Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(8 June 1912 – 26 January 2004) was one of the foremost British abstract artists, a member of the influential

Penwith Society of Arts The Penwith Society of Arts is an art group formed in St Ives, Cornwall, England, UK, in early 1949 by abstract artists who broke away from the more conservative St Ives School. It was originally led by Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, a ...

Early life

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, known as Willie, was born in St Andrews, Fife, on 8 June 1912 into an old landed Scottish family. Barns-Graham's parents were second cousins and their respective families were well established representatives of minor Scottish gentry from both the east and west of the country. As a child she showed very early signs of creative ability. It was at school that Wilhelmina decided that she wanted to be an artist after one of her paintings was chosen to be displayed on the wall there, she stated later in life that "painting chose me, not I it".

Education

After school she set her sights on

Edinburgh College of Art Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) is one of eleven schools in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Tracing its history back to 1760, it provides higher education in art and design, architecture, histor ...

where, after some dispute with her father who was an emotional man prone to uncontrolled anger, she enrolled in 1931. During her time at College Barns-Graham was taught by tutors including portrait painter David Alison and painter

William MacTaggart Sir William MacTaggart, (1903–1981) was a Scottish painter known for his landscapes of East Lothian, France, Norway and elsewhere. He is sometimes called William MacTaggart the Younger to distinguish him from his grandfather, the painter Willi ...

, her friends there included the influential Scottish painters

Robert MacBryde Robert MacBryde (5 December 1913 – 6 May 1966) was a Scottish still-life and figure painter and a theatre set designer. Early life and career MacBryde was born in Maybole, Ayrshire, to John MacBryde, a cement labourer, and Agnes Kennedy Mac ...

Robert Colquhoun Robert Colquhoun (20 December 1914 – 20 September 1962) was a Scottish painter, printmaker and theatre set designer. Colquhoun was born in Kilmarnock and was educated at Kilmarnock Academy. He won a scholarship to study at the Glasgow ...

and

William Gear William Gear RA RBSA (2 August 1915 – 27 February 1997) was a Scottish painter, most notable for his abstract compositions. Early life Gear was born in Methil in south-east Fife, Scotland, the son of Janet (1886-1955) and Porteous Gear ...

. Since birth Barns-Graham suffered from weakness of the lungs, exacerbated by stress or anxiety, and in 1933 she contracted

pleurisy Pleurisy, also known as pleuritis, is inflammation of the membranes that surround the lungs and line the chest cavity ( pleurae). This can result in a sharp chest pain while breathing. Occasionally the pain may be a constant dull ache. Other sy ...

forcing her to take a break from College. Barns-Graham finally graduated with her diploma in 1936.

Early artistic career

After her education Barns-Graham made study trips to Paris, London and St Tropez before moving to St Ives, Cornwall in 1940 at the suggestion of the Edinburgh College of Art's Principal Hubert Wellington. Barns-Graham moved near to where a group of

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

artists had settled, at

Carbis Bay Carbis Bay (Cornish: ''Karrbons'', meaning "causeway") is a seaside resort and village in Cornwall, England. It lies southeast of St Ives, on the western coast of St Ives Bay, on the Atlantic coast. The South West Coast Path passes above th ...

. This was a pivotal moment in her life. On one of her first evenings there she met the sculptor Barbara Hepworth who made an immediate and lasting impression on her she then went on to meet Borlase Smart,

Alfred Wallis Alfred Wallis (18 August 1855 – 29 August 1942) was a British fisherman and artist known for his port landscapes and shipping scenes painted in a naïve style. Having no artistic training, he began painting at the age of 70, using househo ...

and

Bernard Leach Bernard Howell Leach (5 January 1887 – 6 May 1979), was a British studio potter and art teacher. He is regarded as the "Father of British studio pottery". Biography Early years (Japan) Leach was born in Hong Kong. His mother Eleanor (née ...

