Chapter 2 Walter Starmer at Norwich

Chapter 2 Norwich By the beginning of the nineteenth century Norwich was a noted centre of artistic life. It has been suggested that Norfolk’s sea trade with the Netherlands brought knowledge of the work of the Dutch masters to the county and inspired a generation of young men to become artists, and band together in the what became known as the Norwich ‘School’.1 The Norwich Society of Artists was founded in 1803 by the landscape painter John Crome for the purpose of an Enquiry into the Rise, Progress and present state of Painting, architecture and Sculpture, with a view to point out the Best Methods of Study to attain the Greater Perfection in these Arts, and was the first provincial body to show its work in an annual exhibition. John Sell Cotman joined in 1807 and became its guiding spirit after Crome’s death in 1821. In 1829 the Society received a grant from the Corporation of Norwich for the purchase of models and casts, in order to lay the foundations of a regular school of design, in which students may pursue the same methods as are in use in the highest academies in Europe2. The purchase was not made until 1832, by which time the society was in financial difficulties and the nation in economic depression3. Cotman’s departure in 1833 to become Drawing Master at King’s College School in London marked its demise. The casts remained in use by a handful of adult students who paid for instruction from local artists, and a group of former members led by the last secretary, John Barwell, campaigned for this rudimentary academy to be transformed into an efficient and established school of design4. These local ambitions coincided with and reflected a national movement that would lead to the setting up of the Government School of Design at Somerset House in London. This was the British government’s first intervention in art education (outside of military academies), and was a direct response to French competition in the textile trade. 1 C. Geoffrey Holme (Ed.). The Norwich School (London, The Studio Ltd, 1920) Norwich Mercury, May 9, 1829 quoted in Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton with John Stevens, A Happy Eye: A School of Art in Norwich 1845 – 1982 (Norwich, Jarrold, 1982) 24 3 Ibid, 25 4 Ibid, 31 2 1 The superiority of French design, it was argued by the artist and campaigner Benjamin Robert Haydon, came from an extensive system of provincial art schools, the inclusion of art in the curriculum of lycées, and from free public access to museums and art galleries. By contrast Britain only had a handful of municipal and proprietary drawing schools, and no system for the training of teachers. The Royal Academy Schools, an independent institution founded in 1769, did not teach applied art and the National Gallery had only been founded (through private benefaction) in 1824. The Government School did not slavishly imitate French practice, however, because the Board of Trade considered it be over concerned with Fine Art (such as the study of the human figure), but followed the Prussian System, which placed art education in the service of industry. Somerset House was to emphasize the technical training of artisans and of teachers for the provincial schools that were to follow. The Norwich Government School of Design finally opened in 1846. Under the chairmanship of Barwell, the City Council agreed to match a government subsidy, to follow a curriculum directed from Somerset House, and to accept a Master appointed from there. The school was established in the elegant premises of the Royal Norfolk and Norwich Bazaar at 24 to 26 St Andrew’s Broad Street. The Bazaar was a commercial venture opened in 1831 and included a picture gallery as well as lecture and exhibition rooms. The School of Design remained there until 1857 when it moved to the Free Library in Broad Street5. By then there had been what might be called a turn towards Fine Art through the compulsory inclusion of drawing into the government curriculum, and through a fee structure and timetable that suited the better-off classes rather than the children of artisans. The school became the Norwich Government School of Art in ……. Over the next few decades the School achieved a certain success in national competitions, the majority of the prize-winners being academic female artists. Change came again in the 1880s when, as a result of a Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, science teaching was made compulsory, and the school was again re-named (in 1886) Norwich School of Science and Art, finally moving into a purpose-built Technical Institute in 1901. 5 The Bazaar became an amusement hall and in 1910 the city’s first cinema. It was demolished in 1964. 2 The long delay in finding suitable premises had led in 1894 to the students raising a petition for some concerted action to be taken. Among their organising committee of ten were Walter P. Starmer and Edith E. Starmer. Herbert F Starmer was also a signatory. The Headmaster at this time was Walter Scott who had arrived from Macclesfield School of Art in 1888 and remained until 1919. A former student, John Steward, recalled the School in the old library: In this antiquated building with little protection against fire, the pupils studied Art. The class rooms were situated on either side and at the end of a narrow corridor to the right the modeling and drawing rooms, at the far end the Antique room and to the left of that the ‘Life’ room; whilst the Headmaster’s sanctum was somewhere in between. Just inside the entrance to the right was the ‘shop’ for sale of paper, pencils and the like.6 Alfred Munnings became President of the Royal Academy and was knighted in 1944. He is perhaps best known as for his inebriated valedictory speech to the Academy (broadcast by the BBC) in 1949 in which he rounded on modernism: I find myself a president of a body of men who are what I call shillyshallying. They feel there is something in this so-called modern art . . . Well, I myself