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Alfred Cracknell, Photograph of Leon Underwood with Mexican Love Song, 1930, Courtesy Courtauld Institute

Figure and Rhythm:Leon Underwood

Introduction Leon Underwood (1890 - 1975) was a painter, sculptor, draughtsman, printmaker, author and teacher. His passion, inventiveness and versatility fuelled his creativity which seemed to know no bounds.

Underwood was fascinated by the human figure and explored ways to represent the three-dimensionality of its form through various media. He especially tried to capture qualities of rhythm and movement as perceived in dance and music. “All the arts are direct linear descendants from the ancient forerunner dancing, in which the self (the body) is thrown into expressive attitudes”1

His work was greatly influenced by indigenous art, cultures and landscapes from outside the Western European canon, which he encountered at first hand in Iceland, New York, Mexico and West Africa. He was a restless figure, as evidenced not only by his adventurous spirit but in his readiness to challenge received ideas and conventions of tradition and style. This independent streak, his complex philosophies and maverick stance often meant that he was at times isolated from the mainstream. But his energy and gifts as a teacher had a significant influence on his students - some of the most gifted artists of the inter-war generation - including Eileen Agar, Blair Hughes-Stanton and Henry Moore. Although his artistic style was constantly evolving the central theme to which Underwood remained devoted throughout his career, was the human figure. As he discovered new materials and techniques he would frequently rework an earlier subject or motif to explore the qualities that a new medium could bring to its form and interpretation. For example, the figure of The Fishwife which first appears in a coloured linocut print, is later carved in walnut, then cast in bronze. The Diver is first rendered as a wood-engraving and later transformed into a sculpture.

The shifts in focus and style also reflected imagery that Underwood encountered on his travels and the ideas and beliefs that arose out of his engagement with other cultures. All these influences informed the way in which he approached his work.

Underwood’s interest in indigenous art and his subsequent travels were prompted by a desire to better understand primitive cultures. He wanted to discover how subject was linked to form and the motives of the peoples who created sculptural works. His visit to Altamira, Spain in 1925 had led him to consider the compositional mechanics of the cave drawings – he saw the contours not as outlines but as axial points which conveyed a sense of movement and momentum. Dimensionality and rhythm were created by shadow. Underwood coined the term

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‘axial rhythm’ which became a key tenet of all his figurative work as he explored ways of rendering the solid mass of a figure on paper as well as in a three-dimensional, sculptural form.

He also considered the notion of ‘cycles of style’ whereby scientific discovery generates new technology, which in turn changes forms of representation. He writes that “The transition of style in all ages runs on comparable circuits of science, art, technology, and religion.”2

Underwood was a prolific writer and he espoused his ideas on the relationship between art and life, ideals of beauty, the ritual power of ‘aura’ and the consequences for indigenous artistic expression when different cultures collided, in various illustrated publications. These included the review ‘The Island’, his article ‘Art for Heaven’s Sake’ and a trilogy of books on West African Masks, Figures in Wood and Bronzes.

The following notes offer an overview of Leon Underwood the artist through works that he produced at each stage of his artistic journey. They trace his career as a figurative artist as it developed through the different techniques he mastered. Each section focuses on a single work in a specific medium: drawing and painting, etching, wood-engraving, linocut and sculpture, its subject matter and the events that influenced the transition from one form to another.

Words in this pack which are underlined refer to the References and Connection sections on pages 21 to 23.

Elijah’s Meat, 1938 (cast 1970), Bronze, Edition of seven, Private collection, Location: Room 5

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Drawing and Painting

Underwood was a fine draughtsman and drawing from life was fundamental to his

approach. He believed in the ‘life giving force’ of the figure. The movement and energy that he captured with his pencil studies or etchings gave impetus and form to the ‘pure plastic rhythm’ he sought to express in all his work, not least his later sculptures.

Armed with a sound understanding of anatomy Underwood’s concern when drawing was how to render the hidden layers of muscle which gave the figure its dynamic form. He wanted to suggest mass by linear means without simply drawing an outline. In early figurative paintings Underwood frequently found his subject in groups of people working together on a common task. In Erecting a Camouflage Tree ,1919, he depicts a group of men working on the construction of a camouflage tree. They are stripped to the waist and the exertions of manual labour, the contortions of their bodies, the tension and leverage are clearly conveyed through the musculature of the body. Although a little stilted, the painting shows the early stages of a visual language that Underwood would continue to develop and refine.3

In 1920, within a year of completing his own studies at the Slade, Underwood joined the staff at the Royal College of Art (RCA) as assistant teacher of life drawing. His unorthodox approach to teaching was often in conflict with established ‘art school’ training but welcomed by his students eager in the inter-war years for new forms of expression. When he later resigned from his post some of his former students, including Henry Moore, asked him to continue giving them evening classes at his own recently opened Brook Green School of Drawing. In addition, other students such as Eileen Agar found their way to Brook Green on the recommendation of Henry Tonks from the Slade and remained core members of what would became a close and dedicated cohort.

