Late nineteenth century Europe was awash with artists' colonies (Skagens, Newlyn, Pont Aven) but Broadway, a sleepy village at the very southern tip of Worcestershire, is not one that springs immediately to mind. Still less do you associate it with a community of ex-pat Americans, whose names you might link more readily to France or Italy. It was news to me that John Singer Sargent rocked up there, convalescing from having hit his head diving off a weir, and liked it so much he returned for several summers. It was news too that a group of artists and writers which included Henry James, Edmund Gosse, Alfred Parsons and Edwin Austin Abbey joined him. This all makes Worcester City Art Gallery's new exhibition, An American in Worcestershire, intrinsically interesting, and the show is impressive in the number of loans and its ambition to tell this little known, locally significant story. Ultimately it is not big or comprehensive enough but the Worcester curators always make an effort and for that alone they should be applauded.
The exhibition hangs round the work of John Singer Sargent, and although most of it here is tenuously connected with Broadway, it is nonetheless worth seeing in its own right. The first room boasts some fine Sargent portraits, particularly two charcoal sketches of the Earl and Countess of Rocksavage on loan from a private collection and a small but dashing oil of Flora Priestley, spikily bright in black, from the Ashmolean. Even in a small selection Sargent's apparently effortless ability to balance flattery and characterisation is evident. Perhaps the most striking work, however, is a First World War image of American Troops Going up the Line, a khaki-grimed prequel to Gassed, as men gather by the railway tracks which will take them to the industrial slaughter of the Front Line. It is small and shocking after the jokey letters, cartoons and world of sunshine, tennis and country japes which the show has previously conjured up.
Sargent's most famous Worcester work, however, perhaps inevitably has not been secured for the exhibition: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose remains in Tate Britain (although the gallery has been generous with other works). The iconic image of the Barnard sisters was painted at Broadway over a number of weeks in 1885, with Sargent working only briefly outside each day, when the evening light was exactly right. The narrative of the production is well told, but the curators have to rely of reproductions not just of the final painting but of preliminary sketches, now in the United States. The result feels a little hollow. There are, however, some beautiful watercolours of the sisters and their mother, which have all the fluidity of Sargent's later landscapes with the sky-less intimacy and the soft, pinkish peaches which he increasingly favoured. They are fresh and oozing with life.
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Colony camaraderie is the second strand of the exhibition, related through solid wall texts, contemporary letters and blown-up reproductions of some of Sargent's own scribbled cartoons. Broadway developed haphazardly, perhaps suggested to Alfred Parsons as a bolt hole by William Morris (here relegated to a supporting role outside the main show). Francis Davis Millet's purchase of the ramshackle old manor, Abbot's Grange, provided a 'bolt-hole' and the ex-pat community were the regular visitors - Henry James, Edwin Austin Abbey, Sargent himself. They were augmented by Brits like Edmund Gosse, Parsons and George Boughton (born in Norwich but brought up in the States)and the Alma Tademas (who don't get a look in here). There is a great story here, and some lesser known artists to be explored, but the exhibition does little more than frustratingly whet the appetite. Millet's beautifully painted Between Two Fires presents a tongue-in cheek view of Puritan England but does so with the soft subtlety of Dutch genre and some impeccable still life painting. Parsons is represented by two loose, lively landscapes: In the Vegetable Garden is all heat and high summer, When Nature Painted All Things Gay, cool and spring-like. Letters, photographs and book illustrations add layers but it is never really enough.
In the second tiny section of the two room show we are taken off on a series of tangents. Philip Burne Jones' portrait of Elgar is included to illustrate the composer's connections to Broadway and Sargent. Watercolour is an excuse to exhibit works by other members of the RWS, the importance of France for these artists is enough of a reason to show a Renoir and Pissarro from the Worcester collections and one wall is given over to landscapes of the Worcester countryside. Is this a lack of curatorial discipline or simply a lack of material? Either way feels like an opportunity squandered. Yet, as ever, a visit to Worcester's art gallery is an enjoyable experience: it is a well frequented, much-loved venue, staffed by real enthusiasts and with a determination to act rather than simply sit back. They are promising a major renovation and extension project this year which will increase the number of works they can show. In the meantime, An American in Worcestershire provides a interesting nugget of an exhibition and some really beautiful works. I only hope that at some point in the future the Broadway Colony gets the fuller coverage it deserves.
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