Isobel Gloag: Modernism meets Medievalism

Isobel Gloag, The Knight and the Mermaid, c.1890, watercolour

The work of late Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movement British artists is often dismissed as hopelessly Romantic and old fashioned, a determined head-in-the-sand nostalgia which ignored the birth of the twentieth century in favour of a world of beautiful damsels, chivalrous knights, myth and magic. Yet these artists were popular, clearly feeding a broader need for escapism, and their work never existed in a vacuum hermetically sealed from Modernist movements, even when they were consciously rejecting them. This is especially true of Isobel Gloag (1865-1917), a Scottish artist who moved first to London to train at the Slade and then to Paris. She exhibited widely, including nineteen works at the Royal Academy, was a member of major oil and watercolour societies, and worked in a range of other media from stained glass to graphic art, despite a life apparently blighted by periods of illness, and a relatively early death aged 51. 

The Magic Mantle, 1898

There has been a concerted effort in recent years to 'rediscover' the work of female artists of this period and debunk the myth that aestheticism was simply the art of men painting beautiful women. Gloag however remains relatively unknown: there are very few of her works on public display, and many are known only through black and white illustrations. She is an elusive figure. She was not part, as so many artists of this period were, of an extended network of producers either by family or marriage; and little has been written about her. Yet she is so much more than a run of the mill Pre-Raphaelite copyist: her work has a freedom and expressiveness which is akin to Sargent's and her rich, decorative colouration is reminiscent of the Austrian Secessionists, or of Vrubel or early Kandinsky. Her subject matter was hugely varied, from bang-up-to-the-minute images of high fashion to historic representations of a world of crinolines and Victorian restriction; from religion to female nudes; narrative to pure aestheticism.  Gloag's work is always - to use adjectives ascribed to her in a 1906 review - beautiful, vital, lively, and always fascinatingly difficult to pigeonhole. 

A Legend of Provence c. 1894

The more obviously pre-Raphaelite works include Four Corners of my Bed (c.1901) in which four angel musicians watch over a baby. The confined space, with depth represented by the small-scale mother by the window, the profile kneeling foreground figures, the use of music and the quasi-religious sentiment link this back to images by Rossetti or Burne Jones. 

Four Corners of my Bed, c.1901

However, Gloag's unique style is better characterised by The Knight and the Mermaid, sometimes seen as representing Keats' 'Lamia'  but in reality a more akin to Medieval tales like that of Melusine. The artist exploits the subject as a representation of seduction and eroticised feminine power, themes which she explored in Rapunzel. In both works, a similarly clad knight is physically ensnared by the female body - the tail and hair -  and by the precipitous vertical composition and claustrophobic sense of space. The dreamily pale palette of The Knight and the Mermaid, exaggerated by the apposite choice of watercolour, is more like that of French artists like Jules Bastien Lepage than of Pre-Raphaelite richness.

Rapunzel, c.1901 (illustration from The Magazine of Art)

An even stranger work is The Magic Mantle (1898) based on an Arthurian story of a cloak which could only be worn by a pure woman. The painting shows one of the ladies of the Camelot court whose infidelity has quite literally been exposed fleeing as the mantle disintegrates into drifts which resemble peacock feathers. It is an uncomfortable image where the women, some mocking, some shocked, take centre stage and the male figures, relegated to the background observe with almost indifference.

A Bacchante and Fauns, c.1912, Museum of New Zealand

It also seems uncharacteristically judgmental for an artist who elsewhere seemed to relish unabashed female nudity. A Bacchante and Fauns (c.1912) shows a laughing figure, unconcerned by her nakedness and utterly disinterested in any supposed, male viewer. The furs and fabrics, together with the loose handling of the background create a sensual world of softness and pleasure, whilst the enclosed space and cut-off composition reinforces intimacy.

The Woman with the Puppets c 1915, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

The Woman with the Puppets (c.1915) shows a similarly self-absorbed nude, but here Gloag dispenses with any traditional mythological setting, and adopts a pose which in no way indulges the viewer. The woman is amusing herself by playing with puppets of men, perhaps slightly heavy-handed in its symbolism but nevertheless striking; and a detail which links the work back to Gloag's earlier fairy-tale paintings.

