Tag: Celia Franca

January 2 1944

River picture. Worked on the figure with the pink drapery and also on the one combing her hair. Yesterday I did not work. I felt thoroughly ill. Although I was much better this morning I am now, 6 o’clock, beginning to feel rotten again. Really it is too stupid. Why couldn’t I have been ill during term time, instead of now when I have so much to do.

January 3 1944

River picture. Worked at the drapery of the girl combing her hair.

Last night I went to a party, feeling like death, but when I woke up this morning I felt distinctly better. Tomorrow I will repaint the girl tying her sandal, then, I must leave it for a little; although I may be able to do something to the drapery lying in the foreground. If possible, the background and the river, with the barges, boats and people on the shore should all be done at a go with a large brush – and left!

January 4 1944

River picture. Worked on the girl tying her sandal. Excellent – all but one of her hands which I simply could not get right. The other hand came very well. Feeling somewhat better, but not absolutely right.

January 5 1944

River picture. Last night went on painting that wretched hand, by artificial light, until 9 o’clock and, in the end, I had to wipe it all out again. This morning I got it right in an hour. Also repainted the drapery in the foreground.

Afternoon. Drew in a head of Elizabeth on an 18″ x 14″ canvas. How quickly the days go!

I must not touch the big painting again until next week. It must have a chance to settle down before any repainting is done.

I think I will have a rest tomorrow and go to the private view at the National Society. Elizabeth sits again on Friday.

January 7 1944

Worked at the head of Elizabeth, in coloured turpentine. Another sitting next Wednesday.

January 9 1944

Painted a 16″ x 11″ sketch of Hanna, sitting down, hands resting on the arms of the chair. I want to do a large one of the same arrangement, about 30″ x 25″. When I have time, and she has time, or when conditions allow us.

January 10 1944

River picture. A long day on this, 9.30 to 5, and I did a good deal, completing most of the background. A little more work on it tomorrow and then I will leave it.

January 11 1944

River picture. Did just a little more and will now leave it. At the moment I am pleased. Those who can understand it will understand everything about me. Apart from that I think it is a good decoration. I loved painting it.

January 12 1944

Sitting from Elizabeth.

On Saturday I saw the collection of the late Sir Michael Sadler which is being shown at the Leicester Gallery. I imagine it must be the tale end of this much talked about collection, for it consisted of a number of indifferent pictures. The worst Sickert I have ever seen, another also by him, of a dead bird, was not particularly good either. A very bad Vuillard, an unimportant Renoir. There were a few exceptions. Gertler‘s magnificent portrait of his mother dominated the exhibition. I remember also two nice littleCorots.

January 13 1944

Worked a little on the standing nude of Pauline.

Afternoon went to the M.O.I. With some sketches for censorship, in order to get my sketching permit renewed. A great official fuss was made last time I asked for renewal of the permit – because I had not submitted any work. As it happens I had only done two paintings out of doors, however I took up a number of sketches of the river that I did before the war, together with two more recent ones, and officialdom, in the person of a charming blonde, who told me she lived in Chelsea, carefully stamped each one with a stamp on which I now see someone has omitted to change the year from 1943 to 1944.

January 15 1944

Started work on a 30″ x 20″ of Emie. I began this some month’s ago, from drawings and it has been drying ever since. Cleaned and varnished, for Bill, the sketch I did of him in 1937.

Here is what I have done in my four weeks of freedom:

Now everything is stupidly slowed down while I earn a living.

January 16 1944

Sunday.

Continued the painting I was working at yesterday. A thick fog in the afternoon but I was able to go on painting by electric light as the mixtures of various tones had already been made.

January 17 1944

Afternoon. A sitting from Elizabeth.

Evening, saw Marion. More about this another time, later.

January 22 1944

Elizabeth. The light was not very good. Two raids last night, the second one rather bad *, like they used to be, so I did not feel my best.

* January 21st 1944 marked the commencement of Operation Steinbock, also known as the “Baby Blitz”, a stratgic bombing campaign by the German Air Force. It went on until May 29th 1944. Clifford was not called back to serve with the ARP as a stretcher bearer, but continued his Fire Watch duties.  
Operation Steinbock wiki. Editor

January 23 1944

Did a watercolour from a drawing of Alexis Rassine. This was because Leger sold the watercolour of a dancer resting and wrote asking for another like it. He also sent the cheque. He is the only dealer I have ever known who pays on the nail. Redfern still owe me for a watercolour they sold before Christmas. The one I did today turned out quite well – after I had sponged it down three times. Tomorrow I will be forty years old.