, as well as the painter

Ben Nicholson Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, OM (10 April 1894 – 6 February 1982) was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscape and still-life. Background and training Nicholson was born on 10 April 1894 in De ...

and the sculptors

Naum Gabo Naum Gabo, born Naum Neemia Pevsner (23 August 1977) (Hebrew: נחום נחמיה פבזנר), was an influential sculptor, theorist, and key figure in Russia's post-Revolution avant-garde and the subsequent development of twentieth-century scul ...

and

Margaret Mellis Margaret Nairne Mellis (22 January 1914 – 17 March 2009) was a Scottish artist, one of the early members and last survivors of the group of modernist artists that gathered in St Ives, in Cornwall, in the 1940s. She and her first husband, Ad ...

. After two weeks in St Ives, Barns-Graham acquired her first studio, directly below the Porthmeor Gallery which was the administrative headquarters of the St Ives Society of Artists. Her paintings at the time were heavily influenced by the Cornish landscapes and the St Ives harbour. During 1940 and 1941 Barns-Graham contributed to the war effort by volunteering in a factory making camouflage nets however using the rough materials gave her

dermatitis Dermatitis is inflammation of the skin, typically characterized by itchiness, redness and a rash. In cases of short duration, there may be small blisters, while in long-term cases the skin may become thickened. The area of skin involved can ...

so she had to give up the work, instead knitting string vests and socks. In 1942 Barns-Graham became a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists, in which she exhibited with every year, and the St Ives Society of Artists. Whilst establishing herself in St Ives, Barns-Graham also continued to send work back to Scotland for major exhibitions held there such as the Royal Scottish Academy's 117th Exhibition in 1943. The 1940s were an active time for the St Ives Society of Artists who received a number of invitations to send exhibitions and groups of works to galleries in the UK and abroad, Barns-Graham's work was always included in these as the Society's secretary, Borlase Smart, thought highly of her work. After the war the number of young modern artists joining the St Ives Society of Artists increased, of which Barns-Graham was one, their works were often shown in the darkly lit font area of the New Gallery of the Mariners' Church which gave them the nickname 'The Artists Around the Font'. There was deemed to be hostility from the more traditional artists of the

Society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...

so Barns-Graham and the other modern artists decided to exhibit their work separately in the crypt area of the New Gallery, calling themselves the Crypt Group. The use of the crypt as an exhibition space caught on and was used again a number of times to exhibit the work of the young modernist members of the St Ives Society of Artists, including in March 1947 where seventeen artists exhibited work, including Barns-Graham,

, Barbara Hepworth and

Peter Lanyon George Peter Lanyon (8 February 1918 – 31 August 1964) was a British painter of landscapes leaning heavily towards abstraction. Lanyon was one of the most important artists to emerge in post-war Britain. Despite his early death at the ag ...

. Barns-Graham's first opportunity to exhibit in London came when her work was included in a group exhibition of six at the

Redfern Gallery The Redfern Gallery is an exhibition space in the West End of London specialising in contemporary British art. It was founded by Arthur Knyvett-Lee and Anthony Maxtone Graham in 1923 as an artists' cooperative on the top floor of Redfern H ...

. This was due to the introduction and support of

Patrick Heron Patrick Heron (30 January 1920 – 20 March 1999) was a British abstract and figurative artist, critic, writer, and polemicist, who lived in Zennor, Cornwall. Heron was recognised as one of the leading painters of his generation. Influenced b ...

who visited Barns-Graham's studio in St Ives and was excited by her work. Barns-Graham would later have her first one-person exhibition in London at Redfern in 1952. After a few years of tension, Barns-Graham eventually left the St Ives Society of Artists in 1949, becoming one of the founding members of a new breakaway group named

. The first

Penwith Society Penwith (; kw, Pennwydh) is an area of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, located on the peninsula of the same name. It is also the name of a former local government district, whose council was based in Penzance. The area is named after o ...

exhibition opened in June 1949 with huge success and 2755 paying visitors coming to see it. In the same year she married the young author and aspiring poet, and later noted architect, David Lewis; the marriage was annulled in 1960. In 1950 Barns-Graham's painting ''Upper Glacier'' was purchased by the

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lan ...

