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No sooner had the residents of Cassis got used to local artists wandering their streets and quaysides, painting what they saw then they were followed by rather more exotic individuals from Paris and elsewhere in France depicting their village in more challenging styles. Visitors from further afield then started to appear, many from Britain and they would become an almost permanent feature in the period between the two world wars.
Terrick John Williams (1860–1936), a prolific and successful artist in oils, watercolour and pastels rendered in an impressionistic style. He travelled extensively and was a frequent visitor to Cassis in the 1920’s.
Stanley William Hayter (1901–1988) is best known
as a print-maker who spent most of his time in France and the United
States. He was very much associated with Surrealism in the 1930’s and
then with Abstract Expressionism, influencing and being influenced by
such artists as Picasso, Miró, Chagall, Pollock and Rothko.
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Samuel John Peploe (1871–1935) was born in
Edinburgh and trained at the city’s art school before studying at the
Académie Julian in Paris. Here he rubbed shoulders with trend-setters in
the contemporary art scene and absorbed influences from the
impressionists and post-impressionists. In 1910 he married and took up
residence in Paris and the following year he made his first visit to
Cassis. He returned in 1913 in the company of his fellow Colourist, John Fergusson. The First World War put a stop to these sojourns in the South of France but he was back in 1924 when he painted with Francis Cadell and again in 1928 in the company of George Hunter. The painting shown is Street in Cassis (Private collection) and is a shimmering evocation of sunlight and shadow in a back street of the town.
John Duncan Fergusson (1874–1961) was another native of Edinburgh and after a brief spell training as a naval surgeon he enrolled in the city’s art school. However he quickly became frustrated by the academic approach and left to persue a self-taught career as a painter. This inevitably led him to Paris where his outgoing nature soon found him involved in the café society frequented by leading artists of the day and he struck up a lifelong friendship with Peploe. They often went on painting trips together and as has been mentioned they were in Cassis in 1913 and he later recorded this happy time in Margaret and Willy Peploe at the Hotel Panorama, Cassis (Private collection) painted in 1931. During the inter-war years he lived and worked in Paris but then moved to Glasgow when hostilities broke out.
Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell (1883–1937) came from a middle-class family in Edinburgh and after education at the city’s Academy he studied at the Acedémie Julian in Paris from the early age of 16, obviously influenced by his mother who was French. From 1902 to 1908 he and his family divided their time between Paris, Edinburgh and Munich and in 1910 he made a trip to Venice which marked a significant turning point in his artistic development, adopting a looser technique and a more vibrant palette. He served in two Scottish regiments during the First World War and published a book called Jack and Tommy which was his personal view of life in the navy and army. His first visit to Cassis was in 1923 and he returned the following year in company with Peploe. The painting shown is Cassis, the White Villa from the Balcony (Private collection) and shows the view from the Hotel Panorama.
George Leslie Hunter (1877–1931) was born on the Isle of Bute and his mother recognised his artistic talents early on and arranged painting lessons for him. The family was struck by tragedy when two of his siblings died in an influenza pandemic and this may be part of the reason why his parents and surviving children emigrated to California in 1892. At the age of 19 he moved to San Francisco and took a job as a newspaper and journal illustrator and developed into a proficient graphic artist. After a trip to Paris in 1904 he resolved to take up oil painting and was soon exhibiting in the city. However the earthquake and subsequent fire of 1906 destroyed much of his early work and this probably encouraged him to move back to Glasgow. More trips to France followed and by 1914 he was part of the vibrant art scene and became associated with the other colourists. After the war he was a frequent visitor to the South of France and in 1928 he painted at Cassis with Peploe. The watercolour and pen and ink sketch is The Café, Cassis (Private collection).
John Maclaughlan Milne (1886–1957) is closely associated with the inner circle of the group and spent time with them in Cassis in the 1920’s. He was born and educated in Edinburgh, but moved to Canada in 1908 for several years. On his return to Europe he visited Paris and was inspired by the work of Cézanne. After serving with the Royal Flying Corps in World War I he settled in France where he enjoyed the patronage of a Dundee marmalade manufacturer. The picture shown is Red Roofs, Cassis, 1924 (The National Trust for Scotland, Culzean Castle).
Henry Scott Tuke (1858–1929), the highly regarded artist who could be described as an English Impressionist and who is best known for his paintings of young male nudes in rather idyllic Cornish surroundings, made a visit to Cassis in 1927 and no doubt felt quite at home in this equally attractive seaside setting. Boats at Cassis (Private collection) is shown.
William Roberts (1895–1980), was a student at the Slade School of Art in 1910 and his contemporaries included Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, Christopher Nevinson, Stanley Spencer and David Bomberg. Roberts was also influenced by Wyndham Lewis and became associated with the Vorticist movement. After serving on the Western Front in the First World War he was appointed a war artist and subsequently his subject matter turned to portraiture and the recording of urban life. In 1922 Roberts was in nearby La Ciotat and it was probably from there that he made a visit to Cassis which inspired Loading Ballast (aka The Mazeppa), now in a private collection.
