London — In the early 20th century, the Glyn Philpot was one of Britain’s most respected portrait painters. The artist was known for portraying high-society sitters in a style that imitated old masters, so his work, along with generations of families, was on the walls of the client’s country house. I was sitting comfortably.
“Currently, all treatises praise P. Have you seen it?” Philpot’s friend Gladys Miles wrote to art historian Randall Davies in 1910. “Everyone is in a hurry to be portrayed like a sheep.”
But by the 1930s, Philpot’s painting style had an abstract background and With a brighter color palette, he also painted delicate portraits of blacks. Some of them were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, which was rare at the time.
Philpot’s most frequent black subject was Henry Thomas, a Jamaican who met the painter in 1929 and became his servant and muse until Philpot’s death in 1937. male. In Thomas’ own tasteful study, Philpot carefully portrayed the texture, shade and contours of Thomas’ hair and skin.
Some Thomas portraits, along with other Blacksitter paintings, “Green Philpot: Meat and Spirit, ”Exhibited until October at the Parant House Gallery in Chichester, England. The show is the first major retrospective of Philpot’s paintings in almost 40 years and will arrive when his work evokes a new sensation.
In the gallery, works are generally displayed in chronological order, from printed books made as a student at the turn of the century to his final work from 1937. His dignified and diverse portraits of black sitters stood out in the paintings of the aristocrats and social circles that made his career.
But when it comes to organizing the exhibition, its curator and museum director, Simon Martin, felt that some of the original names of the paintings were out of date, he said in a recent interview.
In the days of Philpot, “many of those works were simply called’black heads’,” Martin said. “In the scope of the title, it’s probably more acceptable,” he added, in the early 20th century. “But if we can find out who and where they came from in 2022 and focus on it, I think we should,” Martin said.
To do this, he worked with a team of advisors, including Alayo Akinkugbe, who set up an Instagram account. ABlackHistoryOfArtBritish opera singer and broadcaster Peter Brathwaite. Michael Hatt teaches art history at the University of Warwick. When possible, they changed the title of the fillpot picture to include the model’s name and place of birth, avoiding mentions of the sitter’s race.
This is not the first time the portrait has been renamed to provide more information about the black subject.For 2019 exhibition At the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the titles of the works of Manet, Picasso and Cezanne have been changed to include the names of the black models.
The original title of David Martin’s 1778 painting by Dido Elizabeth Bell and his cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray referred only to the white British aristocrat Lady Elizabeth. Until the 1990s, Dido, a black man, was supposed to be a slave or companion, but research revealed that the pair was relevant, with comparable upbringing in British aristocrats. (This painting influenced the 2014 movie “Bell”).
Organizations such as the National Trust, a British heritage charity, have also begun to rethink how the artwork in large collections constitutes blacks. A National Trust spokeswoman said in an email, “It’s important not to erase the original language to shed light on the historical perspective, but we have carefully updated the information on some artwork.” increase. For example, the 18th-century portrait “Young Coachman” at Eldig, a National Trust facility in northern Wales, now contains information about who the black man in the painting is.
Efforts to Continue Recognizing the National Trust British colonial past Meet some PushbackThe decision to change the title of the artwork can be complicated. “Some people believe that changing the name changes the artist’s intentions,” says a recent essay collection, “Out Of The Sun: Essays at the Crossroads of Race,” exploring the relationship between Western art and blacks. .. “If the artist chooses the name himself, he has to take into account the intent of the gesture,” she added.
Martin and his team of advisors decided to properly relabel Philpot’s work, given that the auction house at the time was likely to have given his paintings a general title rather than the artist himself. I considered it. “I don’t really know a name like’Melancholy Negroid’,” Akinkugbe said in a telephone interview. “I don’t think Philpot would name it that way, but it wouldn’t cause any problems in the socio-political context we’re in, which means we’re renaming it.”
Martin said Philpot’s experience as a gay man would have given the artist a sense of familiarity with his black sitter when sexual activity between men was a criminal offense in Britain. rice field. “There is always a feeling that he isn’t doing it for some reason, even though he’s doing everything he can to blend in and be part of society,” Martin said.
Still, there was a deep and uneven force dynamic between Philpot’s social status and his many black subjects, especially in the case of his servant Thomas. However, the care he portrayed blacks contrasted with some of his fellow approaches. Martin compared his work with the French artist Paul Colin, who was known for his Art Deco poster illustrations at the same time.
“For example, if you look at some of Josephine Baker’s depictions, they are sometimes focused on caricatures,” Martin said. Baker, who became one of Europe’s most popular performers in the 1920s, was often portrayed as topless by Colin and typically had large red lips. “This isn’t what you get from a fillpot job,” Martin added.
In recent years, exhibitions, Podcast Researchers then investigated how blacks are portrayed in European art. This is especially noteworthy since the “calculation moment” of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Edogan said: Focus on larger paintings to recognize the timeless change of blackness. “
Much of the art world was confused and even in dire straits when Philpot began to paint more black and working class themes in modernist style. “Glyn Philpot’goes to Picasso’,” Scottsman wrote in 1932, after one of his new paintings was presented at the Royal Academy.
But today, Philpot’s portraits speak of the current debate about representations in art, showing deep emotions that will continue a century later.
