The Camden Town Group in Context

Given by the artist in 1912 to Zina Drummond (1887–1931), first wife of Malcolm Drummond (1880–1945), from whom bought by Redfern Gallery, London, c.1930, and sold Sotheby’s, London, 12 July 1961 (242) to Tate Gallery (£90).

Study for a Mural Decoration for ‘The Cave of the Golden Calf’ is executed in artists’ oil paints on paper. The support comprises of a single sheet of brown wove paper, which has been cut down after painting and marouflaged onto a paper-faced, wood-pulp board. After marouflage the support was again cut down on the left vertical edge, probably to frame. The support has several creases and a vertical fold running the length of the paper at the left-hand side, which appears to have been present before painting. There are several small holes and tears in the top left-hand corner that may be pin holes made to fix the paper to a board during painting, in preparation for marouflage or in working on the mural itself.

There is no preparatory sizing or priming visible on the paper support. Faint pencil marks consistent with preliminary drawing are visible in areas such as the central horse-mounted archer and the tiger. The design is initially drawn in thinned black paint (see also Tate T02260). The paint has the appearance of oil paint, where the medium has leached into the paper resulting in a consistently matt finish. The drawn shapes are boldly coloured with brushed opaque colours and substantial impasto, in some areas applied with a palette knife. The colour palette consists of blue, red, green and yellow ranging in tonality from dark to medium to light. Pure unmixed colours are quickly worked in broad directional strokes, the texture of the brushstrokes retained in the matt paint. Unpainted paper remains visible in most areas, particularly towards the edges of shapes. Some outlines are reinstated with dark blue paint, such as the tigers and goats. Existing colour is modified and further colour added over the reinstated outlines. During painting a two-inch square grid was applied in pencil, creating shallow troughs in the soft paint. Further colour and impasto were applied after the grid was drawn. High impasto has been flattened and appears more polished as a result of marouflage. The surface is unvarnished.

The Cabaret Theatre Club, later known as The Cave of the Golden Calf, was a nightclub at 9 Heddon Street W1, off Regent Street. It was the brainchild of Frida Strindberg (1872–1943), the divorced second wife of the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg (1849–1912), and opened on 26 June 1912. Strindberg was an Austrian who had inherited a large fortune at an early age, and worked variously as a translator, journalist and author; she was described by the journalist Ashley Gibson, who met her shortly before the club opened, as

Much more famously she was described by Augustus John, with whom she was infatuated, as ‘the walking hell-bitch of the Western World’.2 Jacob Epstein recalled that the project to open the club was launched at a dinner for ‘artists and those she thought would be interested in her scheme’; it should have sounded a warning for all those involved:

Strindberg chose Spencer Gore to organise the club’s decorative scheme, which was intended to reflect and contribute to its intended avant-garde status. In a preliminary brochure issued in April 1912, Strindberg stressed that the club’s ‘decoration will be entirely and exclusively the work of leading young British artists’.4 Gore was the coordinator, and commissioned others of his circle to contribute works. The project took up much of his time during this period, and it appears also to have sapped his emotional strength, for he suffered constant pressure and unnecessary interference from his patron. Generally an even-tempered man, Gore admitted his uncharacteristic annoyance in an undated letter to his pupil John Doman Turner:

Gore’s mention of wall and ceiling colours indicates that he was not just responsible for organising the specific fine-art decorations for the club, but also its overall design. He involved Charles Ginner, who painted three large wall decorations, Chasing Monkeys (untraced), Birds and Indians (untraced) and the triptych Tiger Hunting (untraced, fig.1),6 as well as designing two posters for the club in distemper (see, for example, fig.2).7 Wyndham Lewis was a friend of Strindberg, and it may have been through him that Gore gained the commission. Lewis painted a drop curtain depicting raw meat for the stage, and he also hired out his painting Kermesse (untraced),8 which hung on the stairs down to the club. Epstein carved coloured and decorated columns and capitals, most likely pursuing a sexual theme,9 while Eric Gill was commissioned to make a phallic-looking statue of a Golden Calf for the foyer.10 He also designed the sign outside, a relief version of the calf sculpture flanked by flaccid penises.11

The name of the club was intended to convey a message of primitive abandon through its reference to the Biblical story of the Israelites who, while Moses was absent, indulged in orgiastic, idolatrous celebrations before a golden calf (Exodus 32: 1–6). The brochure for the club reinforced this bacchanalian agenda:

Gore had problems trying to coordinate the other artists’ work, and it progressed very slowly, with Strindberg constantly urging them to be ready by the planned opening. Lewis would only work if absolutely forced, with Gore’s wife standing over him, and when the club opened his drop curtain was still wet and got snarled up. Ginner worked almost equally slowly, starting late in the morning and taking long lunch breaks, a practice Gore attributed to his residence in France. Gore himself worked hard and long, a habit he had maintained throughout his career.13 Mollie Gore helped her husband with his work, and ‘primed the canvas, melted the size, mixed the paint and began to fill in the colours’.14