January 29 1944

Elizabeth posed all day.

January 30 1944

Commenced a charcoal and chalk drawing, 24″ x 18″, of the two dancers resting.

Looking at what I did yesterday, Elizabeth, I am fairly satisfied with it.

January 31 1944

Worked on the dress and background of Elizabeth’s portrait. These parts are always more trouble that the face. They must keep in their place and it is so easy to overdo them. I must have another sitting.

February 2 1944

7.45 pm. At 10 o’clock tonight I am going to see Marion. We are to talk about living together again. After all this time I feel myself utterly incapable of making a decision. In the end I will force her to make it. There you have the pitiful state of mind I am in. Yet I feel certain things. Is it right, for Julian’s sake, that I do something which I do not want to do, or at least something which I have no real urge to do? I do not know. I wish I did.

I have not been unhappy or lonely for a very long time, but I realise I no longer have anything left which I can give, from my heart, to Marion or indeed to any other woman. None of them touch me deeply. She took it all. I can give it to my work but not to a woman, not again. Therefore if I were brave, I would stay as I am, only there is something which tells me I should not give up on Julian, and if I stay as I am it amounts to giving him up. I am fearful of another disaster with Marion, she does not deserve that. I have thought and thought about this problem. I have worried over it. I have tried to guess the future, the probable result of this or that action. I have tried logic, sentiment, duty. Useless. And always it has seemed to me that these ways were not the right ones and if only I stayed still I would feel what I should do. That something would, sooner or later, tell me, Like an actor who has forgotten his part and knows if he does not lose his head it will come back, or he will pick up the cue. But nothing, nothing has happened, and I am as far off knowing what to do as I was nearly a year ago. And we cannot, must not go on like this. Indeed I know she will not. Perfectly right.

I cannot go to her, generously as she deserves, and say – I still love you – for I am afraid of, and no longer feel, that kind of love. I will make conditions and despise myself for making them, and I will rage against the conditions that, to me, make it necessary to make my conditions. And all that seems a very poor foundation on which to start again.

Ah! If only I could set about these problems as I can the problem of painting a picture. But there are plenty of people who will tell you that I cannot do that either

February 3 1944

Well, we talked until after one this morning and we did not get very far. I am afraid of giving up my liberty, too utterly selfish to give it up is what it amounts to, and Marion naturally thinks if I do not give up some of it everything would turn out badly again. Finally we agreed not to see each other for a month, by which time I must decide.

I have just written Marion a long letter, I will give a copy later if I decide to send it, and I have put it away and I am going to read it through when the month is up and if I still feel all I have said in it I will post it to her.

Affection, yes, but love, as I have experienced it with Marion, I regard only as an intolerable burden laid upon me.

February 5 1944

Made a drawing, tinted with watercolour, from an oil painting I did of Leo some years ago. I think it is better balanced than the oil painting.

I understand Celia now. My love for her was a burden and so she ran away and she was perfectly right , for, like me, she had other work to do. Work that demands complete freedom. But I won’t run away, although how I want to, for there is Julian.

Ted came yesterday evening and I exchanged with him an etching by Paul Klee for a lithograph by Whistler. By present values the Klee is worth more than the Whistler, but I have no doubt which of the two I prefer. It seems to me the Klee is unnecessarily eccentric and the Whistler has just as much depth and is a better design – and moreover strikes me as beautiful, and I love things that seem beautiful to me.

February 6 1944

Began to colour a monochrome of the Anglo-Polish Ballet I prepared last Spring. Had a headache all day and only worked slowly. Another raid last night. With worry about Marion and not enough sleep because of the gunfire I am bound to get a headache sooner or later.

I really dread giving up my life here, and yet the more I think over the problem it seems that whatever decision I make I will have lasting regrets.

Today’s painting. Drapery in artificial light. Shadows. Folds. Clearly defined. Soft edge on side nearest principal source of light, hard edge on side farthest away. Remember this when you repaint it.

February 7 1944

Drew in a backcloth 20 feet by 10 at the school. In Chelsea by 1.45. Lunch.

Finished Elizabeth’s portrait. I am pleased with it.

Sent some chocolate biscuits to Julian and now have to rush back to Wimbledon again in time for fire watch.