Working from life models was central to Underwood’s teaching. Brook Green students became adept at shorter poses working swiftly to draw the body in movement, to work from a

premise of volume rather than contour, to think about balance and direction. It was a studio where students were treated as artists, and where individuality and experimentation were encouraged. Underwood’s influence however was so strong that in spite of this liberal attitude, it was his methods that inevitably came to dominate the outlook of those around him, above all in life drawing.4

Study for Venus in Kensington Gardens: Nude (Kitty Malone), 1921, Pencil on paper, Collection of Lord Archer and Dame Mary Archer DBE, Location: Room 1

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1: Drawing and PaintingVenus in Kensington Gardens, 1921Oil on canvasCollection of Lord Archer and Dame Mary Archer DBE, Location: Room 1

For his first major painting Underwood brings his individual life studies out of the studio and into the public sphere. His wife, friends and students became the models for the main characters in this colourful, complex composition; a whirl of artistic and social wit. It is a composition built up from careful pencil and chalk studies, with each pose studied from two or three angles before finding its place in the scene.

There are references to the café scenes of the Impressionists at ‘Tuileries’, ‘Moulin de la Galette’ and Renoir’s painting Luncheon of the Boating Party. With a certain panache Underwood demonstrates his thorough grasp of the belle peinture of his training. It is a stylish nod to an era past and a signal that he was now heading off on a different road.5

Venus in Kensington Gardens is, above all, Underwood’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe and gained similar notoriety to Manet’s canvas. It was greeted with equal measures of outrage - “To seat a woman in her birthday suit among the correctly-attired frequenters of the tea house in a London Park is a departure from civilised conventions for which it is difficult to find a reason” - and quiet amusement.6 Like Manet, Underwood presents his life model, Kitty Malone, nude but surrounded by clothed contemporaries. An original study for this figure can be seen on page three.

Seated with ‘Venus’ at the central table are other characters associated with the school: Mary Underwood (Underwood’s wife) in a hat and red dress; Clement Cowles, involved with original plans for Brook Green School, in a brown suit and hat; Arthur Outlaw, friend and enthusiastic supporter, with his hand on his chin.

In the background, on the left wearing a tie is Warren J. Vinton; the two women at the extreme top on the right are students Eileen Agar and Jessie Aliston Smith; and leaning back in his chair to the right of Kitty – Underwood himself.

The circular rhythm formed by the characters at the central table is echoed by groups in the background to the right and left, creating a harmonious sweep to the composition.7 They almost appear to revolve around the man standing at the hub, as if on a carousel.

The figure of ‘Venus’ is a frequent motif in Underwood’s work, through which he explored ideals of beauty. Following his travels to West Africa she reappears in Birth of Venus Africana, first as an Ink and watercolour on paper (1949) and then as a Linocut (1950). In the sculpture Forty Thousand Years (c.1960) Underwood comments on changing aesthetic ideals, expressed through a Giacometti-esque figure that gazes down on a plump Venus of Willendorf .8

Compare the pencil study for Venus in Kensington Gardens: Nude (Kitty Malone), 1921 with the final image in the painting.

Compare Underwood’s Venus in Kensington Gardens with Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe - both are making statements about past artistic and stylistic conventions and advocating new forms of expression.

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Etching

Underwood had learned etching at the RCA (1910-1913). Returning home after the war he picked it up again with great enthusiasm. He installed a printing press in his studio and in a flurry of activity

between 1921-22 he produced a remarkable body of etchings considered by his biographer Christopher Neve 9 as ‘unsurpassed of their kind in the period immediately after the War’. At Brook Green life drawing extended into printmaking and Underwood and his students worked together to master the discipline.10 For Underwood, the technique of etching offered another way of exploring the figure in its dimensional state. It is, as Whitworth11 observes an intaglio process and, as such, is akin to carving. The bite of the acid into the surface of the plate is an action somewhat analogous to that of the sculptor’s chisel.’

One of the first prints from this period was a rhythmic group composition The Three Graces ,1921, a classical study of idealised beauty. He completed several portraits, notable for their delicate touch, characterisation and compelling sense of presence. They include a street musician The Banjoist, 1921, and a portrait of Mukul Dey, 1921 – a painter-etcher who attended the school. The print that more than any other, finally brought Underwood praise as a printmaker and artistic recognition was his own Self portrait with Landscape, 1921.

During this intense period dedicated for the most part to etching, Underwood abandoned the studio for a summer break and headed for a spell in the country. He enjoyed a taste of the simpler life and explored his passion for the human figure, in its rural environment. His confidence and skill were now at a level that allowed him to work quickly, often directly onto the plate, eager not to let an idea or image escape before he got it down. His portrait of Granny Ashdown, 1922 stands out as a fine example of an etching from this time. She sat for him patiently on a milking stool in the open air.12

A later studio portrait is of Clement Cowles, 1922. Here Underwood reproduces almost exactly the pose in which Cowles had appeared in the painting Venus in Kensington Gardens. It is a strong and poignant etching that attains a level of excellence that suggests that in this medium too, Underwood had now reached his apogee and is ready to move on to new challenges13

An Etching is a print made from a flat metal plate. To make the printing plate the metal is coated with a thin layer of greasy wax called ground. An image is drawn into the ground with a sharp point. The sharp point scratches through the ground and exposes the shiny metal beneath. The metal plate is put into a tray of acid. The acid eats away at the drawn lines to create indented lines, the ground protects the rest of the plate. This process is called biting the plate. The etched plate is inked all over, the ink is then wiped off the surface of the metal, leaving ink only in the indented lines. Damp paper is placed on top of the plate and then printed using an etching press. The damp paper picks up the ink from the indented lines to make the print.

