James Bolivar Manson

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).