REMINISCENCES OF MY FATHER
Margaret Gash.

It is not easy to write about the personality of your father when you have only known him through childhood. I was thirteen when he died so, naturally, the happy times when we did things together come first to mind. I clearly remember sitting on his knee while he read to me, and when we went for walks in the country and gathered wild flowers, particularly at buttercup time. There were occasional times when we went out for days and one such day was very special for we all went to the Great British Empire Exposition at Wembley in 1924. Every country of the Empire was represented and the larger ones had a pavilion of their own. There was also an art exhibition and my father was asked to exhibit in that. There were also the occasions when I was with him and watched him painting – usually this was preceded with a warning from mother to be careful not to touch the easel. I have no doubt that my father loved his home and family, otherwise they would not have been the subject of many of his pictures.

The early part of my father’s life is not possible to record with certainty as there are few details available. He was born in Lincoln on 2 February 1869, the youngest of four children. The family, it seems, had lived in Lincoln for some years but by 1871 they had moved to the village of Nettleham, a few miles away and it was here that his father became a market gardener. It is probable that he joined another branch of the family who were already well established in that occupation. For my father, I think, it was a happy time as in later life he often returned there to paint.

When he was about eleven years old, the family moved to Nottingham and so it was there that his education continued. Certificates of Art examinations from this time indicate that his gift for Art was clear to see. He also spoke often of his time in the church choir and his enjoyment of singing and being sent to other churches to sing solo parts.

On leaving school there was no money available in the family for him to take a training and so he found work in a lace factory. There is a design for a lace cravat, no doubt done at this time, which I have now passed on to the Nottingham Museum of Textiles and Costume. The work at the lace factory evidently enabled him to earn enough money to make a start in developing his gift for art. He therefore joined the Lincoln School of Art and I remember him saying that he walked to Lincoln from Nottingham. From then onwards he greatly benefited from the training and in due course won prizes. Some prizes mentioned in Lincoln newspaper cuttings, 1894:

1st prize and gold medal for still life group 1st prize for antique figure (£1)
3rd prize for shading from cast (10 shillings)
2nd prize for still life group (15 shillings)
National prize for examination in shading from models.

The standard of drawing required by students in order to pass the final examinations was high, especially in life drawing and perspective. It was therefore necessary that a strict practice was followed over several years.

Such a training was invaluable as a basis for the later portraiture and figure subjects that my father so much enjoyed.

At the end of his student days in Lincoln he was advised to further his studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Antwerp.

Return to England

On his return he seems to have taken up an appointment as an assistant master at the Lincoln School of Art but this cannot have been for long as he was teaching in Kettering by 1897, and a local newspaper records him as instructor in Art at the Kettering and Wellingborough Technical Colleges. It also mentions that with a few students he started an Art Magazine as an experiment to show what was being done towards the development of Art in the county. It also says, ‘Mr Gash contributed to the first number (price 5/-), called Au Revoir, a pleasing etching in colour and printed by a special process of his own.’

Probably his first picture to be hung in the Royal Academy (1897) was called The New Woman. This, according to the local newspaper, is of an old local character represented in the painting as a crusty bachelor looking out of the window of a building in the town, probably the Victoria Hall Chambers where Gash had a studio, and comparing the woman of his day passing by to the woman of his youth and to the former’s disadvantage.

Another early work which was accepted and hung in the 1898 Summer Exhibition was a large oil painting called The Flower Seller. This was a year when 12,000 pictures were rejected and just 2,000 hung. A picture could be accepted if good enough but not hung because of the limited space available.

I recall being told that, when my father was planning to leave Nottingham in the late 1890s, his intention was to go to London. However, he decided to break his journey and stay briefly with a friend in Kettering. With no firm arrangements for living in London, he seems to have been persuaded to stay while he clarified his plans. He soon found work teaching and from then onwards Kettering became his home.

Soon after taking a studio at the Victoria Hall Chambers, he had a one-man show of his work (recorded in the The Evening Telegraph, December 1902).