The Three Graces, 1921, Drypoint on paper, Private collection, Location: Landing

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EtchingSelf Portrait with a Landscape, 1921EtchingPrivate collection, Location: Room 1

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It depicts the artist in the act of sketching, in a landscape.

This portrait is deliberately designed to exploit differences of texture and focal depth. The background landscape that the viewer sees, is suggestive of the distant softer textures that the artist might be looking at. These textures contrast with the bold etched lines of the central figure.

We focus on the intense concentration of the artist, in communion with his surroundings and nature. His white knuckles grip the top of the board. One would dare not disturb him.

We can imagine that he is evaluating/weighing up what he sees and considering how to render it onto paper.

Like Underwood in his self portrait Mukul Dey is also looking directly forward, but he appears to engage the viewer as an equal. It isn’t a piercing stare, rather one that draws you in, that invites you consider another point of view.

During the era of the British Empire such straightforward portraits of non-western subjects were rare in British art. This portrait suggests a change in attitude, a confident stance of equality, pride and status.

Indian artist Mukul Dey, attended Underwood’s school and was later considered to be a pioneer of drypoint etching in India.

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Mukul Dey, 1921 Drypoint on paperPrivate collection, Location: Room 1

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Wood Engraving

From etching, Underwood moved swiftly to woodcuts and wood engraving and developed these relief printmaking techniques in parallel with his activities as a sculptor.14 Life drawing, printmaking and

sculpture were by now an organic and evolving process of experimentation. Early bas-relief works such as The Dance of Salome, 1924 or Torso, 1923 show this cross-fertilisation clearly.

Underwood’s interest in the language of so-called ‘primitive’ cultures and ancient art had already taken him to Iceland and in 1925 he travelled to Spain specifically to visit the Altamira caves. He was deeply affected by the sophistication of these cave paintings. Studying the compositional mechanics of the images he saw hidden axial points, rather than outline, suggesting the animals’ supremacy and power of flight. And, contrary to current thinking that the purpose of the paintings was to capture the spirit of the animal, Underwood believed that the hunter identified with his quarry. The Bison was the hero and the pre-historic artist projected himself in the image of the beast. Furthermore, Underwood now understood that subject matter and the manner in which it was expressed were closely linked to belief and technology. To pursue this theory he needed to see, historically, what happened when a static tribal culture met the technical expertise of a developing one; for example in Central America or West Africa. Enthused by ancient Mexican Art he had seen in the British Museum, he decided to visit Mexico.15 First however, Underwood went to New York. He arrived in 1926 and earned a living from teaching and book illustration. Here his experience and talents as a printmaker were sought after by various publishers and Vanity Fair. The images he produced echoed the frivolous, ‘anything goes’ atmosphere of the Jazz Age. He also wrote and illustrated his own book Animalia, 1926, with verses and woodcuts inspired by the characters of various animals and birds, after Apollonaire’s Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée.

Much of Underwood’s wood-engraved illustration work created in New York makes a fascinating contribution to the wider visual culture of the Art-Deco age.16 In return the new rhythms, dance styles and energy that he experienced would resurface in his later three-dimensional works of the 30s such as Negro Rhythm, Harlem NY and The Herald of New Day.

A second book The Siamese Cat, was written, illustrated and published in 1927, when he returned to Britain. It incorporates many of Underwood’s ideas about art, in particular the notion that intuition is superior to logic.17 The book also discusses the concept of the noble savage.

‘Underwood’s strength as a printmaker was ultimately that he understood the human form, not only through linear draughtsmanship, but also through the particular insight of the sculptor into positive and negative space, of how the figure existed in three-dimensional space.’18

A Wood Engraving is a print made from a flat block of end grain wood. End grain means that the wood has been cut across the tree to show the circular growth rings of the wood. Wood engravings are small scale as the size is dictated by the width of the tree. To make the printing block specialist tools called gravers are used to score or engrave the image into the wood. Gravers have a wooden handle and a sharp fine straight metal blade which cuts a thin deep line into the wood. Gravers are made with different shaped blades to create a variety of fine lines and marks. The engraved block is inked up using a roller. The ink covers the surface of the block, the engraved lines will not pick up the ink. A sheet of paper is placed on top of the inked block and pressure is applied to the back of the paper using a burnishing tool, which is a smooth disk of wood. This allows the paper to be firmly rubbed or “burnished” to transfer the ink from the small block to the paper to make the print.

