I’ve been going over a little information on the painter Sir William Coldstream( 1909-1987) for some of my classes next week. Traditionally artists have used many systems of measurement as an aid to accuracy, Coldstream is one of only two examples of artist’s I can think of who not only measured every last, tiny detail in their paintings (Euan Uglow, one of his pupils is the other) but also left the construction marks dotted around over the finished picture for all to see. The critic David Sylvester likened them to the dots in a painting by Seurat, the implication of which rather horrified Coldstream who preferred to describe them as being the equivalent of not having tucked ones shirt in properly, ( Back in the days before that was a fashion statement!) After that, he tended to cover them up. The two paintings that I’ve reproduced here took 2 years to do and given what I know about his method I don’t doubt that they took a lot of work. His word for it was “ prosey” ( ”Anyone could get away with poetry”) the idea being that by a careful measurement of reality a sense of the marvellous is bound to come through. I’d hesitate to say reproduction of reality because they’re not photographs and there are many artists with more of a photographic style that would, I imagine, measure less obsessively.
Obsessiveness can still be interesting however. The following is a quote from “The Artist at Work” by Colin St John Wilson. This book describes the authors experiences of sitting for portraits by William Coldstream and another English painter, Michael Andrews.
“There were, it seems, three kinds of measurement being sort. Firstly (and not so frequent), a direct check of accurate correspondence between what is registered by a thumbline in the cone of vision and what is marked on the canvas. Secondly a comparison between significant measurements of this kind (“I get intense pleasure when I’m painting in just saying that this is two-thirds that or that is one sixteenth more than that”.) Thirdly, the comparing of dimensions in which the acts of measurement went in pairs–seeking out and stressing simmilarities. ‘if you get a number of measurements, both on the surface of a canvas and then imagined measurements to some extent in depth working together, then it gives you a kind of kick…And then this system builds up and you build on it…it is a kind of play acting at sums, in a way, which gives one pleasure.’
He was one of the founders , along with Claude Rogers, Victor Passmore and Graham Bell of a private art school at Fitzroy street in 1938 which later became known as the Euston Rd school. This was devoted to the depiction of urban subjects in a realist way, partly as a reaction against some of the avant garde art of the time.(The paintings here are from a much later period.) He went on to be a hugely influential figure in English art education. To quote the art critic David Sylvester”He has sat on, in many cases chaired, advisory committees and boards of trustees–so many of them that the list of the honorary official positions he has held reads like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan” and “so he has become not just a pillar but a veritable collonade of the Establishment. What with quietly running, besides the Slade, practically the whole art world in this country, he has had little time for the practise of art.” ( Coldstream was the head of the Slade School of Art from 1949-75 and chair of the Coldstream reports which reorganised art school teaching in the 1960s.) It’s probably because of this that when I think of the observational drawing I was sometimes encouraged to do at art college during the eighties that I think of his work, which was a pity as it put me off measuring of any kind for years afterwards! How is it possible that someone could spend two years on a painting like “Seated Nude” carefully measuring all the time and not notice that the head is too big for the rest of the body?
Which was a pity. The whole business of making observational drawings, as I now realise, can be so fraught with difficulty that some kind of measuring is nearly always essential. It’s certainly more of a confidence boost to be able to find your own mistakes than have somebody else point them out to you. What seems right at the time is not always right later on and there’s certainly no reason why one can’t be loose but still keep a little accuracy. The one doesn’t exclude the other.
I’ll finish with a scan of a “Coldstreamesque” student life drawing by David Hockney from the 1950’s.
The obsessions of artists are fascinating. I can’t fault Coldstream for his desire to get the proportions correctly, but it seems he has gone further than that.
It must have been crippling for students learning to draw, feeling that everything had to be measured and “correct”. Yet, I found that when I was learning and frustrated in my own drawings with “getting it right” I took a ruler and measured until it was “right”.
Later when I was teaching, I preferred to use a wide variety of examples for teaching students to draw figures. I emphasized the drawings of masters where “mistakes” could be seen underneath the final result so that students could see that even the masters didn’t just automatically “get it right”.
There is value in the struggle to observe, to coordinate hand and eye in placing marks upon the support for the drawing by use of the eye alone (without thumb or ruler). Working directly gives the students a more forgiving start in their explorations and helps them build their confidence. If masters could make mistakes, then their own could not be so dire.
In looking on Coldstream’s works that you have provided here, there is a curious mix of rigidity and stillness that bespeaks his meditation on measured form. On the other hand, his manner of applying paint is much more freely applied than one might think for a painter whose basic precept is careful and studious measurement. I would rather have thought he might be looking for that licked quality of Dominique Ingres, the French Pompiers or the Classicists.
Thanks for talking about this artist. He’s one I was not aware of before.
K
artiseternal.wordpress.com
You make a number of very interesting points there. Firstly I think you were absoloutely right to point out to your students that even the great artists don’t always get things right all the time. I actually think that it’s slightly strange if there is never some sense of struggle in a persons drawing at least some of the time. I remember once a few years ago I used a particularly muscley model who a lot of people in the group couldn’t draw because they were too used to drawing conventional long limbed life models and they therefore had to approach their drawings in a completely different way. It can be all to easy to draw effectively the “same” life drawing over and over again and I can be as guilty of this as anyone else.
You are also correct to point out the sketchy quality in Coldstream’s work. How much more sense they would indeed make if they were more polished and Ingres-esque. Euan Uglow, a pupil of Coldstream did produce quite sensual work colourwise but if anything his forms are even more geometric.
This sort of way of working was very popular in English art schools once upon a time, particularly in the Slade school of art in London and Camberwell. I’d love to know if students who attend those colleges still draw in this way. For me it sums up a very dreary notion of “good taste” but is still an interesting idea of an approach to put to my own students from time to time. “If you think I’m mad trying to get you to measure one or two things you should see this guy etc etc”
Coldstream “left his mark” in many ways! His paintings are often fresh, quite loose in the application of paint but tied together with the drawing of measurement.
I knew him quite well whilst studying at The Slade during his final time there. He allowed me to visit him at the studio in Hampstead where he was painting some flowers in a vase near the window. A nail in the floor showed him where to place his foot so that he was always in the same position relative to the still life. He was very aware of the fact that not everything can be tied down by measurement. As we all know our two eyes create different relationships between edges in the foreground and background. Many of his paintings show this dilemma, even celebrate it, unlike Euan Uglow who preferred a definite edge.
When teaching Coldstream would happily paint away on my canvas, I’m not sure if this applied to others, he was casual and amusing often cracking jokes. In particular he would stress the difference between :
1) Searching out a colour relationship with many trial blobs or marks, and
2) Testing a distance from one place to another on the canvas.
He would establish one distance, fairly centrally, which would never be moved throughout the painting. All other distances were in some way related to this distance.
I was delighted to see the drawing by Hockney, it exhibits both the light and unsure touch associated with all Coldstream’s work.
Thanks Martin, I’m exceedingly grateful for your input regarding this interesting artist, particularly the personal recollections regarding his teaching style.(I’d be happy to hear more.)Philosophically and artistically I prefer an approach that involves some kind of measuring rather than none at all but as a teacher I’m aware that people can find the discipline involved incredibly hard. Coldstream therefore stands out as an example that it can be possible to take a delight in the mathematics of a picture and not find it boring as most people seem to do. I am a little mystified as to why some of the paintings had to take so long however, but’s that’s only my personal opinion. I also like his hat
regards
Will Stevens