On one of his early journeys between Nottingham and Kettering (52 miles), my father told me that he rode a penny farthing bicycle, a challenge indeed, especially as the bike had no brakes and the road was hilly.

During the last few years of the 19th century in Kettering there seemed to be a remarkable burst of interest in art. This was due mainly to two very gifted painters, Alfred East (later knighted) and Thomas Cooper Gotch, who were born in the town. Both were, at that time, reaching the peak of their careers. My father, who had settled in the town in the late 1890s, shared fully in its artistic activities. One important event was the foundation of an Art Society, open to professionals and amateurs alike, and an exhibition was held annually.

A few years later Kettering was fortunate in receiving a generous gift from the Carnegie Trust which enabled the town to build a new Public Library. Soon after the opening, it was suggested to the town council, I think by

Alfred East, that they should consider starting a permanent collection of pictures, with some by local artists and some by artists with a national reputation, and, until a gallery could be built, space should be given for the display within the new library. As a starting point, my father was commissioned to paint a portrait of a well-known local character, Benjamin (Benny) Percival, an antique dealer. The picture is called The Connoisseur. The local newspaper tells of the occasion when it was presented and hung. Alfred East then offered some of his paintings and Thomas Cooper Gotch too, at a later date.

Father’s work varied considerably as he gained experience in a wider variety of subject matter. Portraiture always interested him and he was pleased when commissions for them came along. Subjects involving one or two figures and sometimes a group also occur such as Sorting Plums for Market, exhibited at the Royal Academy and undoubtedly painted on a visit to Nettleham.

Comments in newspapers on exhibitions where my father had shown pictures frequently mention subjects which he had chosen especially for their light. Some examples are: Light of the Lanterns – a scene with two girls, the evening sun is just setting and the light of the lanterns is beginning to tell in the twilight – and landscapes, Sun on the Thames, Misty Morning, and Early Morning in Lincoln, with the towers of the cathedral catching the first sunlight. His interest in light, whether for figure subjects or landscapes, remained a central feature of his work as his later paintings also show.

In due course, my father moved his studio to the Cornmarket Hall, which was by the Market Place, and it is just visible (left hand side) in a watercolour painting Market Scene now owned by the Alfred East Gallery and in a small etching of a similar scene.

Teaching continued to occupy much of his time and in 1907 he became Art Master at the Old Grammar School (now demolished) in Gold Street. He stayed there until it was closed and pupils were moved to a new County Grammar and combined High School which was built in 1913. He continued to teach there, part-time, mainly with the boys, until he died.

From time to time he returned to Nettleham near Lincoln and stayed with his relatives. His early years living there, and going to the village school, seemed to make a deep impression on him for it was a place where he loved to return for painting. Pictures that, I think, were undoubtedly belonging to such visits are Sorting Plums for Market, Gathering Roses and Shelling Peas. When my parents became more fully acquainted, my mother was taken to Nettleham, initially it was to recuperate from an illness. I remember her speaking of her delight in wandering amongst the flowers and fruit trees in the garden.

In Kettering it was not long before my mother became the subject of a portrait – a drawing in red chalk on toned paper – dated 1909. Another portrait of mother and this time, an oil painting, shows her in profile. A small portrait in oils of my grandmother (my mother’s mother) belongs to this period and must have been painted shortly before her death. Perhaps because of her illness and her death my parents’ decision to marry was delayed, or so it seems, until January 1911 and then it was a very quiet affair in Nottingham.

From then onwards their home was in Kettering at 145 Stamford Road. The house was in a fairly recently built row of houses on the edge of the town. It looked out on to a pleasant grass verge with sycamore trees and across the road to fields, haystacks and farm buildings. I remember a lovely poppy field. My father soon painted the view from a front window and that oil painting, and two others, is now owned by the Alfred East Gallery in Kettering. By this time my father was nearly 42 and, after many years in lodgings, having a wife and home of his own must have brought him enormous pleasure. This, I think, is evident in his choice of subjects for pictures for, in the next few years, there are several involving family members inside the home.