The big, bold brushstrokes, seen especially in the draperies, are characteristic of Gloag's later work and demonstrate how far she moved away from her earlier Pre-Raphaelitism. Similarly, her contemporary portraits of women, now only known through black and white images, have a dash and verve which characterises the sitters as strong, independent figures. One can only suppose that Gloag saw herself in the same light. 

Perfect Procession: Hew Locke at Tate Britain (until 22 Jan 2023)

 

Hew Locke stands amid The Procession in the Duveen Galleries. Photograph: Guy Bell/Alamy (from The Guardian)

Like a New Orleans funeral without the sound, Hew Locke’s Procession through the Duveen Galleries of Tate Britain is part carnival, part wake; joyous in spirit, sorrowful in memory. It is jaw-dropping in its scale and conception: well over a hundred life-size figures, clothed and accessorised, each an individual. The colour and pageantry alone is enough to make you take a slow procession of your own along the length and back. Enough to pause and go again. There is an element of frustration that you cannot engage more fully, walk amongst them and literally join the parade. The Tate's line on the floor is a barrier of sorts, but not the main one. The figures themselves, alienating behind their masks and head-dresses, united and self-contained, do not seem to want or need you to join them. The whole of humanity is represented, but there is no place for you. The viewer becomes the outsider.

There are men, women, children, horses; old and young; pregnant; maimed. Men about town off to a party, protest marchers, carnival queens and shamans; regal parade, refugee train, Day of the Dead; bejewelled conspicuous consumption, military uniforms, flower-wearing, flag-waving, drum-beating. All of life is here.  Yet every time you pick up a reference it slips through your fingers, defying labels, resisting order and control. Stragglers at the back seem dusty and weary: water stains on their clothing suggesting perhaps the perils of the climate emergency for a low lying nation like Guyana. At the head of the procession masked figures swathed in black fabric, flowing in apparent motion, carry aloft a pyramid of material topped by an imperious mask. More alien than human, it speaks of the emptiness and facelessness of power. 

The more you look, the more the detail takes over. Imperial bonds printed on fabric, old master paintings re-appropriated, dilapidated buildings, maps, graphics of slave ships, sugar plantations, flag colours, medallions, animal heads, death masks. Many are images which Locke has used before, themes which he has returned to many times. In themselves they are hardly subtle and the wall text here, with its discussion of the Tate's past, of sugar and slavery, has the same banal obviousness. It is a pity because the way the artist has used the trappings of Empire in the actual installation is clever, thoughtful, sometimes even humorous, adding to the layering, the cacophony, the power. This is not about the legacy of one man or the funding of one gallery, The Procession reflects on a global system of control and exploitation.

The more you look, too, the more the sheer craft involved becomes overwhelming. Yes, there are found objects and readymade clothes, but there are elaborately abstract shields and  headdresses, characterful animal masks, hand printed fabrics, batiks, patchwork. Figures created from cardboard, papier mache, plaster, recycled plastic. Hundreds of hours of labour and love, planning, preparation. And choreography, because from every angle and on every level the figures interact in a beautiful, endlessly interesting static ballet.

During the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, Hew Locke took over the city's statue of Queen Victoria to create a temporary installation: Foreign Exchange. A boat was constructed round the 1951 bronze sculpture, itself a cast of the original marble work from 1901. Victoria was placed in a crate alongside five smaller versions of herself, all masked and wearing oversized medallions which depicted famous Imperial battles. Imperial propaganda ready for  transportation to the colonies. The idea of Foreign Exchange was wonderful. The reality left me cold. The hull, built around the statue on top of its plinth seemed marooned and awkward, almost comic; the detailing of the sculptures' masks and medals was lost. The ideas of medals, ships, and public sculpture are long standing themes in Locke's work, and the artist has been planning such an intervention for years. But I am not sure the reality lived up to the concept.

Ideas, however strongly felt, are not enough to make a great artwork. The success of The Procession derives from ideas that are fully developed into a crafted, considered, coherent whole, all the more striking because it appears spontaneous and anarchic, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. In the end that is what makes The Procession such an emotive and enthralling experience: we desperately want to join the parade but as the figures make their way Pied Piper-like through the Tate and, one imagines, out, down the steps beyond its great Neoclassical portico, we are left behind.