Roger Fry (1866–1934) was an artist and critic with a towering intellect and one of the the most important influences on the appreciation of modern art in Britain, bringing exhibitions of French Post Impressionists to London early in the century. In the years before the First World War he became associated with the Bloomsbury Group when he met Venessa Bell, the sister of Virginia Woolf, and her husband Clive Bell. Fry’s wife had been committed to a mental institution and in 1911 he began an affair with Vanessa which although only short-lived laid the foundation of a life-long and very close friendship. He established the Omega Workshops, an important outlet for the design and artwork of the group, and he was a key figure at the centre of this hothouse of creative and emotional passions wherever it might be found and this was often in the South of France in the 1920’s. Fry had visited Cassis as early as 1915 and undoubtedly promoted the attractions of the place to other members of the group. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant became habitués of the town when they rented a villa in 1928 and Fry became a frequent visitor until his untimely death in 1934. The picture shown is Vue de Cassis, 1925 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris/www.musee-orsay.fr).
Vanessa Bell (1879–1961) was the eldest daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Duckworth. After the death of her rather overbearing father in 1904, Vanessa moved to Bloomsbury to live with her brothers, Thoby and Adrian and with their circle of intellectual, literary and artistic friends the Bloomsbury Group was formed. She married Clive Bell in 1907 but their relationship was ‘unconventional’ and they both took lovers throughout their lives. Vanessa’s most significant relationships were with Roger Fry and Duncan Grant, with whom she had a daughter, Angelica, although Clive Bell raised the child as his own. During the First World War Vanessa, Clive, Duncan Grant and his then-lover David Garnett moved to Charleston in Sussex which became a focal point for the group outside London. After the war the focus shifted, for part of the year at least, to the South of France and in particular to Cassis where Vanessa and Grant eventually rented La Bergère, a derelict cottage on an estate called Fontcreuse just outside the town. By 1928 the renovation of the property was complete and it was here that they entertained a succession of friends, lovers and fellow-artists in a joyful atmosphere of ‘anything-goes’. This occasional idyll continued until the late thirties when the realities of the twentieth century consigned this happy interlude to history.
Duncan Grant (1885–1978) spent his early childhood in India and Burma, the son of an army major, well-connected but not wealthy. He was educated in England and his passion for art was fostered by his aunt, Lady Strachey who was probably instrumental in persuading his father to allow him to pursue this as a career rather than the army. He went on to study at the Slade School and in Italy and Paris. His artistic talent, homosexuality and striking good looks soon found a sympathetic home with the Bloomsbury Group where Lytton Strachey and John Maynard Keynes both became his lovers. A life-long relationship with Vanessa Bell developed but his emotional life was always complicated by affairs with other men. Grant was a prolific and influential artist of the twentieth century and his interests extended to the design of sets and costumes for the theatre, fabrics, graphics and interiors. The picture shown is Window, South of France, 1928 (Manchester City Galleries/www.manchestergalleries.org).
Fred Mayor (1866–1916) was a respected member of the ‘Staithes Group’ with a style all his own, influenced by the work of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists with whom he became familiar while studying in Paris. He was also friends with Sir Frank Brangwyn, with whom he shared a studio for a time, Philip Wilson Steer and Walter Sickert. His watercolours have a melting fluidity which capture the essence of Cassis where he spent several winters. Typical of this style is Spring Morning, Cassis (Leeds Art Gallery).
Dorothea Sharp (1874–1955) was born in Kent and went on to study art at the Regent Street Polytechnic where she was influenced by the Scottish painters David Murray and George Clausen. She went on to study in Paris and became yet another artist fascinated by the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. Many of her paintings are of young children paddling by the sea and display a luminous quality rendered in bold swift brush strokes and this is exemplified by Girl in a White Frock (The Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate).
Jessica Dismorr (1885–1939) is now a little known name in art history but, after training at the Slade School of Art and in Paris, she became a pioneering figure in various avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century including Rhythm and Vorticism and she was a close colleague of Wyndham Lewis. John Fergusson, the Scottish Colourist, who was a significant figure in the story of art in Cassis, was also a friend and influence in the years before the First World War. After the war her work developed towards abstraction and she was the only female contributor to Group X, the short-lived British art movement. She was constantly troubled by mental health issues but in the decade before her untimely death by suicide she did spend some time traveling abroad and this watercolour, Cassis, dates from 1926–27.
Stanley Cursiter (1887–1976) was a Scottish artist and some-time curator and director of the National Galleries of Scotland. His early work was influenced by the Futurists but after the First World War his interests turned to the landscape of Southern France and in 1920 he spent several months in Cassis where he produced a series of lyrical watercolours which have an affinity with the work of the Scottish Colourists and typical of this period is The Little Harbour (Private collection). He went on to become an accomplished portraitist and had a lifelong passion for the landscape of Orkney.
Christopher Wood (1900–1930) was born into a middle-class family near Liverpool and by the age of 14 was showing an aptitude for drawing which lead to a brief period of architectural studies. In 1920 he went to Paris where he enroled at the Académie Julian and quickly became part of the avant garde circle of artists, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Picasso and Cocteau. Back in England he became close friends with Ben and Winifred Nicholson and often painted with them, especially in Cornwall. Throughout his life Wood struggled with personal demons fueled by dependence on opium and this led to his suicide in 1930 at the tragically early age of 30.
Keith Vaughan (1912–1977) was largely self-taught and is best known for his searching studies of the male nude as well as landscapes bordering on abstraction painted in the post-WWII period. He is associated with the group of artists known as Neo-Romantics. He was a frequent visitor to the South of France, including Cassis, both before and after the war. The work shown is a pencil sketch of Cassis dated 1950 and is to be found in the Tate Archive.
