True to Life: British Realist Painting in the 1920s and 1930s, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, July 1–October 29, 2017

Abstract

‘True to Life’ at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is an exhibition largely of storeroom contents, yet this is not a criticism of the artworks, artists or the curators, Patrick Elliott and Sacha Llewellyn. This exhibition of over ninety infrequently seen ‘realist’ works from the interwar period is a reminder of how easily the dominant narratives of art – here the modernist narrative of the twentieth century – censure and forget. The interwar period has been characterized as one of regression – ignorable and retrograde apart from the small strand of valiantmodernists easily typified by The Seven and Five Society when its membership included Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth andHenryMoore. Thosewho shunnedmodernism have accordingly been sidelined in art history and collections. It is a stark change in fortunes, as British realist art was immensely popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and staunchly advocated by the Royal Academy (RA). The annual Summer Exhibitions either outright rejected modernist tendencies, or relegated them to a single room, which had been assigned to ‘the newmovements in art with which it is not in sympathy but which it could not entirely ignore’. A number of the works shown here were exhibited at the Academy, with the promotional image for ‘True To Life’, By the Hills by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, featuring in the 1939 Summer Exhibition and selling for 850 guineas. It is clear why Brockhurst’s immaculate portrait of Lady Marguerite Strickland takes this role – the ‘brushless’ style achieves almost photographic levels of realism, while the poised sitter enigmatically averts her eyes away from the viewer. The background of darkened receding hillsides is influenced by Da Vinci’sMona Lisa. Mystery, glamour, high society and an unusually elongated neck mesmerizingly collide. A quiet yet palpable tension is apparent in a number of the works. Charles Spencelyah’s domestic scene Why War? and Harry Riley’s effectively anonymized self-portrait in ARP (Air Raid Precautions) uniform and gas mask titled Me confront the historical context of the Second World War meditatively. Spencelyah’s potent, almostVictoriannarrativepaintingdepicts a First World War veteran staring into space, apparently with resignation as the world descends once again into chaos during the Sudeten Crisis. It was, alongwithBy TheHills, themost talked-of painting at the RA in 1939, andwas considered one of themost powerful images of the unfolding crisis. Algernon Newton’s hauntingly still city streets, on the other hand, are paintings that