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Wood EngravingThree Peasants and a Lost Shilling, 1924 Wood-engraving on paper Private collection, Location: Room 1

Woodcutter, c.1925 Wood-engraving on paperNigel & Samantha O’Gorman, Location: Room 1

In this harmonious group of three figures Underwood revisits and develops the motif of The Three Graces, 1921, one of his first etchings.

The graceful smooth-limbed, idealised beauties of his earlier work are replaced by the rhythmic interaction of these wood-engraved figures.

The work shows how the artist has adapted subject to material, technique and tools.

The figures are draped and the limbs rounded. There are no straight lines, just interlocking curves and arcs.

The artist is exploring the human figure in sculptural, primitivising terms.

Several of Underwood’s prints emphasise the analogy between the act of woodcutting or sculpting and wood-engraving, as in this image of the Woodcutter.

The image of a man wielding an axe is seen in Underwood’s earlier painting Erecting a Camouflage Tree, 1919. Compared to the later wood-engraving the protagonist in the painting appears more posed, less natural. He stands with his back to the viewer, axe at the ready.

As in Three Peasants and a Lost Shilling, Underwood is working his material and exploring the figure in more sculptural terms.

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Linocut

In the mid-1930s Underwood ceased producing wood-engravings in any significant quantity and instead began working with linocuts. These took the place of oil paintings, combining the graphic

qualities of line with vibrant colour. To work out the colour layering and balance, Underwood would first paint gouache studies and experiment by thinning the inks so that translucent colours could be rendered. Alternatively, he would paint, rather than roll the inks onto the linoleum so that the print had the painterly quality of a monoprint.19 Later Underwood employed a white line as a graphic device in linocuts for delineating the figure, as in Growth of Habitation: The Family, 1942. This echoes the chased lines that Underwood used in sculptures such as Music in Line (1938) and African Madonna (1935).

A commission to illustrate a book by writer and friend Russell Phillips provided Underwood with the pretext for a much-anticipated visit to Mexico. Before setting out on the trail, Underwood spent some time by himself at Chichén Itzá, a Mayan site built around 600 CE which was undergoing excavation at the time of his visit. He saw first-hand how ancient statues such as the Chaac-Mool functioned within their religious setting. He was profoundly impressed by the precision of Mayan astrologers and the cultural refinement of masons and sculptors of the time who achieved, with only the most basic stone tools, works of remarkable sophistication. In Mexico he found his subject and the paradoxes of a ‘primitive’ culture that would influence and sustain his creativity for the next eleven years. Neve20 points out that Underwood’s view of Aztec and Mayan civilization was undeniably a romantic one, and the whole journey was undertaken with an eye for the picturesque.

The two travellers chose to use basic forms of transport, to bring them as close as possible to local people and their culture. Underwood was enchanted. He learned local fishing skills, rode horses over the Sierra Madre, sketched market scenes, river life and boats. It was a period of intense observation during which Underwood kept his own notes and sketched extensively. The drawings and watercolours he made ‘in situ’ served as a visual repository to be later worked into paintings, prints and carvings; often working the same source image in different media. The heroes and villains of the conquest were dramatised into important oil paintings; humble market and street scenes, women bathing, figures resting during the afternoon siesta became the subject of lively, colourful linocuts. Underwood was also inspired by the work of Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Figurative subjects in prints such as Woman and Child Tehuantepec, 1928 and Mexican Water Carrier, 1930 show a clear debt to the rounded forms of the figures in Rivera’s lithographs.21

A Linocut is a print made from a block of linoleum or lino for short. Lino is a soft, pliable material a little like rubber. To make the printing block an image is carved into the surface of the lino using linocutting tools called gouges. Gouges are small chisels which have a wooden handle and a fine sharp curved metal blade to carve with. Once carved,the lino block is inked up using a roller. The roller covers the surface of the lino with ink, the areas of the lino that have been carved away are lower than the surface and will not pick up the ink. A sheet of paper is placed on top of the inked block. A dry roller is used to apply pressure to the back of the paper, this helps transfer the ink from the surface of the block to the paper to make the print. Linocuts can also be printed using a printing press.

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The Fishwife, 1936 Linocut on paperPrivate collection, Location: Room 4

Linocut

The colour lino print of The Fishwife captures all the perceived simplicity of coastal life: of the wind and sea, food, tradition, survival and physical work.

The Fishwife, barefoot, simply dressed, hair and robes billowing in the wind, stands proudly gazing out to sea. She balances the day’s catch on her hip.

In the background, dark clouds, black rocks and a small craft battered by the wind remind the viewer of the precarity of this existence.

Underwood represents the figure in graphic terms that are akin to sculpture.22

Later in 1973, Fishwife was cast in bronze.

This sculpture echoes not only scenes Underwood had witnessed in Mexico of women supporting containers on their head goods but also the pose of as tribal sculptures such as an African water-carrier in his collection of African art.23

The figure is assured and poised as she descends the steps. Her centre of gravity perfectly balanced. She does not need to look at her feet.

