Articles» IN FOCUS: Henry Clarence Whaite’s post-impressionist sketches of the East Suffolk Coast
It’s a theory that in the 20th century with the growth of art colleges and jobs in education some good painters, sculptors, artists, were ableto maintain their identity as practitioners, focus on their vocation and develop without having to pursue commercial recognition for their art as a be-and-end all, that is, without necessarily renouncing home and hearth, upping sticks and taking residence in the nearest Bohemia to seek patronage, etc. As a consequence it is not a surprise to find in our time odd works and even whole collections of work coming to light by artists of surprising merit who one has hardly heard of and who have not registered on the standard histories general or otherwise.
Harry or Henry Clarence Whaite was the nephew of famous painter of the sublime, a contemporary of Turner, who had the same name. This kind of family history brings a familiar pressure and burden. Whilst in some of his larger efforts HCW the younger seems obliged to demonstrate his draughtsmanship and art historical skills in these oil sketches a rebellious streak comes to the fore and he casts off the shackles of tradition in order to become a recorder of sensation in what was at the time, in the 1930s, still a relatively radical and new approach to art.
These post-impressionist sketches are very fresh, they recall the lines of New EnglanderFairfield Porter, a kindred spirit and near contemporary, whowrote of Monet’s “morning awareness”, the revolutionary post-impressionistrejection of the evening tone that was ingrained like the rise and fall ofthe iambic pentameter into the landscape perceptions ofwestern artists since Titian at least. 1
The east coast of Suffolk had been a favoured site for painters in the later Victorianperiod with post-impressionists like Philip Wilson Steer and his circle doing muchwork in Walberswick and Southwold. Painters like to talk about places with good lightand this stretch of coast is one of these places. With the sandy sub-soil (the area is known as the Sandlings) things can have a quality of inner light, an incandescence,even on a gloomy day. The story is that Margaret Mellis and her then husband the critic AdrianStokes wanted to move here in the 1930s. They were part of the avant garde circle that includedNicholson, Barbara Hepworth and others, they subsequently decided on Carbis Bay, StIves, where many of their artists friends later came to visit and then stay on.Had it been Suffolk they had chosen to live then who knows the Sandlings might have been theseed bed of a great flowering of British Modernist art and even had itsown Tate Gallery now! The area did foster modest and little known achievements nevertheless. Later Margaret Mellis, in 1940s, returned with her 2nd husband, artistFrancis Davison, first to Southwold and then inland to Diss, which was more affordable forstarving artists, then later, in the 1980s she returned to to Southwold once more, where she worked on her driftwood sculptures in one of thefamous coloured Southwold beach huts, works that are now beginning to fetch good prices.
This local quality of East Suffolk light is apparent in “Old Boats, Beached, With Nets, Walberswick, Suffolk1937”. One can almost feel the chill of an east window blowing up the estuary whippinga pert liveliness into the tall grasses making the colours of the sky, mud, paintedboats sing. In “Blue Boat on River Bank, Southwold 1939” or "Walberswick Boats by a Wooden Jetty 1937” the colours are drabber and sludgier but only in an English true-to-life sense and still an inner light shines out. Objects stand apart, no moodtakes over, discrete marks compose the whole as in early Monet. A blue boatdeclares its blueness, with a slow inner fizzing sensation of here-ness, notamplified and hallucinogenic, a red bridge, a sunflower, distinguishing this art both from the more expressionist visionary end of the spectrum of post-impressionismas well as from the earlier moody "all art aspires to music” painting of the school of Whistler.
Here minor art can achieve heroic feats by a mouse-like nibbling at the curtain of appearances. Acres of daubs rolled in dusty vaults are less convincing that one fresh takeon the north shore looking to Covehithe or the "Chapel, Southwold in Green and Cream". If we consider that the narratives of art history are simplifications that suit media, classroomor commerce then we might be inclined to believe that things develop along multiple tracks of evolution and that it is plausible to uncover worthy modern artefforts of all sorts previously overlooked. Clarence Whaite's daughter clearly rated her father's works and this is evident in the careshe has invested in preserving the sketches, they have been stretched onto frames, at Nassua St, London, and then some backed with card onto which is applieda print out of the artist's biography2 plus detailed hand written labelling and recording,, "H Clarence Whaite (1895-1978) ‘The Track Across Southwold Common' 14” x 18” oil on canvas ?1937Not signed . not varnished Polished in May 2005 with Roberson's Cleaning Reviving PolishingVarnish emulsion by G.W.” All is catalogued with a bibliographer's fastidiousnessas if there was a plan for the ouevre that time missed – missed as yet at least.
1 This collection of oil sketches are especially fresh also because they were carefully restored and cleaned by the artist's daughter, the artist, Gillian Whaite,over the course of the last decade. The intention it seems was to bequeath everythingto the National Trust and after GW's death last year it all was, along with otherfamily possessions.
2 Clarence Whaite studied at Manchester Evening Schools, where he was awardedthe Herbert Birley Gold Medal for Art, and scholarship to London. He studied paintingand design at the Slade, and in 1929 University College London published his monographon ‘St Christopher in English Medieval Wall Painting' for which he had made 60watercolour drawings in churches all around England; these are now in the collection ofthe Society of Antiquaries of London. Clarence Whaite made some notable ceramics, plaques and stoneware groups, also wood engravings and textile designs. He taught in several London schools and went to the University of London Institute of Education where from1936 to 1962 he was in charge of the Art Department concerned with the educationof teachers. He put great energy and enthusiasm into the encouragement of creative workin art among children and students of all ages. The core of his own work as an artistis in oil paintings, often landscapes painted out of doors, and masterly drawings.