posters using poster paint that came in powder form in tins. There was

no oil painting because, I suppose, it would have been too expensive in terms of

materials. Around 1955 I bought an oil painting kit plus a booklet about how to

paint in oils. I used a piece of hardboard as a support and copied a photo of

Louth church. I painted it in my small bedroom as there was no other place

suitable.

Walker, 'Louth Church', circa 1955, oil on board, 54 x 38 cm. Artist's collection.

Despite the advice of the booklet, I found using oils extremely difficult and I

struggled for days. The pigments emerging from the tubes reminded me of

toothpaste. When I mentioned my problems to Worrall he said I should have

asked him for help.

If I recall correctly, the samples of work submitted for exams at O and A

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levels were of traditional genres such as still life, landscape and portraiture. One

of my best full-length portraits was a 1955 pencil drawing of my deaf

grandmother Georgina Beel sitting anxiously on the edge of her chair.

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Walker, 'Grandma Beel', 1955. Pencil on paper. Artist's collection.

I also painted in oils a rather unflattering head and shoulders portrait of my

mother Constance Walker (since lost). At the age of seventeen I took it to an

interview for a university place in Newcastle upon Tyne and it was praised by

Lawrence Gowing the Professor who considered my application. ( was accepted

and started the following year.) I do not recall any theoretical discussion of

genres in painting at school although Worrall would discuss our individual

efforts at length in class crits. I also recall some primitive art history but my

studies were hampered by the lack of suitable books or slides and by the fact

that I had never been to Italy to see the murals and masterpeices I was

supposed to write about. I do remember one essay subject Worrall set: discuss

Le Corbusier's contention that a house was a machine for living in.

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Walker, 'Descent into Hell', 1955. Watercolour and gouache. Destroyed.

Attempting something more ambitious than a still life subject I set myself

the task of painting a history painting on a large sheet of paper. It was a complex

composition containing many figures and was dominated by a pair of eyes. It

was entitled 'Descent into Hell' and addressed portentous subjects such as

money/greed, war, death, wine, women and song - i.e. it was a prudish

adolescent's moral condemnation of human behaviour. I disliked the result and

so I never tackled anything so grandiose again.

Mastering the human figure was an essential goal of any budding artist and

I was keen to draw life models, preferably in the nude. Naturally, there were no

nude models available at school. Worrall may have asked pupils to pose for one

another. In the 1950s I did manage attend a life class held at the town Art School

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then located in Silver Street. This school was primarily vocational and

commercial - it trained people to paint lettering and shop signs. (John Hurt, the

movie star, is the most famous person to have attended this school. He studied

there in 1957 and 1958.) The model posing in the life class was a fully-clothed

male pensioner so my knowledge of anatomy did not improve. Desperate to

master the naked female body, I undertook drawings based on large photos of

bathing beauties featured in the popular press. I copied them and removed their

bathing costumes. Unfortunately, my prudish mother discovered the drawings

stored under my bed and I was acused of being a sexual pervert. In irritation I

tore the drawings up. I tried to explain to her that shortly, at university, I would

be drawing naked females in life classes and that my current drawings were

simply practice.

A series of mongraphs published by Penguin attracted my attention and I

bought one on Paul Klee (published in 1949 with an introduction by Douglas

Cooper). When I showed Worrall the book he acknowledged that he was aware

of Klee's work but he had never mentioned him in class. Worrall knew a good

deal about modern art but frustratingly he kept this knowledge to himself.

Perhaps he thought such knowledge would confuse beginners such as ourselves.

Klee did not directly influence my art but his images did strike me as magical and

extraordinary, and the book widened my understanding of what art could be.

In 1950 a new, morally improving children's comic called The Eagle was

founded by Marcus Morris, an Anglican Vicar. It encouraged readers to submit

drawings for publication. I submitted one of a footballer heading a ball which

was duly reproduced. I later discovered that David Hockney and Gerald Scarfe

also had drawings published in The Eagle.

In 1952 King George VI died and his body lay in state in Westminster Hall

guarded by Beefeaters. For some reason this event and photoraphs of it

appealed to me and I made it the subject of a detailed painting (since lost).

One of the drawbacks of Grimsby was the lack of a public art gallery and

museum (to this day it does not have one) where one could see actual works of

art in the flesh rather than via reproductions. Only when one sees the actual

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works does one realise the role of scale and texture in painting. The absence of a

civic gallery meant that we did not benefit from seeing travelling exhibitions.

However, I did visit the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull and the Usher Gallery in

Lincoln plus some country houses in Lincolnshire. My first significant exposure to

modern art occurred in 1955 when a large Van Gogh exhibition was held at the

City Art Gallery in Manchester (December 1955 - February 1956). Worrall

organised a coach party to see it and I managed to get a seat. I cannot over

estimate the extent of the emotional and aesthetic impact of Van Gogh's

drawings and canvases. I count myself lucky that I saw his work before knowing

the melodramatic details of his life-story.

Grimsby public libraries provided a solid service and they nearly made up for

the lack of a decent school library. Virtually the only widely available

contemporary art magazine in Britain during the 1940s and 1950s was called The

Studio. This I read regularly in the periodicals section of the public reference

library. At the time, however, it was a small and dull publication.

In 1956-57, during my first year at university, Worrall arranged a commission

for a mural-size, narrative painting to be placed in the vestibule of Wintringham

School. The theme I choose was a fishing one - it was a tribute to fishermen

recently lost at sea due to 'black ice' forming on the decks which caused the

trawlers to capsize. I received no fee for the painting but was reimbursed the

cost of materials. The painting was thoughtfully reviewed by a sixth form

schoolboy in the school magazine. (2) It was my first experience of art criticism.

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Walker, 'Black Frost', 1956-57, oil on canvas, 274.3 x 81.2 cm. Lost or

destroyed.

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(1) Worrall (1898-1972) was born in London and fought in the First World War.

He later trained at Ipswich Art College and the Royal College of Art in London. He

moved to Grimsby in 1932. He and his wife Mollie - who served as a model for

his nudes - lived in the village of Healing just outside Grimsby. He painted in a

large shed at the back of his garden. During the Second World War he was

employed by the local authority to document aspects of the war - ship

construction and bombed buildings - and some of these paintings are now in the

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collection of the Imperial War Museum. From time to time his paintings appear

in auctions where they sell for small sums. Worrall defended me against the

Headmaster with whom I had several altercations and made sure I gained a

university place.

(2) A. G. Beeden (6U), 'Black Frost', Argus, Vol 2, no. 5, May 1957, p. 10.

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