Lloyd Ellis Blog

We have acquired three amazing paintings by the British artist Anthony Colbert (1934-2007). Although he is now known as one of the most successful illustrators of the later 20^th century, in the mid-sixties Colbert was working for The Observer newspaper. In early 1967, he was commissioned by the paper and the charity Save the Children to travel to Vietnam to record the impact of the increasingly devastating conflict on women and children in the warzone. He travelled at a dangerous time. The Vietnam War was escalating rapidly: the bombing campaign Operation Rolling Thunder was flattening the North, and a ground war was building in lead up to the huge battles of the Tet Offensive in January 1968. What safe-conduct Colbert travelled under we don’t know, perhaps as a journalist. He wasn’t an official war artist, and, although the US Vietnam Combat Artists Program had already started, as a foreign non-combatant it is unlikely that he was able to link up with them.

He returned safely (miraculously!) in the summer of ’67, with a substantial body of work, which was exhibited at the Artists’ International Association galleries in August. The majority seems to have comprised rapid sketches on paper. Our paintings are three of only four oils in the exhibition, and they are dramatic and powerful works. In all the paintings, the figures float, isolated against a neutral background, reinforcing the sense of abandonment and helplessness of the subjects. The muted colours, the strange use of apparently military-issue khaki gloss paints and the violent physicality of the application of the oils (almost scrubbed on in some cases), all contribute to the sense of urgency and desperation which these works carry.

It would be great to learn more about this amazing episode of British charitable intervention into an American war. What, for example, did the Observer and Save the Children do with the knowledge and results which Colbert brought back?

Any ideas, please get in touch!

Click here to view artwork

My first encounter with Japanese prints was as Keeper of Art at Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery, where I was lucky enough to curate the wonderful T B Lewis collection. Lewis was a textile mill owner, and a compulsive collector. His fine collections of cabinets and pictures were largely sold on his death, but he bequeathed his Japanese prints to his local town. It is a brilliant collection – one of the key collections in the UK. Lewis was acquiring in the late 19th and early 20th century – the heyday for European collections. While it is rich in early prints (it was richer before a disastrous theft in the 1960s), Lewis had a particular – and unusual – interest in prints from the later periods, especially the work of artists of the Utagawa School of the 1820s – 1860s at the end of the Edo period. They were unfashionable, many said degenerate, and they debased the subtlety and elegance of earlier generations of printmakers. But Lewis obviously loved them. Above all, he seems to have admired Utagawa Kunisada (also known as Toyokuni 3), perhaps the most prolific print designer of the 19th century. And he passed his enthusiasm on to me. I love Kunisada’s work. It is so joyous and, at his best, I would argue that he is the equal of any artist anywhere at that period. Considered inferior to his contemporaries, such as Kuniyoshi or Hiroshige, perhaps just because he turned out so vast an oeuvre, much of it devoted to the popular Kabuki theatre, Kunisada is at last beginning to receive the recognition he deserves.

One of the difficulties of taking on the role of a curator is that as soon as you step into the job, you become ‘the expert’. I wasn’t. I’m still not, but I am learning. I blundered around, admiring, but understanding little of this specialised, inward-looking world of ukiyo-e. Under the guidance of Peter Hardie, curator of another wonderful collection of Japanese Prints at Bristol, and a proper specialist in East Asian art, I began to learn. Together we put on the exhibition Kunisada ga, marking the bicentenary of the artist’s birth in 1786.

I’ve had the chance to extend my knowledge of Kunisada through the collection in Birmingham, too (all the B’s), also rich in works by artists of the Utagawa school, and I continue to love them. There is a strength, panache and (occasionally) vulgarity about their work, which brings a vibrancy and colour to what can be a rather overly restrained art form. I try to make sure that we always have some Utagawa works in stock. You’ve got to share the love!