Room guide:
Portraits and Self-Portraits
Modernity/Style
Harold GilmanCanal Bridge, Flekkefjord, c1913
Tate
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The portraits in this section represent the principal artists responsible for the inception of the Camden Town Group: Walter Sickert, Spencer Gore, Charles Ginner, Harold Gilman and Robert Bevan. All five attended the regular meetings of the informal 'Fitzroy Street Group', from which the idea of forming the Camden Town Group was conceived. Although joined by other sympathetic players such as Malcolm Drummond, these were the key figures around whom the main activities, character and fame of Camden Town painting revolved.
Stylistic similarities within these portraits reinforce the common aesthetic ground shared by the core members. One of the points on which they agreed was a desire to rejuvenate British art by responding to recent developments in modern European art. Their works reveal the deliberate absorption of pictorial devices such as the Impressionist rendering of light, Divisionist dabs of paint, Fauvist chromatics and Post-Impressionist decorative form.
Walter Richard SickertHarold Gilman, c1912
© Tate
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Robert BevanSelf Portrait, c1914
National Portrait Gallery, London
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