, this was her largest sale she had made so far and the following year the work was also included in Herbert Read's book ''Contemporary British Art.'' Barns-Graham's work was also increasingly being included in London exhibitions such as the Leicester Galleries ''Artists of Fame and Promise'' and the inaugural exhibition at the new

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...

premises. In 1951 Barns-Graham's work was also included in international exhibitions such as the Biennale de Peinture de France, where Barns-Graham was one of only eight British artists invited to contribute.

Later artistic career

Barns-Graham travelled regularly over the next twenty years to Switzerland, Italy, Paris and Spain. With the exception of a short teaching term at

Leeds School of Art Leeds Arts University is a specialist arts further and higher education institution, based in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, with a main campus opposite the University of Leeds. History It was founded in 1846 as the Leeds Schoo ...

(1956–1957), where she befriended the artists

Terry Frost Sir Terence Ernest Manitou Frost RA (13 October 1915 – 1 September 2003) was a British abstract artist, who worked in Newlyn, Cornwall. Frost was renowned for his use of the Cornish light, colour and shape to start a new art movement in ...

and Stass Paraskos, and three years in London (1960–1963), she lived and worked in St Ives. From 1960, on inheriting a house outside St Andrews from her aunt Mary Niesh (who had been a support to her throughout her art college years), she split her time between summers in Cornwall and winters in Scotland. After the war, when St Ives had ceased to be a pivotal centre of modernism, Barns-Graham's work and importance as an artist was sidelined, in part by an art-historical consensus that she had been only as a minor member of the

St Ives school The St Ives School refers to a group of artists living and working in the Cornish town of St Ives. In old age, however, she received belated recognition. She received honorary doctorates from the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

in 1992 and later from the universities of Plymouth in 2000, Exeter in 2001 and Heriot Watt Universities in 2003. In 1999 she was elected an honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Scottish Watercolourists. She was awarded a

in 2001, the same year that saw the publication of the first major monograph on her life and work, written by Lynne Green — ''W.Barns-Graham : A Studio Life'' (Lund Humphries). This publication was followed in 2007 by ''The Prints of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: a complete catalogue'' by Ann Gunn (also a Lund Humphries publication). Her work is found in several major public collections in Britain. Wilhelmina Barns-Graham died in St Andrews on 26 January 2004. She is buried by the western wall of the Eastern Cemetery, not far from the cathedral. She bequeathed her entire estate to The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust, which she had established in 1987. The aims of the trust are to foster and protect her reputation, to advance the knowledge of her life and work, to create an archive of key works of art and papers, and, in a cause close to her heart, to support and inspire art and art history students through offering grants and bursaries to those in selected art college and universities.

Artistic style

Through the course of her life Wilhelmina Barns-Graham's work generally lay on the divide between abstract and representational, typically drawing on inspirations from landscape. From as early as the age of eight Barns-Graham had been creating abstract shapes with coloured chalks. From 1940, when she arrived in Cornwall, her pictures are exploratory and even tentative as she began to develop her own method and visual language. The influence of St Ives then starts to arise, to take hold as local shapes and colours appear in the images - the Cornish rocks, landscape and buildings. Perhaps the most significant innovation at this time derived from the ideas of

, who was interested in the principle of stereometry - defining forms in terms of space rather than mass. Barns-Graham's series of glacier pictures that started in 1949, inspired by her walks on the

Grindelwald , neighboring_municipalities = Brienz, Brienzwiler, Fieschertal (VS), Guttannen, Innertkirchen, Iseltwald, Lauterbrunnen, Lütschental, Meiringen, Schattenhalb , twintowns = Azumi, now Matsumoto (Japan) Grindelwald is a village and ...