would rather have—excuse me, my Lord Archbishop—a damned bad failure, a bad, muddy old picture where somebody has tried . . . to set down what they have seen than all this affected juggling7. In his autobiography An Artist’s Life he recalled his time in the Norwich of his youth: Norwich itself was then a beautiful place, and looked almost the same as if it must have done in the days of Crome and Cotman. I now realize what a playground it was for the artist. No wonder it had its famous Norwich School of Painters, for the artist is dependent on his environment, and no artists had a more truly picturesque home than this old city of gardens, with 6 John H. Steward, Typescript Memoir, 18 March 1955; Norwich School of Art Archive quoted in Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton with John Stevens, A Happy Eye: A School of Art in Norwich 1845 – 1982 (Norwich, Jarrold, 1982) 94. Unfortunately it has not been possible to trace this Memoir in the Archive. 7 Quoted in Peter Chew, ‘The Painter Who Hated Picasso’, Smithsonian Magazine October 2006 3 its cathedral, its fifty churches, its rivers with wherries, boats and barges, quays and bridges. There are towers on the ancient walls of the city, alleyways leading to courtyards and back streets, with churches hidden away, set in churchyards filled with tombs of parishioners. As I became older, I became more and more unconsciously in love with those gabled houses in their narrow streets. Such an unlimited wealth of motifs would tempt the dullest painter. This city should never have been spoilt, but preserved and renovated, restored and cared for as a timehonoured relic of the past. It was its ancient beauty, without any doubt, that produced those artists.8 The son of a miller, Munnings attended the art school in the evenings between 1893 and 1898 whilst apprenticed to a firm of lithographers in the city. Our hours were from nine till one o’clock and from two till seven, when I walked straight down to the School of Art, working there until nine. So I continued for six years, which sped away all too fast. With a friend from the School of Art, on bicycles (which gave place to newer and later designs year by year), did I cover the face of an unspoilt Norfolk. We must have seen the inside of every church, and as my friend was studying stain-glass design as well as architecture, our jaunts were full of interest.9 The stained-glass friend, as Munnings called him, was Walter Starmer. Starmer set down his own memories in a letter to Munnings’s biographer Reginald Pound. I remember his first coming to the old Norwich School of Art under Walter Scott. We were closely associated in studying the same subjects chiefly life class and painting etc. I soon found a mutual comradeship and outlook for some years. Outside we became close friends and frequently during weekends spent many happy days exploring the unspoiled and fascinating county of Norfolk, cycling, sailing, rowing or walking, carrying sketch books, and exploring many of the glorious old churches, the stained glass or paintings 8 9 Sir Alfred Munnings, An Artist’s Life (London, Theodore Brun, 1950) 52-53 Ibid, 52 4 or brasses, the organs and generally climbing the towers to get the distant views. From the first A.J.M. had a genius on the representation of horses and farm subjects. I was more interested in ecclesiastical architecture or stained glass, but we always blended the two in our explorations. He was a ceaseless enthusiast. I owe much to his infectious vivacity and his speed of work.10 The nineteen-year-old Munnings recorded his own impression of the Art School in large oil for which he won a bronze medal in the South Kensington Museum Exhibition of 1898. He described how beautiful diffused top lighting by day and gaslight at night made work a joy. The faded grey colouring of the rooms was a perfect background to everything – students in blouses working at easels, large casts of Greek and Roman fragments with slight settlements on top surfaces, aged castor-oil plants on green tubs11. It is tempting to imagine that one of the two young men in the painting is his friend Walter Starmer. The earliest record of Starmer himself as a student at Norwich School of Art is from 1891, when the fourteen-year old Percy won First class prizes in both the elementary and advanced art sections12. In each of the following five years he was listed as a prize-winning or highly placed candidate in both local and national exams, excelling in drawing from life, the antique and memory, and fulfilling the requirements for the Teachers’ Certificate. In the report of the Students’ Exhibition of 1895 he was commended for his achievements in book illustration, bookplate and cover design [the] practical utility of which cannot be questioned13. And in the exhibition of 1896, held in the Free Library, he showed, as well as drapery studies, clever black and white drawings of Norwich church fonts and ancient doorways [described as] sure to attract attention14. In the summer of 1895 Starmer obtained from South Kensington, in open competition amongst 215 candidates, a Local Art Scholarship of the value 10 Letter from Starmer to R[eginald] Pound in reply to request [in Eastern Daily Press] for information about the early life of Sir Alfred Munnings 10 July 1960. Royal Academy of Arts Official Archive RAA/SEC/1/156 11 Sir Alfred Munnings, An Artist’s Life (London, Theodore Brun, 1950) 58-59 12 Eastern Daily Press, February 17, 1891 13 Eastern Daily Press, February 5, 1895 14 Annual Report of the Norwich School of Art 1897 5 of £20 annually tenable for three years at this school and free admission to all our classes. No other candidate entered from Norwich15. However, after just one year, and another excellent in the 1896 examinations, Starmer is said to have recently left us for Birmingham and received the Lord Mayor of Birmingham’s prize for figure design16. 15 16 Annual Report of the Norwich School of Art 1896 Annual Report of the Norwich School of Art 1898 6