By Kristian Purcell

Edward Bawden is often thought of as a designer rather than anartist, primarily because of the sheer volume of commercial workthat he produced and the popularity of that work with the public andcommissioning companies alike. But how did Bawden see his ownwork? What interested him and what did he bring to those worksmade for non-commercial reasons? I will examine the works hemade away from the marketing of products and hope to show aneglected aspect of Bawden’s oeuvre. The designer label naturally originates education at the Designschool of the Royal College of Art. At that time it was easier to applyfor a scholarship for ‘industrial design’ than the more popular fineart, and probably suited the young Bawden and his Cambridge artschool education better. At this time this meant calligraphy, or morespecifically ‘Writing and Illumination’. This route importantly leadshim into contact with three artists that would be of such influence tohis art and life, Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash, and Douglas Percy Bliss.When Bawden joined the Design School, he had entered a schoolvery much considered the lesser partner to the RCA’s paintingschool - not least of all by the college principle William Rothenstein. The college had been established to improve the quality of industrialdesign, but it was the belief, it seems, that the solution to thisproblem was to produce painters heavily trained in figure drawing,rather than the ‘designers’ who hadn’t required a drawingexamination to get in. Sub-standard painting applicants who didn’tpass Rothenstein’s drawing exam were ‘kicked into the designschool’.Writing in his book

Edward Bawden

, Bliss wondered if Bawden andRavilious had not got the better deal as the ‘Elect’ (as theyconsidered themselves) in the painting school had a pretty solid dietof figure drawing and painting while over in design they had thefreedom to do pretty much what they liked. Bliss wrote that Bawdenreluctantly acknowledged that his drawing was seen as poor by RCAstandards, but always resented this. He noted the primitive natureof Bawden’s figures, which he refers to as ‘Anglo Saxon’ in nature,

Henri MatisseArabesque,1924.

Branson andthe Nude,c.1927.

and may well owe more to the brass rubbings Bawden made atschool than the traditional life class he ‘frequently dodged’ at theRCA, where he left it to painters like his friend Bliss to deal withdays on end shading breasts and thighs, and searching for solidity.Examples of his brass rubbings can be seen in the watercolour of hisSchool room.But Bliss doesn’t deny that these flatfigures

worked

for Bawden. They didwhat he required of them and no more,often vehicles for his humour or fittingin the place of a decorative schemerather than realistically rendering lightand shade or even accurate form of thehuman figure. It is important toremember that a drawing should havea purpose. It can’t achieve everythingat once and Bawden knew well what hecould and couldn’t do, and as by theend of his time at the RCA he wasincreasingly busy with graphic designcommissions, his clients were also very awareof what he was good at and in those on thebook at the Curwen Press he was the mostfrequently used of all their artists. Blisssummed-up his friends range at the time bysaying that

‘

Line was his weapon… not solidform, not tone, not atmosphere.’

An example of Bawden really making the mostof his abilities with line is the engravingBranson and the Nude.

Bawden first came intocontact with engraving at a regular eveningclass at the Cass institute. TheBranson was George Bransonwas a fellow student at theRCA and here stands at hiseasel, possibly in his own digs,painting a nude. The life modelin the study is very revealingabout where Bawden’s artisticinterests lay at the time. Thefigure reclines on a patternedchair that at first evokes aMatisse composition, butunlike a Matisse such asArabesque.

Matisse balancesthe decorative effects of fabricwith the lines of the figure and is interested in both. In Bawden’swork the figure is almost completely dominated by the pattern to

Detail fromBransonand theNudec.1927.

BrightonSnowstorm,1956

the point that the lines of the legs and waist are worked to fit in withand reciprocate the floral motif than with accurate human anatomy:in fact the lower leg seems quite dislocated from the rest of thebody. The chair is almost a cardboard cut out such is its flattening. The shadows are interestingly dealt with in the use of a broad bandof repeated marks that contrast with the clearly delineated featureson the other side. The face is no more than fudged and shows a lackof interest in features not ripe for a satirical or witty treatment. Itseems that rather than Matisse’s enjoyment of depicting the femaleform against fabrics, as he did over and over again, Bawden sharessome of Cezanne’s discomfort in drawing the nude from life. This issurely the only area in which Bawden allowed the shyness of hisyouth to impinge on his artistic output. The face of Branson

is muchmore confidently dealt with:Bawden has his protagonistunconsciously sticking histongue out like a child deepin uninhibited concentration.In the background Bawden ison much happier ground ashe takes obvious pleasure infilling every available spacewith little details andbeautifully executeddecorative motifs, such asthe figures of eight in thefrieze above Branson or thefire place by the model.Here Bawden is in control and the way he has laid out thecomposition cleverly puts the viewers focus where he wants it. Lateron in his career Graham Sutherland referred to Bawden’s lineengraving as ‘the epitome – the very heart and flesh of engraving. The lines are resonant and astringent. Its technical origins may befound, perhaps, among the early masters of art’

Indeed, even inthose early years everything he did had line at the very heart of it.A master engraver then, but theprinting medium that Bawden ismost famous for is lino cutting. Bythe mid ‘50s Bawden had beenworking with lino for 30 years,mostly for commercialcommissions, and was anincredibly experienced exponent of the medium. Pieces like

BrightonSnowstorm (1956)

and

Liverpool Street Station (1960)

are incredible technical

Detail fromBransonand theNudec.1927.