My brother, Norman Bonner, was born in November 1913. In May 1915 I was an addition to the family and during the following years paintings seemed to centre frequently on the family.

Miniatures

As far as I know, miniature painting was new to my father. Apart from one other of an old man which could have been a trial run, I only know of the four family ones.

The experience of painting miniatures with their extreme fineness of detail (and on the surface of ivory with watercolour mixed with gum arabic) must have been a formidable challenge for a painter used to free flowing watercolour or the heavier techniques of oil paint. I am amazed how successfully he adapted. The ones of Norman and me, it seems, were exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1921 and 1922 and the others at the Royal Academy.

Still inspired by the home environment, he looked to our small garden in the summer, when hollyhocks grew in wild profusion. There was no need to nurture them with great care, as they sprang up between the paving stones. In the painting that followed, the hollyhocks were used as a background to the figure of a child standing in front.

Even though I was older, perhaps seven, I have no clear recollections of posing but probably, by now, I had accepted that everyone was expected to pose for their father from time to time. The scene shows an early evening light coming from the left, and this plays, with varying brightness and clarity, over the area of hollyhocks. Quite clearly this movement of light was of special interest to my father when planning the picture. The fact that there are two small preparatory oil studies suggests that he wanted to be ready for the challenge of the final and quite large composition.

Teaching continued to occupy much of my father’s time (sadly too much), and some of it was at the new County Grammar and High School. (One building, but half for boys and the other half for girls and never the twain should meet except when plays were produced.) This sort of teaching he did not, I think, enjoy nearly as much as his adult classes. He always kept Thursdays so that he could, whenever possible, get on with his painting. Saturday afternoons were often taken up with adult classes and in the summer with outdoor sketching groups.

A private student who used to come to the house on Friday evenings was called Dudley Brown, and I don’t remember a time when he didn’t come. In 1956 he wrote a pamphlet in celebration of the Golden Jubilee of the Kettering and District Arts Society and in it he says, ‘An event of great importance to the Society occurred in 1907, when WB Gash, a young professional artist, who had settled in the town, joined the committee. He had a profound knowledge of art in many forms and almost everyone will agree that he, more than anyone else, widened the artistic horizon and raised the standard of the exhibitions. Many local artists remember him and his teaching with pleasure and gratitude.’

When plays were produced at school, my father was called upon to paint scenery. Sometimes it was a large canvas hung over the back wall of the stage, and I have an oil painting which is a study for such a canvas in preparation for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. I was then nine and in my first year at the High School and was given the part of Mustard Seed. A yellow dress was made for me but because I was skinny, they had to make one of less flimsy material to make me look fatter.

I am ashamed to admit that I was not always a co-operative model. An occasion which I remember clearly was when my school friend, Vera, and I were having fun standing on our hands against a wall in the garden and mother called me in with a message from father that he needed me to pose for a picture. What strange phases one goes through.

All through my father’s career in art, landscape painting played quite an important part, both in oils and watercolours. It gave him the opportunity to develop his interest in light in its many variations of weather and time of day. After his marriage, in consequence of a more settled life with home and family, his landscapes were mainly of the district around Kettering. Sketching classes continued and he either walked or cycled to an appropriate place.

It is interesting to see, as time went on, how his use of watercolour gradually changed from a less free form, a style previously favoured by the Royal Academy, to a fresher more fluent use of the paint, stressing its lovely transparent quality and spontaneous brushwork. Sometimes he would develop a sketch later and on a larger scale, as, for instance, in Haystacks and Thatched Cottages.

My father’s last major painting was called The Inseparables and it is of my school friend Vera and me, walking in a meadow. The finished picture was exhibited at the Paris Salon. Not entirely satisfied with it, my father painted a larger version but, whether or not it was an improvement, I have never been able to decide. That version is now in the possession of Vera’s eldest son. I used to like to go and sit with my father when he was working and I recall, on one occasion, I watched him painting the sunlight on my left arm in this picture.