March 1 1944
I went to see Marion this evening and we have agreed. We start together again.
March 4 1944
Made a sketch, mostly from memory, for a painting I have in mind of Elizabeth.
March 5 1944
Went on with painting of the Polish Ballet. A group of four figures, backstage. Spent the morning making a careful drawing of drapery for the foreground, then worked from the drawing, and went on over the rest of the picture. A good day. Must keep this picture very dramatic, over dramatic a fault on the right side with such a subject.
Rowley. Bill told me last night that the Tate had acquired one of Rowley Smart’s watercolours, presented, I believe, by Dr Stross. John Rothenstein, the curator, was asked to see the Stross collection and was surprised (!) at the quality of Rowley’s work. How irresponsible these people are. The curator of the Tate really should make it his business to know what is going on. There were three exhibitions of Rowley’s work in the West End before the war and one critic, in the Referee I think it was, wrote that Smart was one of our finest watercolourists. And so he was, but no one took much notice.
March 6 1944
Went on with the painting.
March 11 1944
Did a lot more to painting of Anglo-Polish Ballet.
Last Thursday saw Tod Slaughter, for the fourth time in Jack The Ripper.
Metropolitan, Edgware Road.
March 12 1944
Worked on yesterday’s painting.
When I can spend a couple of days here painting, I feel so far away from the boredom and stupidity of the rest of the week at the school.
If I can hang on to this I will not mind so much. Just suppose I have to go on teaching until I am 60! Then I will get a pension! And another ten years in which to paint, or perhaps twenty years, or even longer. As long as I can go on painting give me a hundred years.
March 13 1944
Prepared five boards and three small canvasses with a mixture of Indian red and white. The same colour underpainting that the house painters use. They should be all right to paint on about the end of June.
March 15 1944
I read they have selected Munnings President of the Academy. Another triumph for mediocrity. The new president is reported to ‘have decided views on modern art’!
March 18 1944
Made a drawing of naked women by the sea shore, with a stormy sky.
Two weeks since I went back to live with Marion. And I am still as miserable as I was before. What a hopeless brute I am. Marion is truly magnificent and yet I feel like a stranger in her house. I do hate myself today and I feel I would like to kill myself but I know I won’t.
March 19 1944
Slept abominably last night.
Morning. Worked at a painting of some clowns.
Afternoon Went to look at a view in the Kings Road that I want to paint. Made two rough drawings. Pretty bad ones, but I rather like what I did this morning.
March 20 1944
A sketch in oils of the women by the sea.
March 21 1944
Another drawing of the same subject.
March 25 1944
Hyde Park with Hanna. A lovely day. Made a few panel sketches. Nasty raid last night.
March 26 1944
A head of Hanna. She has her turquoise necklace and earrings.
March 27 1944
Afternoon. Coloured one of the little sketches made on Saturday, in watercolour.
April 1 & 2 1944
Worked at a large drawing from the sketch of the women by the sea. The drawing now measures 27″ x 22″. I am trying to do this without models. Models seem to get in the way of ideas.
April 9 1944
I have been working most of the time since last Sunday on the large drawing and I got it on a canvas and painted yesterday for nine hours at it and very nearly got something good and this morning I wiped it all off and I have started again.
It’s a terribly difficult job.
I am still very miserable and sick of everything and I suppose that is why my work won’t come right. Marion has gone to East Meon and I am by myself for the weekend. I am frightfully worried about my attitude towards her. I am just miserable and frustrated when we are together. I hate myself.
April 10 1944
Spent the whole day at the picture and had another hard tussle with it – something is slowly emerging, I think.
After three days here , back in the studio, I feel much calmer but I do not want to leave.
Reg brought a girl he thought I might like to paint. I would – and Henry came and stayed about an hour.
No doubt about it, I was happier when I was here by myself with Hanna staying a day or two now and again. I have nothing to give Marion and I should have been brave and not gone back, but then I would have asked Hanna to live with me. I really need someone and we got on perfectly. But it might not have lasted., turned out like a marriage, and I was afraid. A selfish brute, I suppose.
I do not know where my duty lies, it is to Julian especially. I know it but I don’t feel it.
April 11 1944
Another day at the painting. Amazingly incomplete yet it is getting something my more accomplished ones lack. I am beginning to rather like it.
April 12 1944
Worked on the painting filling in the portions of canvas I had not previously touched with solid paint. I will not do any more to it for some time, if ever, for I think I have got something here worth keeping.
April 13 1944
Painted a little panel by the river.
April 16 1944
Another little panel – this time of dear Hanna, a bed and a chest.
April 19 1944
I have spent the last three afternoons on a very careful pen and wash drawing of Cheyne Row, one of the few remaining streets in Chelsea that have not been made hideous in one way or another.