The twist of her pelvis is followed through into the slight curve of the steps that form the base.

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Fishwife, 1939–44 (cast 1973) Bronze (cast from black walnut carving)Private collection, Location: Room 5

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Sculpture “The soul of sculpture lies in the reality of matter, in the mind’s aspect of it, in its static instantaneity – a glimpse of eternity”.24

From the 1920s, as Underwood’s interest in so-called ‘primitive art’ and sculptural forms grew, he began collecting African Carvings. Whilst the collection played a significant role in his own creative

development Underwood never copied directly and was critical of the appropriation of past styles. Objects from his collection were used as a means to transcend historical and cultural boundaries and to explore essential aspects of culture.25

As a sculptor Underwood was self-taught, driven by his need to find a way of expressing a third (even fourth) dimension - beyond what he could achieve as a draughtsman and painter. It was an aspiration that never left him as he explored his perennial passion, the figure and the rhythm that it embodied, through different media and materials. Where etching and drypoint had been contiguous with the act of drawing and an extension of his draughtsmanship and painting, the relief techniques of wood-engraving and linocutting now fed directly into his work as a sculptor.

At Brook Green, Underwood worked to master materials and techniques alongside his students in an atmosphere of mutual support and experimentation. It is significant that he attracted students also eager to break new ground; several of whom, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Gertrude Hermes included, would themselves make their name as sculptors.

Underwood liked to be in control of the whole process of sculpting, from creating the model to casting. Therefore many of his pieces are relatively small – attributable to the maximum weight and volume that he could handle in his studio. He wrote of his appreciation for ‘the rhythm of materials’ - wherein the material from which the sculpture was made, perfectly expressed its subject. This insight and his philosophies on art informed the dramatic sculptures he created in the 1930s, such as the optimistic chased-bronze figure Negro Rhythm, Harlem NY, c.1934 and chased-brass The Herald of a New Day, 1934. They capture the intangible forces and states - energy, power, balance, poise, freedom and rhythm - that dance, music and physical labour embody.

From 1934 onwards, the driving preoccupation of Underwood’s sculpture was the challenge of expressing movement in bronze. He strove to release the cast metal from its immobility and launch it into the fourth dimension - time.26

In 1944 he travelled extensively in West Africa, lecturing for the British Council and assembling his collection. He made many drawings and watercolours on African themes and later wrote seminal texts on African Figures in Wood, Masks and Bronzes.

Like the image of Woodcutter, that of The Diver evolved from a wood-engraving (1925) before being reworked as a sculpted figure in Hopton Wood Stone. Both works illustrate the extent of Underwood’s instinct and skill for harmonising subject and material. The original quarry source of both the stone and its name was Hopton Wood, Derbyshire. Subsequently other nearby sites were exploited. Hopton Wood Stone is typically a relatively fine shelly, creamy-grey limestone. In the inter-war years it became one of the English stones of choice for eminent artists including Eric Gill, Jacob Epstein, and later, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

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Diver, c.1932Hopton Wood stone Collection of Lord Archer & Dame Mary Archer DBELocation: Room 2

The Diver, 1925 Wood-engraving on paperPrivate collection, Location Room 2

Sculpture

The Diver is replete with potential energy. Its feet are anchored and knees are braced ready to thrust the weight of the diver’s body in an arc forward and upward into space.

The slight concave of the abdomen, suggests a drawing of breath, a moment of suspension before the body extends into full flight.

The simple, fluid curves that articulate the figure echo those of the stone figure Chaac Mool, the Mayan-Toltec rain god, which Underwood had seen during his visit to Chichén Itzá in Mexico, and later used as the subject of his painting Chaac-Mool’s Destiny, 1929.

In his wood-engraving The Diver, Underwood creates a narrative, a context.

The Diver is poised on a ledge, high above the water. His body is taut, his eyes focused on his target way below.

We anticipate the moment of impulse when his knees flex and he springs forward.

The shadows that outline the body and the fringe of lines suggest the natural forces that will meet and carry the diver’s body as he leaves terra firma.

