Spencer Frederick Gore (26 May 1878 – 27 March 1914) [1] was a British painter of landscapes, music-hall scenes and interiors, usually with single figures. He was the first president of the Camden Town Group, [2] and was influenced by the Post-Impressionists.
He was born on 26 May 1878 at Epsom in Surrey, the youngest of the four children of the Wimbledon tennis champion, Spencer Gore and his wife Amy Margaret (née Smith). His father's brother was the theologian Charles Gore. His father sent him to board at Harrow School in Middlesex (now Greater London). He went on to study painting in London at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he was a contemporary of Harold Gilman.
In 1904 Albert Rutherston introduced Gore to Walter Sickert at Dieppe; and afterwards he associated in Fitzroy Street, London, with Sickert, Lucien Pissarro, Harold Gilman and Charles Ginner. In 1909 he became a member of the New English Art Club, and in 1910 contributed an article to The Art News on "The Third London Salon of the Allied Artists Association".
In 1911 he was a co-founder and first president of the Camden Town Group.
In January 1912 he married Mary Joanna ("Molly") Kerr, with whom he had two children – Margaret Elizabeth (1912–1994) and Frederick John Pym (1913–2009); the latter would become well known as the painter Frederick Gore. His widow died at Meopham, Kent in 1968. [3]
In 1913 he became a member of the London Group.
His later works show growing concern with pictorial construction, under the influence of the Post-Impressionists. He experimented with colour in his works, as may be seen in his painting Hartington Square.
Gore painted a series of thirty-two landscapes in Richmond Park during the last months of his life. [4] His painting From a Window in Cambrian Road, Richmond [5] shows the view from a top-floor window at the rear of 6 Cambrian Road, near the park's Cambrian Gate entrance, where he and his family moved to in 1913. [6] [7] This may be the last picture Gore worked on before his death. [7] According to Tate curator Helena Bonett, Gore's early death from pneumonia, two months before what would have been his 36th birthday, was brought on by his painting outdoors in Richmond Park in the cold and wet winter months. [8]
Gore's painting Richmond Park, thought to have been painted in the autumn of 1913 or shortly before the artist's death in March 1914, was exhibited at the Paterson and Carfax Gallery [9] in 1920. In 1939 it was exhibited in Warsaw, Helsingfors and Stockholm by the British Council as Group of Trees. [10] It is now in the collection of the Tate Gallery under its original title but is not currently on display. [10] It is not certain where in the park the picture was made but a row of trees close to the pond near Cambrian Gate has a very close resemblance to those in the painting. [11] Another Gore painting, with the same title (Richmond Park), painted in 1914, is at the Ashmolean Museum. His painting Wood in Richmond Park is in the Birmingham Art Gallery's collection. [12]
Two of Gore's artworks, Brighton Pier and Richmond Houses, appear in the first number of the landmark modernist journal, BLAST, published some three months after Gore's death. [13] There features also an obituary piece by Wyndham Lewis, who edited the magazine, and who eulogises Gore's "dogged, almost romantic industry, his passion for the delicate objects set in the London atmosphere around him, his grey conception of the artist's life, his gentleness and fineness, [which] would have matured into an abundant personal art". [14]
He died at Richmond, Surrey, on 27 March 1914, aged 35 and was buried in Hertingfordbury in Hertfordshire, where his mother lived. [15]
Spencer Gore gave John Doman Turner artistic training from 1908 to 1913 in a series of thirty letters. The teaching was probably carried out via correspondence because Doman Turner was deaf. The letters are now held in the Gore family collection. Doman Turner was a member of the Camden Town Group, having been elected by Gore, but was shy and unsure of his abilities, which probably led him to resign his membership of the London Group soon after it was formed on 27 November 1913. [16]
Richmond Park, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, is the largest of London's Royal Parks, and is of national and international importance for wildlife conservation. It was created by Charles I in the 17th century as a deer park. It is now a national nature reserve, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Area of Conservation and is included, at Grade I, on Historic England's Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England. Its landscapes have inspired many famous artists and it has been a location for several films and TV series.
Walter Richard Sickert was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the mid- and late 20th century.
The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists founded in 1911 and active until 1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.
The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was formed from the merger of the Camden Town Group, an all-male group, and the Fitzroy Street Group. It holds open submission exhibitions for members and guest artists.
Charles Isaac Ginner was a British painter of landscape and urban subjects. Born in the south of France at Cannes, of British parents, in 1910 he settled in London, where he was an associate of Spencer Gore and Harold Gilman and a key member of the Camden Town Group.
Lucien Pissarro was a landscape painter, printmaker, wood engraver and designer and printer of fine books. His landscape paintings employ techniques of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, but he also exhibited with Les XX. Apart from his landscapes he painted a few still lifes and family portraits. Until 1890 he worked in France, but thereafter was based in Britain.
James Dickson Innes was a British painter, mainly of mountain landscapes but occasionally of figure subjects. He worked in both oils and watercolours.
Stanisława de Karłowska was a Polish-born artist, who was married to the Camden Town Group painter Robert Bevan.
James Bolivar Manson was an artist and worked at the Tate gallery for 25 years, including serving as its director from 1930 to 1938. In the Tate's own evaluation he was the "least successful" of their directors. His time there was frustrated by his stymied ambition as a painter and he declined into alcoholism, culminating in a drunken outburst at an official dinner in Paris. Although his art policies were more advanced than previously at the Tate and embraced Impressionism, he stopped short of accepting newer artistic movements like Surrealism and German Expressionism, thus earning the scorn of critics such as Douglas Cooper. He retired on the grounds of ill health and resumed his career as a flower painter until his death.
Harold John Wilde Gilman was a British painter of interiors, portraits and landscapes, and a founder-member of the Camden Town Group.
Malcolm Cyril Drummond was an English painter and printmaker, noted for his paintings of urban scenes and interiors. Influenced by the Post-Impressionists and Walter Sickert, he was a member of the Camden Town Group and the London Group.
Robert Polhill Bevan was a British painter, draughtsman and lithographer. He was a founding member of the Camden Town Group, the London Group, and the Cumberland Market Group.
Frederick John Pym Gore CBE RA, was an English painter.
The Stafford Gallery was an early 20th-century art gallery in London. Artists whose works were exhibited there include both internationally known painters such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne and Gustave Courbet and significant English figures such as Walter Sickert and Sir William Nicholson.
John Doman Turner was a deaf British painter and member of the Camden Town Group.
Albert Daniel Rutherston was a British artist. He painted figures and landscape, illustrated books and designed posters and stage sets.
William Ratcliffe was one of the Camden Town Group of artists in early twentieth-century England. Although he never achieved the fame of other members of the Group, such as his friend and mentor Harold Gilman, he remained a full-time artist throughout his life, relying on the support of friends and family.
Anna Hope Hudson, generally known as Nan Hudson, (1869–1957) was an American-born artist who lived and worked in France and England. She was the life partner of Ethel Sands.
Diana White was a British artist and translator. She painted Impressionist-style landscapes and translated, into English, books authored in French and Danish. Her most sought-after work is the 1903 book The Descent of Ishtar, of which only 226 copies were printed.
Media related to Spencer Gore at Wikimedia Commons
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