Glacier in Switzerland, reflect the idea of looking at things in a total view, not only from the outside but from all points, including inside. In 1952 her studies of local forms became more planar and two dimensional, but from the mid-1950s she had developed a more expressionist and free form attitude following journeys to Spain. In the early 1960s, reflecting the turmoil in her personal life, Barns-Graham adopted a severe geometrical form of abstraction as a way of taking a fresh approach to her painting. Combined with a very intuitive sense of colour and design, the work often has more vitality than is immediately apparent. Squares tumble and circles flow across voids. Colour and movement come together and it is at this point in her work that St Ives perhaps exerts the least influence; rather, this approach more likely reflects an interest in the work of

Josef Albers Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College ...

who was exciting UK artists at this time, in embracing new possibilities offered by the optical effects of a more formulaic abstraction. Nonetheless there is evidence to suggest that many images did stem from observations of the world around her. This is seen in a series of ice paintings in the late 1970s and then in a body of work that explores the hidden energies of sea and wind, composed of multiple wave-like lines drawn in the manner of

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented ...

. The ''Expanding Form'' paintings of 1980 are the culmination of many ideas from the previous fifteen years - the poetic movement in these works revealing a more relaxed view. From the late 1980s until her death, Barns-Graham's paintings became more and more free; an expression of life and free flowing brushwork not seen since the late 1950s. Working mainly on paper (there are relatively few canvases from this period) the images evolved to become, initially, highly complex, rich in colour and energy, and then, simultaneously, bolder and simpler, reflecting her enjoyment of life and living. "In my paintings I want to express the joy and importance of colour, texture, energy and vibrancy, with an awareness of space and construction. A celebration of life – taking risks so creating the unexpected." (Barns-Graham, October 2001) This outlook is perfectly expressed in the extraordinary collection of screen prints that she made with the Graal Press of Edinburgh, between 1999 and 2003. Barns-Graham's work is now owned by a number of public collections including the Arts Council of Great Britain,

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

, the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

and the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

Solo exhibitions

* Downing Gallery, St Ives, 1947, 1949 and 1954 *

, London, 1949/52 * Roland, Browse and Delbanco, London, 1954 * Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1956. 1959, 1960 and 1981 * City Art Gallery, Wakefield, 1957 * Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh and The Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford 1968 * Sheviock Gallery, Cornwall and Park Square Gallery, Leeds, 1970 * Marjorie Parr Gallery, London, 1971 * Wills Lane Gallery, St Ives, 1976 * The New Art Centre, London, 1978 * LYC Museum and Art Gallery, Cumbria, 1981 * The Crawford Centre, St Andrews and Henry Rothschild Exhibition, Germany, 1982 * The Piers Art Centre, Orkney, 1984 * Gillian Jason Gallery, London, 1987 * Ancrum Gallery, Roxburghshire, 1988/1990 * Scottish Gallery, London, 1989 * Retrospective exhibition, touring:

Newlyn Art Gallery Newlyn Art Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in Newlyn, Cornwall, UK. Opened in 1895, designed by James Hicks of Redruth and financed by John Passmore Edwards the gallery was conceived as a home and exhibition venue for the Newlyn ...

, Penzance; City Art Gallery, Edinburgh; Perth Museum and Art Gallery; Crawford Art Centre, St Andrews and Maclaurin Art Gallery, Ayr, 1989-1990 * Crawford Art Centre, St Andrews and The Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, 1992 * ''W Barns-Graham at 80'', William Jackson Gallery, London touring to: Lillie Art Gallery, Milngavie; Abbott Hall Art Gallery, Kendal;

Royal Albert Memorial Museum Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery (RAMM) is a museum and art gallery in Exeter, Devon, the largest in the city. It holds significant and diverse collections in areas such as zoology, anthropology, fine art, local and overseas archaeolo ...