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Leon Underwood Sculptural Convictions. First published in the Island, vol.1, no.2, 1931, pp 40–44Leon Underwood The Cycle of Style in Art, Religion, Science and Technology’, Royal Society of British Sculptors Annual Report . London: Royal Society of British Sculptors, 1961, pp 22–9Christopher Neve, Leon Underwood. London: Thames & Hudson, 1974, p.30Neve 1974, p.46Neve 1974. p 52Neve 1974. p 49Neve 1974. pp 50,52Simon Martin. Introduction in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. Chichester: Pallant House Gallery p 34Neve 1974. p 53Charlotte Stokes. The Brook Green School in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. Chichester: Pallant House Gallery p 42Ben Whitworth. Sculptural Dimensions In the Early Work Of Leon Underwood in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. Chichester: Pallant House Gallery p 78Neve 1974. p 66Neve 1974. p 61Simon Martin. Making an Impression: Underwood the Printmaker in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. p 62Neve 1974. pp 88,89Simon Martin. Making an Impression: Underwood the Printmaker in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. p 63Simon Martin. Making an Impression: Underwood the Printmaker in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. p 65Simon Martin. Introduction in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. Chichester: Pallant House Gallery p 15Simon Martin. Making an Impression: Underwood the Printmaker in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. p 68Neve 1974. p 104Simon Martin. Making an Impression: Underwood the Printmaker in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. p 67Simon Martin. Making an Impression: Underwood the Printmaker in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. p 70Simon Martin. Introduction in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. Chichester: Pallant House Gallery p 24Leon Underwood Sculptural Convictions. First published in the Island, vol.1, no.2, 1931, pp 40–44Celina Jeffery, ‘Leon Underwood: Collection of African Art’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, no.12 (May 2000), p.27Ben Whitworth. Sculptural Dimensions In the Early Work Of Leon Underwood in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. Chichester: Pallant House Gallery p 85

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Endnotes

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Born George Claude Leon Underwood, on Christmas Day

Worked in father’s Antiquarian shop in Praed Street, London, copying and repairing prints.

Studied at Regent Street Polytechnic, under Percival Gaskell.

Won a scholarship to the painting department of the Royal College of Art. Saw Manet and the Post-Impressionists at the Grafton Galleries.

With his friend Edward Armitage made two trips to Vilna, Poland (Lithuania) where they were frequent guests at the Ravanica estate (Belarus). Travelled back on outbreak of First World War through Finland and Sweden.

Enlisted with the Royal Horse Artillery. Served with the 2nd London Field Battery, Woolwich and at Gommecourt France.

Transferred to the Royal Engineers (Camouflage Section) at Wimereux. War drawings in Illustrated London News.

Married Mary Coleman.

Invalided back from France, recuperation at Ilfracombe. Submitted trial drawings to the Ministry of Education’s Propaganda Section for a painting based on camouflage work.

Painted Erecting a Camouflage Tree for Imperial War Museum. Bought lease on house and studio at 12 Girdlers Road, Brook Green, in May.

Attended Slade School of Art for one-year refresher course in Henry Tonks’ life class.

Awarded Premium in the Prix de Rome art competition. Embarked on sculpture for the first time with experimental stone carvings.

Assistant teacher of life drawing at the Royal College of Art.

Opened the Brook Green School of Drawing at Girdlers Road in January. Installed etching press and began series of portrait etchings. Began work on Venus in Kensington Gardens.

First exhibition at Chenil Gallery, Chelsea included Self-Portrait with Landscape. Spent the summer in Ashurst, Kent where he produced etchings and paintings of rural scenes.

Resigned teaching post at RCA. Travelled to Paris and Iceland on Prix de Rome award. Began evening class at Brook Green School.

Visited the Altamira Caves in Spain. Forms the breakaway ‘Wood Engraving Society’ with some of his students. In December travelled to the USA.

1890 1906–7

1907–10

1910

1913–14

1914–16

1916–18

1917

1918

1919

1919–20

1920

1920–23

1921

1922

1923 -24

1925

Leon Underwood : Key Dates

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1926

1927

1928

1931

1932

1934-37

1939-44

1945-49

1953

1954-57

1958 -59

1960

1961

1962

1966

1969

1975

New York. Opened private drawing school in Greenwich Village. Worked as illustrator for publishers including Brentano’s, and Vanity Fair. Wrote and illustrated Animalia.

Returned to England and went to Cornwall to write his novel The Siamese Cat with woodcut illustrations.

Accompanied Phillips Russell on a trip through Mexico. Sketched material to illustrate the resulting book Red Tiger. Studied Mayan and Aztec architectural sites and art. Exhibited Mexican wood-engravings and linocuts on return.

Co-founded the art and literature journal The Island. Contributed texts and prints.

Organised and wrote catalogue for Sydney Burney Gallery exhibition Sculpture Considered Apart from Time and Place featuring modern European sculpture alongside non-Western and historic sculpture.

Published pamphlet Art for Heaven’s Sake. Exhibited drawings, paintings, engravings and sculpture at Leicester Galleries, Beaux Arts Gallery and with the National Society. Completed his sculptures June of Youth and Negro Rhythm. In Johannesburg Black Madonna caused an uproar. Completed chased bronze sculpture of King George VI.

Served in the Civil Defence Camouflage Establishment, Leamington Spa, and painted a series of landscape watercolours.

Began paintings on African themes and writing on African art. Published Figures in Wood of West Africa, Masks of West Africa, Bronzes of West Africa.

Showed African-themed sculptures, paintings and drawings for the Beaux Arts Gallery, with a catalogue essay expounding his theory of the Cycle of Styles.

Received commissions for a mural in tempera (Shell Offices, St Swithins, stained glass and reredos (Church of St Michael and All Angels, Oxon) and a relief panel (Commercial Development Building, Old Street)

Published Bronze Age Technology in Western Asia and Northern Europe. Visited Sculpture Biennale in Antwerp. Stopped painting entirely to concentrate on sculpture.