February 12 1944

Repainted the water of The River.

Peter Stone has bought a painting of snow covered roofs. I painted it from the studio I used to have in Jubilee Place.

Last night I saw Tod Slaughter in ‘Jack The Ripper’. He is magnificent. I am going to see him again tonight with Hanna.

February 13 1944

Made a sketch of Hanna

February 14 1944

Started a painting of Elizabeth. Very difficult to draw as I was tired for I had not slept since 4.30 in the morning.

Evening with Peter, New Theatre, to see Helpmann in Hamlet. Enjoyed it, and Henry’s setting is successful although there are regrettable lapses in taste. He needs more restraint.

February 17 1944

Went with Lillian to see Sir Wiliam Nicholson at his studio in Dover Street. Charming. Told me a few stories about Greaves and let us take away a small painting by Greaves to be photographed. This painting shows Whistler at work on the portrait of his mother. The figure of Whistler is full of vitality.

Here is a copy of the notes I made after the visit.

Nicholson did not agree that Greaves had a rich cockney accent (Schwabe said he had). Greaves might have dropped an H now and again. Greaves did not work in Nicholson’s studio as Rothenstein suggests. Greaves was in the studio simply because Nicholson was painting the portrait now in Manchester.

Nicholson asked Greaves to meet General Smut. Smuts suggested that Greaves should go to South Africa -much bright colour, unlike England. Greaves was doubtful. ‘ What do you want bright colour for? Jimmie Whistler always turned away when he saw bright colour. No, quiet colours were the best.’  Nicholson took Greaves to an exhibition of contemporary paintings. Greaves was not very impressed. ‘Those bright colours. Blues, yellows, purples, reds. All one wanted was a little white, some black, ochre and so on. No more. Far too expensive all those bright colours, anyway.’

Greaves apparently never looked at any but Whistler’s paintings. Always spoke of Whistler as the only painter that mattered. Nicholson thought Whistler had once been rather gone on Greaves’ sister, Tinnie. He remembered Tinnie at her brother’s show in the Goupil Gallery. She had dressed up for the event and seemed to have made use of some old lace curtains. Greaves was somewhat overcome with the initial success of this exhibition and Nicholson helped him interview the reporters.

At Cremorne* where Greaves used to go with Whistler they had great times. Whistler enjoyed himself immensely, always with several women. One would sit on his knees. The others hung about him. They adored him.

Nicholson said Greaves looked on his painting as a job to be done. He gave the impression of knowing exactly what he wanted to do, and he did it without any fuss.  ‘I take what I can get for ’em.’ He remembered old Chelsea so well he could paint and draw it from memory. Greaves was a contented person, but, thought Nicholson, he didn’t like going to the Charterhouse. They made him take baths and leave off blackening his hair – and that killed him.

Nicholson also spoke of Whistlers kindness and charm. Remembered seeing him sketching out of doors somewhere up the river not far from Hampton Court. Whistler was surrounded by children and a few grown-ups. Someone advised him to get his hair cut and they were very much in his way, but Whistler took it all with great good nature and went on with his sketch of an old woman sitting in a doorway.

* Cremorne Gardens. The following are some extracts taken and listed as appendix notes by Julian Hall from the now lost long version of ‘Strange Echo’ by Clifford Hall. Editor

Cremorne had been in existence for three years when Walter was born. Named after the Viscount Cremorne who had acquired the property in 1803, it spread over twelve acres, with an entrance in the King’s Road, and another from the river; its pleasure gardens recalled the more famous Vauxhall of Regency days, but Cremorne catered for the populace. All kinds of amusements were to be found there and it soon became an unending source of attraction to the Greaves children. It was fun just to hang about outside. In 1852 a Monsieur Poitevin was the sensation, making a successful parachute descent on Clapham Common, having jumped from a balloon released at Cremorne. His wife, known as the Parisian Aeronaut, later ascended from the gardens as Europa carried away by Jupiter. Seated on a live bull, slung beneath the basket of her husband’s balloon, she sailed up into the air above Chelsea, but the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals prosecuted Poitevin and finished further exhibitions of this kind, for, on coming safely back to earth Europa’s ravisher was discovered to be in a dying condition, and had to be slaughtered; and further, it turned out to be a sick beast bought at Smithfield for the ascent, and not even a bull but a harmless heifer…..During 1858 Cristofero Buono Core, billed as the Italian Salamander, delighted huge crowds by walking unharmed through a fiery furnace. As a young man, Walter spent many of his evenings there, sketching and making notes for pictures to be worked out during the day…..The Gardens at Cremorne were closed in 1877 and never opened again.

