September 5 1944
Very little work done since August 18th . Really ill for a week, sunstroke said the doctor. My head was frightful and my eyes. Couldn’t eat. Feeling better now. Spent a few days at Christchurch with Marion and Julian. Low flying planes all day long, barking dogs, wasps and flies. Like a lunatic asylum. Had to come back to be quiet.
Yesterday I started a 24 x 20 of Cheyne Row from my drawings. Went on with it today. Don’t feel quite myself yet. Still no pictures sold although I have two at the Leicester, Redfern and Leger. No flying bombs. Luckily the school does not open until the 22nd so there is still some time left.
Peter Stone lent me ten pounds and I think I will just be able to hold out until the next teaching cheque. Canvas is a shocking price and our Government has put a purchase tax on it. The Government that claims to be fighting for culture. Seems inconsistent, but then I am a hopeless idealist, still.
September 6 1944
Worked on the canvas of Cheyne Row, still drawing it, a definite improvement. I am most depressed; but it will pass, eventually.
September 7 1944
Went on with Cheyne Row.
September 8 1944
Morning made a sketch of a bullfight form some sketches I did years ago in Marseille, at Les Arènes du Prado.
Afternoon Did more to Cheyne Row.
September 9 1944
Made a number of sketches for a composition of figures. Will do some more tomorrow. I would like to paint this about 30″ x 20″.
September 11 1944
Yesterday and today – more sketches for the picture. Coming slowly. I do not know whether I can do this one without models for at least three of the figures, possibly more. There are eleven at present although one may have to go.
September 12 1944
More sketches, but I am not working well and only one of them is any good. One out of nearly a dozen.
This is one of the days when I think I am a failure. Money is a terrible problem. I need canvas, models, coal for the winter. And money for Julian. His clothes, his school fees. Marion too. And even if I had it I would find no happiness in such a life. Little nagging worries and utter dullness. No doubt about it, I am sick of everything today. Maybe it is the frightful school which starts again next week, and I am not even decently paid for the precious time I waste there. How I detest the place and the stupid system of which it is a part. And I can see no way out, and it is, in a sense, my own fault, so I hate myself too. Time to dream, unworried, that it is as essential to me as time to work; and there is nothing peculiar in feeling as I do. I am sure of it. Antisocial is it? To hell with their society!
September 14 1944
Painted all day on the 24″ x 20″ of Cheyne Row. I am inclined to leave it, but I may change my mind later, yet there are many things I like about it. It is certainly better than if I had attempted to paint it from nature, and I hardly looked at my careful drawings. I had worked it out thoroughly in the squaring up. When one has really studied the thing and got a definite mood impressed on one’s mind a study must not be allowed insist too much. Studies from nature should serve the purpose of making one memorize what one wants to paint. They must not be copied slavishly for mere facts. Generalize.
That figure composition is worrying me again. I was not very successful with all the sketches I made at the beginning of the week. There is something I cannot realize.
I would love to spend every day like this one, just painting. All my life.
September 15 1944
Today I managed to paint a little sketch of the composition. This sketch really has possibilities. As soon as it is possible, I will get models and start making drawings for it, only I must not copy the models. I must only take what I need. I will begin a full-size drawing soon, before I attempt to get any models. Something I can work at when I come back from that stupid school: like the big drawing of the River that I was doing last year. It would work out on a 24″ x 18″, or maybe a 30″ x 25″. I think a 30″ x 25″ would be better, more scope. Faces and hands on a small scale are the devil. Yes, it had better be 30″ x 25″, and I will start the cartoon next week. I feel better now this is settled. I have been appallingly depressed, unbearable to be with, restless, and impressed with a terrible sense of failure and frustration. It is my old complex and I continually lose it only to find it again. It has always been the same, as long as I can remember, and the cure is always the same – work. I do not look upon the time I am obliged to give to teaching as work. It is exasperating waste of time, tragic and prodigal; for the teaching I have to do could be done by any good student in his teens, and I am teaching boys who do what they delightfully call ‘art’ merely as a subject to help them through an exam which , if they pass, helps them to get a job in commerce or science. It is all horrible and I can see no way out. I won’t become a prostitute and paint popular portraits. I can’t, and I am not sorry, produce ‘commercial art’ , and my only chance is to fight it out in the hope that one day I will sell my pictures fairly frequently and do a little teaching – very little, and not of an elementary standard. I get so tired.
Note of the colours used for today’s sketch. Ivory Black, White, Raw Sienna, Alizarin Crimson, French Blue, Viridian.
September 18 1944
Yesterday and today I have been working on the figure composition, and I am slowly beginning to see my way. I have sketched a drawing for the painting – 30″ x 25″.
Sales July 13 – Sept 18th:
Watercolour (Dancer) £5.5.0
Wing Commander C H Schofield
7 Gt. Ormond St. W.C.1.
Inner Temple Lane
(Pen & wash) £5.5.0
Winnie Bretton
Jennette (Drawing) £5.5.0
F.G.Stone
10(!) little oil panels £5.0.0
Fred Roots
2 Sping St. Rugby
Total £20.15.0
£58.5.0 less than during last summer holidays.
September 19 1944
Working on the 30 x 25 drawing which I started, was it yesterday? or the day before? Anyway, I am beginning to have hopes of it, after many alterations. It has possibilities. Must paint another sketch in colour. Tomorrow. Will have to use models before I commence the large painting – for sketches, but not, I think for careful drawings. If I do that, I will lose the spirit of the thing and it must not be lost. It is all important.