April 21 1944
I made a careful tracing of the Cheyne Row drawing and marked it through onto a panel. I am really quite pleased with it. It doesn’t look as if I was worried when I did it, and neither was I, but now I have left off all this terrible business of Marion crowds on to me again. She keeps telling me I had better go if I am not happy. I don’t know what to do. I am torturing her and torturing myself. It is only the thought of Julian that stops me. I must make up my mind. What a coward I am.
April 22 1944
Painted an 18″ x 14″ panel of Lawrence Street looking towards Upper Cheyne Row. Drew it in very carefully this morning and worked freely over it in the afternoon. Four and half hours. Very tired. Only fairly successful. I think, but I will know better tomorrow when I am fresh to it.
I have been able to keep the problem out of my mind most of the day – when I am working, only. Marion is away to see Julian. I wish she hated me. It would make it so much easier for each of us. On my side, she told me last night, is indifference which is worse than hate. But that is only partly true, for if I were completely indifferent I would bolt, at once. I have too much imagination. And all this is getting nowhere, nowhere.
April 26 1944
Started a nude of Elizabeth, yesterday.
I had a struggle with myself about Marion. It’s no good, I can’t leave her. Things are going much better and I must do my part towards making them successful.
April 27 1944
Elizabeth posed all the afternoon and on until seven o’clock. I will leave this sketch for its freshness of feeling.
April 28 1944
Four clear weeks to myself and what have I done?
1. Women by the Sea 27 x 22
2. Cheyne Row 13½ x 12
3. Lawrence Street 14 x 10
4. Nude (Elizabeth) 22 x 15
5. x2 panels (river and bedroom) 8½ x 6
6. Pen & wash drawing of Cheyne Row 14 x 10
Not enough, and three more days left. Elizabeth sitting tomorrow and Reg’s friend on Sunday.
Sketched by the river this afternoon. How the light kept on changing! Quite a passable little panel.
I have , these last few weeks, done the first chapter on Greaves and started on the second.
April 29 1944
Afternoon. Made a drawing of Elizabeth lying back in an easy chair. Pencil, pen and ink, wash, retouched with white and finally worked all over with black chalk. Indirect wish I could get something of the same sort of feeling in an oil painting.
April 30 1944
Resi Weltlinger,* Reg’s friend, posed for a drawing. Had intended to paint but she had been sitting in the sun. Lee Hankey asked me in for a drink before lunch. He had just been altering a painting. Taken a whole house away with some patent paint remover, and covered the space with sky, daubed on with great jabs of a loaded brush, a square brush, I should say, full of sticky paint. Such methods positively horrify me, yet he is such a nice man, and works largely from drawings.
* Resi Weltlinger was a German Jewish refugee and an associate member of the Leninist League, who later in 1944 was arrested for the forgery of two National Registration-stamps which had enabled two British Trotskyists to avoid military service. She was convicted of larceny and forgery and subsequently interned. Editor
May 1 1944
Painted by the river and had a job with it. Evening. I saw so much colour. Teaching starts again tomorrow.
May 8 1944
Saturday. Wrote up my notes on the visit to Streatham Hall (Greaves’s decorations)Mounted a drawing.
Sunday. A few sketches of Hanna. Only kept one, as an idea to paint.
Monday afternoon. Black and white chalk drawing of Upper Cheyne Row. Trees and sunlight. Turned out rather well.
May 13 1944
Started a drawing of Kings Road from Oakley Street.
May 14 1944
Started a head, canvas 16 x 12. Did some more to Greaves. Yesterday’s drawing is very interesting and I will go on with it on Monday. Today’s head I enjoyed after a difficult start. Funny I can’t see her as pretty as she looks.
May 15 1944
Went on with Saturday’s drawing.
May 20 1944
Painted in Oakley Street – same subject as the drawing I did last Saturday.
May 21 1944
Worked at the head I started last week. Dull. I can’t get hold of it yet. (16 x 12)
May 22 1944
Afternoon. Started a careful drawing of Upper Cheyne Row – as a study for a painting.
Recently I have found this an excellent method: make a good drawing, trace it on to a panel and paint the panel from nature and from exactly the same position as that from which the drawing was made. One is free to concentrate entirely on the painting. I find streets far too complicated to draw and paint in a sitting and I must paint them in one sitting as now my time is limited. I am almost a slave.
May 24 1944
Worked on my drawing of Upper Cheyne Row 4 – 5.30. Must pull it together and finish it next Saturday, if the light is right.
May 27 1944
A sunny afternoon so I worked at the drawing of Upper Cheyne Row, with black and white chalk, trying to get the feel of the light which was most exciting.
May 28 1944
Repainted the head (28 x 12) and improved it although there remains a great deal more to be done. Lighting for this, left hand blind down. Left half of window on right covered. Use smaller brushes.