February 19 1944

Miserable. Made a little drawing.

February 20 1944

Started a painting and worked some hours at it. Got more and more depressed. Wiped out all I had done.

February 23 1944

Raid last night. I stayed in the studio and watched the flashes through the big window whilst the whole building rattled. I worried about Marion. My instinct says go back, then I think how wrong it is to make decision now the raids have started again when the whole situation is coloured by emotion. I do not know.

The school was hit last Friday and it’s in a hell of a mess. We open again tomorrow. I do not know how much patching up will have been done. Yesterday most of the windows were still missing, ceilings down, doors blown off.* My room was one of the few that escaped serious damage. One thing is certain, my nerves are not what they were. I can hardly believe I am the same person. Why I used to be out most of the night in bad raids, and the recent ones only last an hour at most. But they are too much for me. I was frightened last night.

* “Following a lull in German air raids, 1944 saw the era of V2 raids.  On 18th February 1944, a bomb exploded on the Convent of the Sisters of Mary in the Downs.  Five nuns were killed, with several others wounded.  The shockwaves were so great that several of the College’s windows were shattered, doors were broken, and the ceiling of the swimming pool caved in.” 
Source – The College during the Interwar Years and World War Two Editor

Elizabeth posed until 4 o’clock and I got the picture started. It went very slowly but I think I can do it. A night like the last one is not the ideal preparation. The sirens have just gone – 10.5 pm.

February 26 1944

Elizabeth. Did some more work to her picture and I really think I like it.

Very tired. But no raid last night and so far, it is past midnight, nothing has happened.

I have got a bad chill caught in that beastly school. Not surprising as I spent a day in a room with one skylight minus its glass – in this weather!

Saw Rex this morning, He had been digging out more bodies from the block of flats that was hit on Wednesday night. Yesterday at school a request from the H.M. That all the staff make a point of attending prayers. Said I would not. Failed to see any connection between God and the things that were going on. Best leave Him out, make the best of it, and finish the war.

Probably hundreds killed in Chelsea on Wednesday last. Churchill inspecting recent raid damage in London makes a vulgar gesture with his fingers, a V sign they call it, and remarks: ‘It is quite like old times’! It bewilders me. I can only see sense and order in painting.

Elizabeth told me a story she heard from someone who got out of France not long ago:

It was the year 1960 and the three prizes in the State Lottery were, first, a gramme of butter, second, a few grammes of potatoes, and third, five minutes use of the electricity.

The prizewinners met and discussed what they had done with their prizes.  Said the first – ‘I managed to steal a bit of bread. I spread my butter on it and it tasted almost like a pre-war tartine.’ The second saved up a little fat and made pommes frites. The third admitted he had used the electricity to listen in to the broadcast from England to France. ‘And what did it say?’ asked the other two prizewinners eagerly. ‘Oh’, he replied, ‘it said: Courage! Patience!’

February 27 1944

Cold much worse. Wrote over 2,000 words about Greaves.

February 29 1944

Sketched in a painting of Elizabeth yesterday. Still not feeling very strong.

Late last night took a letter to Marion. Not the one I originally wrote but the same in substance and much shorter. I told her I was willing to try and live with her again but I could not make her promises I knew  I would be unable to keep. That I did not want to lose her and Julian. We could not go back and find what we had before. We would have to make something entirely different. I also said that I could not live up to a great love. It was a burden to me, made me over sensitive, imagine things that probably did not exist, and sooner or later behave cruelly and hate myself for it afterwards.

I think that sort of love is a disease and I can well understand anyone running away from it.

I know that I have not been very generous, I have tried to be honest and I cannot pretend to feelings I do not possess. I do not love Marion anything like she loves me.

Something has gone quite dead in me and I think I will never feel intense love for a woman any more. In my heart I believe I still love Celia, but I do not want her.

I feel love for Julian but that is quite a different kind of love.

And I would be very sad if I lost dear Hanna because in some strange way she has made me happier than anyone else ever has. Happy in a funny secure kind of fashion.

This afternoon a note from Marion asking me to see her tomorrow evening. 
That must decide.

Part 29 ~ March – May 1944