September 20 1944
Painted a colour sketch for the picture.
Read article in this evening’s Evening Standard by Dean Inge. Years ago I thought his writings stupid, snobbish and extremely dull. They have not changed. He actually refers to de László as a painter!
Old Mrs de Groot, my neighbour, told me of a lovely model who called to see me yesterday, when I was out. With the air of a procuress, de Groot described her: ‘just eighteen, red hair, really lovely, Her little breasts stuck out like two apples. I have arranged for her to come and see you on Saturday.’ And she produced an address, ‘in case she is not able to come, you must write to her.’
September 21 1944
Worked at the composition.
Saw the Gyln Philpo exhibition at the Leicester Gallery and enjoyed it. The Rowland Suddaby exhibition at the same time. His work means nothing to me. All painted to a formula and an uninteresting one at that. Fireworks, squibs rather. He seems to have been pretty successful, in the material sense.
Evening: New Theatre with Peter Stone. Richard III*. Magnificent.
* This was a production starring Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson and Sybil Thorndike. Editor
Teaching starts tomorrow. It depresses me more and more. At last I feel trapped, and I am running round, mentally, trying to find a way out; and I had lost a precious half day which now leaves me only two days a week for painting, Saturday and Sunday. The other five must be wasted to make only just enough money to keep going, always anxiety about money, paying models, buying canvas – But I must not give up. Never.
September 23 1944
Still at the composition. Mrs de Groot’s discovery called, not so exciting, but I think she can sit for one or two of the figures, next Saturday.
September 24 1944
Painted (14 x 10) two lovely yellow pears and an apple. Crimson background. I enjoyed it.
September 30 1944
Model. Three drawings for the picture. Only one has the feeling I want. Dissatisfied.
October 1 1944
Made very drastic alterations to the composition I am much more satisfied with it now. Hopeful again. At last I can begin to see it as a painting.
October 7 1944
Felt appallingly depressed this morning and was not able to start work until after lunch – about 2 o’clock. Left off at 6 without having much to show. I feel dull, tired, stupid. Will go on tomorrow.
October 8 1944
Worked better. The loss of Monday afternoons, worse, for I used to be back here by 12.30 pm , is tragic. It just makes all the difference. I can only hope I will get it back next term. It is possible. I must make some drawings from the model before I go any further with the cartoon. This time I can’t get on without them.
October 14 1944
Painted all day and wiped off all I had done.
October 15 1944
Painted a small version – 14″ x 10″ – of the two dancers resting – the 24″ x 18″. I made slight changes in the design and very definite ones in the colour. I have enjoyed today.
Last week Lillian spoke about the gallery she is going to open in Cork Street. She proposes to have, at the start, an exhibition consisting of works by Matthew Smith, Gotlib, Pasmore, Elliott Seabrooke, Jack Yeats. She said she wished to include me, and had already spoken to the others about it. They had not heard of me. I said they probably would not want me., but she said it was not a matter entirely for them to decide, although I could expect a visit from some of them. I do hope it happens. I am delighted and worried and nervous at the idea; but I do hope. This is at a time when I am having to make an enormous effort not to give up. Five solid days a week teaching little boys is too much – artistic suicide, and this exhibition may, in the en, be the means of getting away from King’s. I expect I will have to do some teaching for years and years, but please not so much. I must have more time to paint. I must. I certainly have long holidays. A complete mental somersault has to be made each time the holidays start, and it seems I am just getting right with myself when it is time to go back to school again. Utterly loathsome it is.
October 18 1944
Staying by myself at the studio for a week. Marion has Pearl with her. Last Monday about midnight I did a little more to the two dancers. I am fairly satisfied with it now.
Yesterday evening Celia was here. She is very wonderful, different and yet the same. I have started on a brief sketch of the life of Walter Greaves for a dictionary of painters Wilenski is preparing.*
* Faber & Faber, London, published An Outline of English Painting by R. H. Wilenski in 1947, but there is nothing about Walter Greaves in it, although his mentor, James McNeill Whistler, who was, of course, actually an American, is included. Editor
October 21 1944
Continued with the Greeves. Afternoon went to the New English Private View. A most disappointing exhibition. There is a fine sea piece by Ethel Walker.
October 22 1944
Elizabeth posed in the morning and I made a fairly good drawing, the sort of drawing, if it does nothing more, gives me an idea for a painting.
After lunch I finished the article on Greaves and I will take it to be typed tomorrow.
I miss Hanna acutely. With Celia I feel I can never be more than friends. It is Hanna I continually turn towards. No one could take her place. And between me and what I perhaps only imagine to be happiness stands Duty, Conscience, what you will. And their names are Julian, Marion. It is more than that. I don’t want to lose them.
October 28 1944
Painted a sketch (16 x 12) of Dorothy, the barmaid at the Crosskeys.
October 29 1944
Made a little watercolour for a friend of Bill. A good start on the fourth chapter of the Greaves book.
Evening. Bill came with a new model he had discovered. She is very lovely, and I was able to make one of the most complete drawings I have done for months – almost years. She has promised to come and sit again for a painting. She is a dancer and I am hoping to paint a nude of her. They always have such good figures, not a bit like the professional models.
The result of this has been to make me almost cheerful today, in spite of the stupid school. I hope to start the painting next Saturday, not the nude, we must lead up to that; but her head is excellent and just the colour I love. I have ordered a canvas.
I like the sketch I painted of Dorothy on Saturday. It is rather brutally seen but that will do me no harm, now and again, and the colour is good. I must get her to sit again; several sittings, so that I can carry the next one further.