Commissioned by London County Council in March to make bronze The Pursuit of Ideas for Hillgrove Estate, London.

Elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. Made bronze crucifix and candlesticks for Ampleforth Abbey.

Major one-man exhibition at Acquavella Galleries, New York

Awarded the Jean Masson Davidson Medal by the Society of Portrait Sculptors.

Retrospective exhibition at the Minories, Colchester.

Dies in Clapham, London.

Leon Underwood : Key Dates

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References and ConnectionsIntroduction

Iceland Using his Prix de Rome Prize money Underwood travelled to Iceland (instead of Paris) in 1923 with two of his students. He mastered some Icelandic, recorded landscapes and figures, and set down his impressions of his engagement with daily life. The experience set Underwood to thinking about the way in which a culture develops channels of communication.1

West Africa In 1944 Underwood travelled to West Africa under the auspices of the British Council. He visited British and French colonies, including the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, Benin and Nigeria, to lecture on the influence of African Art in Europe, to study local artistic traditions, contemporary production and art education. He returned with a substantial collection of carvings and pottery. From this point the focus of his figurative painting and sculpture found its subject in African themes.

Eileen Agar, 1899–1991 Agar was one of Underwood’s first pupils and a model for one of the figures in Venus in Kensington Gardens. She helped to finance Underwood’s trip to the USA and the publication of the Island. Her own work was featured in the International Surrealist Exhibition, London, in 1936. From then on, she experimented with automatic techniques and new materials incorporating photographs, collages and objects.

Blair Hughes-Stanton, 1902 - 1981 Studied with Underwood from the age of 19 and over time they became kindred spirits. Hughes-Stanton accompanied him to Iceland and in 1925, was left in charge of the Brook Green School when Underwood went to America. Hughes-Stanton was a major figure in the English wood engraving revival in the twentieth century and a member of Underwood’s breakaway group who formed the English Wood Engraving Society.

Henry Moore, 1898 – 1986 Avant-garde English sculptor and artist. Moore was one of Underwood’s core group of students and his most celebrated. He was to praise Underwood’s ‘passionate attitude towards drawing from life.

He (Underwood) set out to teach the science of drawing, of expressing solid form on a flat surface and not the photographic copying of tone values, nor the art school limitations of style in drawing’.

Primitive So-called ‘primitive societies’ were those generally identified with non-western, ‘uncivilised cultures’. Today these are questionable terms but ones that gained dominance in the late nineteenth century, during the height of colonialism and associated epistemological debates concerning the nature of human society. ‘Primitivism’ – a western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples - became a central tenet of many Modernist artists. A central belief expressed in the ‘Island’ was that ‘primitive art’ provided a source of wisdom and sublimity which could reinvigorate Modern art.2 For Underwood the art of ‘so-called’ primitive societies also offered inspiration.

Altamira In 1879 prehistoric paintings and drawings were discovered in the caves of Altamira in Spain. They represented the apogee of Paleolithic cave art that had developed across Europe, from the Urals to the Iberian Peninsula from 35,000 to 11,000 BC. The sophistication of these paintings challenged presumptions held by ‘civilised’ societies that prehistoric man did not have the intellectual capacity to produce any kind of artistic expression.

The Island, 1931 A quarterly magazine that ran to four issues in 1931. It was financed by Eileen Agar and edited by her husband Josef Bard. It provided a forum for Brook Green printmaking, poetry and verse and featured articles, poems and images by artists associated with the ‘Underwood School’. In his editorial to the first edition Josef Bard explains Underwood’s credo as: “the need to realise the Self and to find its simplest expression. The essence of dancing with its spontaneity and unity of feeling and form, suggests the spirit of art in juxtaposition to aesthetic formulae borrowed from architecture.”3

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References and ConnectionsArt for Heaven’s Sake, 1934 The pamphlet in which Underwood expounded his ‘Notes on the Philosophy of Art to-day’, comprising thoughts and ideas that he accrued whilst working in the studio with his students. Always busy with the next idea, Underwood wrote in ‘Art for Heaven’s Sake’ that ‘the artist is the sower who casts about him original thought, woven out of his intuition and imagination; when the conditions are right, germination takes place. The artist is the sower who at harvest time is over the horizon – on his way to sow new ground. 4

Trilogy of books on West African Art Underwood returned from his travels to West Africa in 1944 with an enormous collection of African art. He published widely on the subject including three seminal books : Figures in Wood of West Africa 1947, Masks of West Africa 1948 and Bronzes of West Africa 1949. These essays, together with a number of articles, set out his interpretation of various aspects of African art.

1: Drawing and Painting

Camouflage The British Army commandeered artists’ skills for their camouflage units. Captain Underwood joined the camouflage unit in 1916 and served in France at Wymereux. Camouflage trees were used in trench warfare to replace real trees with dummies to change landscape features and confuse enemy reference points. The substitute tree could also serve as an observation post. In 1919 Underwood was commissioned by the Propaganda section of the Ministry of Information to create a painting on the subject of camouflage.