, Exeter; Dundee Art Galleries & Museum, Dundee and Wakefield Art Gallery, Wakefield, 1992-1993 * ''Drawings 1945-1960,'' Art First, London; and The Wolf at the Door, Penzance, 1994 * Art First, London, 1995 * The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1995 *

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is part of the National Galleries of Scotland, which are based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The National Gallery of Modern Art houses the collection of modern and contemporary art dating from about 1900 to th ...

, 1996-1997 * Art First, London; The New Millenium Gallery, St Ives, 1997 * The McGeary Gallery, Brussels and Art First, London, 1999 * ''Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: An Enduring Image,'' Tate Gallery, St Ives; ''W Barns-Graham Prints'', Exeter University; Art First, London and

, 1999-2000 * ''Wilhelmina Barns-Graham - Painting as Celebration'', Crawford Art Centre, St Andrews;

Aberdeen Art Gallery Aberdeen Art Gallery is the main visual arts exhibition space in the city of Aberdeen, Scotland. It was founded in 1884 in a building designed by Alexander Marshall Mackenzie, with a sculpture court added in 1905. In 1900, it received the art ...

;

Royal Cornwall Museum The Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro holds an extensive mineral collection rooted in Cornwall's mining and engineering heritage (including much of the mineral collection of Philip Rashleigh (1729-1811), Philip Rashleigh). The county's artistic her ...

;

Graves Art Gallery Graves Art Gallery is an art gallery in Sheffield, England. The gallery is located above the Central Library in Sheffield city centre. It houses permanent displays from the city’s historic and contemporary collection of British and European ar ...

, Sheffield; City Art Gallery and Museum, York; Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University and

Ferens Art Gallery The Ferens Art Gallery is an art gallery in the English city of Kingston upon Hull. The site and money for the gallery were donated to the city by Thomas Ferens, after whom it is named. The architects were S. N. Cooke and E. C. Davie ...

, Kingston upon Hull * ''W. Barns-Graham: A Celebration at 90'', Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh; W. Barns-Graham at 90: A tribute from Art First, Art First, London, 2002 * ''Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, 1912-2004: A tribute - Recent Paintings and New Prints'', Art First, London, 2004

References

Selected Bibliography

*Geoffrey Bertram ''Evolution'', exhibition catalogue, Sherborne House, Dorset 2007 *Mel Gooding ''A Discipline of the Mind. The Drawings of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham'', exhibition catalogue, Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, and tour, 2009 *Mel Gooding ''Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: Movement and Light Imag(in)ing Time'', Tate St Ives exhibition catalogue 2005 *Mel Gooding ''Elemental Energies: the Art of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham'', exhibition catalogue, Trinity Hall, Cambridge 2007 *Lynne Green ''W.Barns-Graham - A Studio Life'', Lund Humphries 2001; 2nd edition, amended and updated, published 2011 *Lynne Green ''Wilhelmina Barns-Graham - a Scottish artist in St Ives'' exhibition catalogue, City Art Centre Edinburgh/Fleming Collection London, 2012 *Ann Gunn ''The Prints of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham : a complete catalogue'', Lund Humphries 2007 *Douglas Hall ''W.Barns-Graham Retrospective 1940-1989'', exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh City Art Centre 1989 *Professor Martin Kemp ''W.Barns-Graham Drawings'', exhibition catalogue, Crawford Arts Centre, St Andrews 1992

Obituaries

*Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Peter Davies, ''The Independent'', London, 28 January 2004 *Wilhelmina Barns-Graham - Obituary, ''The Times'', London, 28 January 2004

External links

*
The Barns-Graham Charitable Trust

Works at the Tate Gallery

Works at National Galleries Scotland
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barns-Graham, Wilhelmina 1912 births 2004 deaths 20th-century Scottish painters 20th-century Scottish women artists Abstract painters Academics of Leeds Arts University Alumni of the Edinburgh College of Art Commanders of the Order of the British Empire People educated at St Leonards School People from St Andrews Scottish watercolourists Scottish women painters St Ives artists Women watercolorists