Picasso and Britain – a difficult relationship?

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Picasso and Modern British Art

Clare Finn reports on a show at Tate Britain, London

Critical responses in Britain to Picasso’s work early in the 20th century were not always positive, though not dissimilar to those in France and America, British displays of his work were, however, routinely met with outrage.

Picasso’s work shown in early London exhibitions starts the current show. There are paintings and prints from Roger Fry’s 1910 and 1912 Post-impressionist exhibitions at the Grafton Galleries, the 1912 Stafford Gallery exhibition, and that at the Doré Galleries in 1913. We see pieces owned by early collectors, Clive Bell and Frank Stoop, or works illustrated in the short lived, pro-French, magazine Rhythm. But the general lack of appreciation of Picasso’s work can be gauged from knowing Fry sold only one work, Bottle and Books, from his second exhibition.

It was the Bloomsbury group who mainly took notice of Picasso, represented here by Duncan Grant and Wyndham Lewis, though Lewis left the group. Grant used Picasso’s strong hatched lines and collage technique in decorative ways, never managing to overcome this tendency, and while Picasso broke with representational conventions Grant could not, even re-working his The White Jug to include a representational jug in it. Lewis, on the other hand, criticized Picasso for his limited subject matter and lack of formal energy though he nevertheless drew on his work and achievements.

In 1919 Picasso worked in London for ten days designing sets and costumes for Diaghilev’s The Thee-Cornered Hat. His early biographer, Roland Penrose, tells us that even before this trip Picasso was an anglophile.  When he first set off for Paris from Barcelona at the turn of the century London had apparently been his ultimate, proposed destination.

Back then both Picasso and Barcelona were in thrall to Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelites. His own father was also known for his taste in English furniture and clothes. How much Picasso’s work on Diaghilev’s productions influenced other artists when he was actually in London is unclear. Although not represented in the show, but mentioned in the catalogue, is Christopher Wood, whose clear drawing lines, Harlequin and circus images, it is suggested, may derive from Picasso’s, although probably seen in Paris rather than London.

Ben Nicholson first encountered one of Picasso’s Cubist works in the early 1920s in Paul Rosenberg’s Paris gallery. But he saw it as a purely abstract composition. In the light of his discovery of the spatial and colour relationships in Picasso’s Cubist work, his break with past forms of representation, Nicholson developed his own art, although he never recognized Picasso’s metamorphic use of signs, such as, for example, using a jug to indicate a woman.

Many of the Bloomsbury group knew Picasso personally but Nicholson’s relationship was with his work not the man. They did meet but only a few times. For British artists Picasso’s work could be seen during visits to Paris, or in magazines such as Cahier d’art, Documents or Minotaur, sold in Zwemmers Bookshop in Charing Cross Road. Opportunities to see his work in London were scarce.

In 1931 Alex Reid and Lefevre held the show ‘Thirty Years of Pablo Picasso’ and over the 1930s Picasso’s reputation in Britain grew. Works owned by British collectors before 1939 are displayed, though poignantly many are no longer in British hands.

While the collector Hugh Willoughby’s Picassos were, briefly, on view at Tate, in 1934, no museum bought a Picasso. The first to enter a British museum was a bequest to the Ashmolean in 1939 of Picasso’s 1901 Blue Roofs from Frank Hindly-Smith. Tate bought their first Picasso only in 1949 having declined several in the interwar years.

Interspersed with pieces by Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney are works by Picasso that are known to have influenced their development. Between each room on these artists are displays on the travelling exhibition of Guernica and its studies in 1938, the 1945 exhibition of Matisse and Picasso’s work at the Victoria and Albert museum, Picasso’s second trip to Britain in 1950, to attend the Peace conference in Sheffield, and the Arts Council Picasso Exhibition at Tate in 1960. The exhibition culminates with the Tate’s purchase of Picasso’s Three Dancers, in 1965, one that Picasso himself thought of as one of his greatest.

While Picasso’s achievements are undeniable even with his influence made clear Moore, Bacon and Sutherland’s work holds its own, only Hockney, working after Picasso had died quotes from him wholesale.

The exhibition covers critical responses of collectors, critics, commercial galleries and museums to Picasso’s work, and artists’ responses to it. Laid out chronologically it intertwines these themes. Hence it is about reactions to Picasso’s work rather than about his art per se, so there is a great deal for the viewer to read on the raison d’être for the show’s exhibits.