Several sheets of studies for Gore’s designs survive, and these indicate that initially the artist was planning to decorate a large number of the interior walls.15 As it turned out, he appears to have given much of this work to Ginner. It is difficult to be certain of the precise number of decorations Gore actually executed. The mural Deer Hunting (untraced, fig.3) was certainly completed, as it is shown in an illustration of the club in the Daily Mirror on 4 July 1912 (fig.4), situated on the wall to the right of the stage. The Tate’s oil study has a trio of orange and blue-striped tigers in it, and might have been the subject taken over by Ginner and represented by his triptych Tiger Hunting. However, the man on horseback is shooting an arrow at a deer or antelope, and so this could equally suggest that the design was an alternative for Gore’s mural Deer Hunting. There are a number of references that suggest Gore executed further finished murals. Strindberg writes of ‘your pictures’ in a letter to him in 1913,16 and Lewis too, in his obituary of Gore, referred to his ‘large paintings’ for the commission.17

In a letter of February 1962 to the Tate Gallery, Gore’s widow recalled the circumstances of her husband’s work on the project. By implication, she suggested that there was just a single design by her husband, and explained how the Tate study was presented to Zina Drummond:

The Tate study is in the same simplified, vibrantly coloured manner as Gore’s other studies for the project, and in both subject and style is clearly influenced by Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian pictures. Gore had seen a group of Gauguin’s works at the Stafford Gallery in November 1911,19 and commemorated the exhibition and his excitement in his painting, Gauguins and Connoisseurs at the Stafford Gallery 1911 (fig.5). The subject matter of wild beasts and tribal hunters must have been chosen deliberately to emphasise the carefree and hedonistic ideals of the club. Tribal societies, often dubbed as ‘primitive’, were a cipher for a simpler way of life that was more in tune with human needs and emotions, and in particular, the erotic urge. This fantasy of what tribal life in somewhere like Gauguin’s Tahiti might be like was partly a reaction against the mechanised, industrialised, urban, alienating society that early modern Britain had become, and also a response to the continuing restrictiveness of accepted sexual morals. That the club had a popular image of sexual freedom is testified by its citation in a sensational divorce trial in July 1914, and description as an unsuitable place for a respectable married woman to visit.20

The club was a venue for drinking, eating and, most notably, watching an extremely varied programme of performances. The Times reported that:

The opening night performances included songs by the Norwegian singer Bokken Larsson,

The club mixed the avant-garde with more obscure or arcane material from the past in its bills. A performance of Pergolese’s La Serva Padrona attracted a long review in the Times which, as well as drawing attention to the ‘Futurist paintings’, praised the Club’s ‘catholicity of outlook’.24

The position of the club below street level probably gave rise to the ‘Cave’ part of its name; possibly the ‘prehistoric’ associations suggested by cave dwelling influenced Gore’s choice of savage scenes. The art critic of the Observer was quick to compliment

The club was seen as a distinctly continental phenomenon by the Times which, while sceptical of its success, praised its creativity:

The club was viewed as a triumphal achievement for Gore by his contemporaries, and this success led to him being invited by the Daily Mail to make decorative designs for a modernist house in the Ideal Home Exhibition. But Gore decided to pass on the commission, and this led to a row between Lewis and the Omega Workshops who both believed they had been given it.27

In his obituary of Gore, Lewis highlighted the club decorations as among Gore’s best work, and asked that ‘the memorial exhibition of his work shortly to be held should, if possible, since the Cabaret Club has closed, contain the large paintings he did for that place’.28 The memorial exhibition never took place, cancelled in the wake of the outbreak of war in August 1914. A grieving Walter Sickert viewed the club differently, blaming the hard work and interminable wranglings as contributing to his friend’s death. ‘I wished he hadn’t had that long fatiguing rotten period of running that blasted cabaret’, he wrote to Nan Hudson.29 ‘I tried all I could to prevent his hacking himself to pieces with that bloody Madame Strindberg’s Cabaret. That was a mistake’, he wrote later the same month to Ethel Sands.30

The club had been a great critical and popular success, but by 1914 it was in financial difficulties and Strindberg seems never to have paid the artists involved the fees they had been promised. On 14 April 1913 she wrote characteristically to Gore:

This arrangement naturally enough seems to have fallen through, and in 1914 Strindberg closed the club and sailed to the United States, leaving behind her a wake of creditors, and apparently taking many of the decorations, including Gore’s murals. Mollie Gore’s description of her husband and Ginner hiring a studio to execute the works and Lewis’s call for them to be included in a memorial exhibition confirms that they were made on canvas or some other transportable support, rather than being painted directly on the walls of the club, and so the removal by Strindberg seems certainly to have been physically possible. Attempts to trace these and other works from the club have, however, reaped no indication of their whereabouts at any time after they were displayed in the Cave of the Golden Calf.

The first owner of the Tate study was Zina Drummond (née Ogilvie), first wife of the artist Malcolm Drummond, whom she married in 1906. She was a painter and illustrator, and was drawn by Sickert in c.1913–14.32 A label on the back of the picture is inscribed in ink in an unknown hand ‘Decoration for ‘The Cave of the Golden Calf’ by Spencer Gore | Ginner did the opposite wall, I think. ‘The Cave of the Golden | Calf’ was a night club run by Mme Strindberg (widow of | the dramatist) circa 1912. The originals may be in the U.S.A.’33