Brook Green School Underwood set up his own school in 1921, in a former architects studio in Hammersmith. It took its name from Brook Green at the western end of Girders Road. Life drawing was the main focus of instruction. His students were treated as artists in the hope that ‘the harmful and repressive influences of orthodox art training’ could be avoided.

Henry Tonks, 1862 – 1937 Trained as a surgeon and taught anatomy. Studied art at Westminster School of Art and from 1892

taught at the Slade. Regarded by some as the “most renowned and formidable teacher of his generation”. Underwood’s independent spirit and preference for experimentation were not readily sanctioned by Tonks.

Luncheon of the Boating Party (Le déjeuner des canotiers), 1881 In contrast to Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe , Renoir’s Le déjeuner des canotiers received favourable reviews at the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition in 1882, for being “ fresh and free without being too bawdy”. The painting, depicts a group relaxing on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise along the Seine in Chatou, France. It combines figures, still-life, and landscape in one work. As he often did, Renoir included several of his friends in Luncheon of the Boating Party, a penchant that Underwood would echo in his Venus in Kensington Gardens.

Le déjeuner sur l´herbe, 1862 - 1863 Edouard Manet’s painting Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1862-1863) is a large impressionist painting that broke away from established conventions and modes of representation. The painting depicts a female nude at a picnic with two fully dressed men. Behind them a scantily dressed woman is bathing in a stream. The painting was rejected by the Salon jury of 1863 on grounds of the incongruity of a nude (a classical subject) in a modern setting. Manet therefore exhibited the canvas in the Salon de Refusés where its notoriety caused much controversy. The connection to Underwood can be seen in a mutual desire to break free of restrictive artistic convention and experiment with subject and form.

Venus of Willendorf c 25000 b.c Gravettian period. A figurine in painted limestone discovered on the archeological sites of Willendorf, Lower Austria. The specific function of the Venus is unknown, although suggestions include its role as mother goddess or a symbolic icon of fertility. The breasts and thighs are extremely exaggerated. The figure has no visible face, her head being covered with circular horizontal bands of what might be rows of plaited hair or a type of headdress. She is possibly looking down in submission.

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References and Connections3: Wood Engraving

Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée An album of 30 short poems by Guillaume Apollinaire with woodcuts by Raoul Dufy, published in 1911 4: Linocut

Diego Rivera, 1886 – 1957 A prominent Mexican painter and the husband of Frida Kahlo. Known for his painted murals in Mexico and North American Cities. In the 1920s the themes of his murals dealt with Mexican society and reflected the country’s 1910 revolution. He participated in the founding of the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors, and joined the Mexican Communist Party. Rivera developed his own native style based on large, simplified figures and bold colours with an Aztec influence.

José Clemente Orozco, 1883 - 1949 A Mexican painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others. Orozco was the most complex of the Mexican Muralists, fond of the theme of human suffering, but less realistic and more fascinated by machines than Rivera.

5: Sculpture

British Council In 1944 Underwood succeeded in gaining the support of the British Council for a trip to regions of West Africa. The remit of the British Council (formed 1940) was to promote ‘a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language abroad and develop ‘closer cultural relations between [the UK] and other countries’. Although Underwood did not engage directly with the growing debate concerning decolonisation, he was concerned that Africans should understand the significance and impact of their own tribal art on Western culture. He believed the preservation of indigenous art would be profitable to both Africa and Europe. However, he also stated African art was at the point of exhaustion, fearing that: ‘Africa can produce no more art comparable with that of her past genius, without some restoration of her artistic fertility’.5

Chaac Mool The chacmool is a ceremonial sacrificial altar of the Toltec, who predated the Aztecs, also associated with the Maya. The chacmool is a distinctive form of Mesoamerican sculpture representing a reclining figure with its head facing 90 degrees from the front, leaning on its elbows and supporting a bowl or a disk upon its chest. Underwood saw a recently discovered example at the famous temple of Chichén Itzá, a Mayan site built around 600 CE.

Endnotes1Christopher Neve, Leon Underwood London: Thames & Hudson, 19742 Celina Jeffery, ‘Leon Underwood: Collection of African Art’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, no.12 (May 2000), footnote3 Josef Bard. Editorial. The Island : a quarterly. Vol 1, Nº 1 1931 p 2 4 Leon Underwood, Art for Heaven’s Sake. London: Faber and Faber, 19345 Leon Underwood, ‘Provisional draft for a report on art in West Africa, 2/11/45’, 1945, Henry Moore Institute Archive, Box 2. Cited in Charlotte Stokes, Artist as Anthropologist in Leon Underwood : Figure and Rhythm. 2015. Chichester: Pallant House Gallery p 112

Written by Lesley CrewdsonDesigned by Louise BristowNatalie Franklin, Learning Programme Manager

n.franklin@pallant.org.uk, 01243 770839

Telephone 01243 774557info@pallant.org.ukwww.pallant.org.uk9 North Pallant, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1TJ