The Camden Town Group in Context

Purchased at Wildenstein & Co., London, by David C. Fincham in 1937 and presented anonymously to Tate Gallery 1938.

Self-Portrait is painted in artists’ oil paints on a pre-primed stretched canvas, supplied by the artists’ colourman P. Shea, who was used by several Camden Town Group artists. The canvas is fine, plain-weave linen and has been prepared with sizing and a white, probably oil-based, primer. Small areas of priming and paint have lifted from the canvas, probably due to an inherent instability in the support, which may be a so-called ‘shrinker’.1

Manson began his painting by drawing in thinned blue paint directly on to the priming, apparently without any preliminary underdrawing. The distinctive use of thinned blue paint for the underdrawing was associated with post-impressionist technique and was popularly adopted by English artists at the time (see also Tate T02260 and T00164). The paint is brushed on briskly in linear strokes that describe the forms and impart lively shimmering colour. Some areas, such as the background, are summarily executed, leaving patches of priming visible through the broken brushwork and around the edges. The head and collar are most densely worked, the artist applying successive strokes of soft tints heightened with accents of purer colour, building up into thicker layers as he struggled to resolve the portrait. There are several areas of reworking, the sitter’s right side and the reinstatement of the background to define the contour of the jacket, for example, and additional detail added in the final stages, such as the jacket pocket and handkerchief. The painting is unvarnished leaving a matt surface characteristic of paint that has been thinned only with solvent without the addition of painting medium.

Manson was in his early thirties when he painted this self-portrait. It shows him in a pose that combines alertness and a very direct gaze with an assumed aspect of informality by depicting himself with a pipe in his mouth. This character of artistic bohemianism is reinforced by his unstructured jacket, which is probably his painting coat. The portrait has the appearance of having been made while looking in a mirror, with adjustments made later. It is painted in a version of impressionism, with broken touches of paint and colour. With his friend Lucien Pissarro, Manson believed strongly that the impressionist technique and theory developed by Lucien’s father Camille was the ideal style of art. Like Lucien, he had misgivings about the more radical direction the London avant-garde was taking away from such principles, although he tried to hold the Camden Town Group together and later ensure the plurality of the London Group that succeeded it.1

The subjects of Manson’s art were generally country landscapes or flower pictures (see, for example, Tate N01355 and N05320). But he also painted a number of portraits, generally of his friends or family. These include an informal picture of his wife sewing outside from c.1910, perhaps the picture exhibited as A Corner of the Garden at the first Camden Town Group exhibition (private collection),2 as well as more conventional portrait treatments, such as: Portrait of Mr Bravington aged Two, made in 1912 around the same time as his self-portrait;3 Portrait of a Child 1915 (private collection),4 perhaps also Master Bravington; and Portrait of a Lady in a Striped Dress, probably of a later date.5 His portrait of Lucien Pissarro reading, from around 1913, is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (fig.1).

When Manson had moved to Paris in 1903 to study at the Académie Julian, his friend Samuel Halpert had painted a half-length portrayal of him in the typical Whistlerian style of the time.6 Manson had first become affiliated with the Fitzroy Street Group through Pissarro in late 1910. Shortly after this he depicted himself in the group’s shared studio in Self-Portrait. The Fitzroy Street Studio c.1911 (Fine Art Society).7 In contrast to the close-up view in the Tate work, this self-portrait presents an almost full-length depiction of the artist seated in a chair, looking young and thin in a rather outsized suit. Manson’s poses in the Halpert portrayal and the c.1911 self-portrait appear hesitant and effeminate in comparison to the masculine, uncompromising stare of the Tate self-portrait. It is interesting to compare this work with the portraits and self-portraits of his fellow Camden Town Group colleagues from this period, including those of Charles Ginner, Spencer Gore and Robert Bevan, which also portray a form of masculine bohemianism (figs.2–4).8 Manson also made a later self-portrait that is now in Southampton City Art Gallery, purchased from the artist in 1937 and probably made around then.

Manson joined the staff of the Tate Gallery as Chief Clerk in 1912, around the time this picture was painted. He was Assistant Keeper 1917–30, and from 1930 until 1938 he led the gallery as director. Manson’s portrait was presented by David Fincham, one of the gallery’s Assistant Keepers, who was on friendly terms with his director. In a letter to the Tate in 1957 he outlined the circumstances of its acquisition:

Fincham may have been misremembering from which gallery he had bought it. Manson’s solo exhibition was held at Wildenstein’s in Bond Street in October–November 1937, and included a work listed as Self-Portrait (32), which is almost certainly the Tate painting. Fincham’s presentation of the picture to the Tate Gallery in 1938 was designed to mark the tenure of Manson’s directorship. In 1932 the gallery had accepted the gift of an oil by Stephen Bone of Manson’s predecessor, Charles Aitken (Tate N04618), establishing the precedent of marking former directors by the acquisition of a portrait. Fincham’s mention of waiting until ‘the dust raised by Manson’s retirement had died down’ is a reference to the fallout from Manson effectively being forced out of his post and into early retirement after causing a diplomatic incident in Paris by drunken behaviour.