Return to India

In 1972 I went back to India for a break. There was suggested I should help someone with his thesis. His English was poor. My first reaction was “Why should I?” but on second thought I decided on a give-and-take arrangement. I proposed to the young man that I would help him with his thesis if he, in exchange, would be my escort in and around the area and the towns of Hyderabad and Seconderabad. He readily agreed. So from then, after his work was over, we’d go out whilst it was still light and the heat of the day was gone. He took me places where the family would never have taken me. He took me to great outcrops of rock, strange in their shapes. I wanted to paint them. Those that attracted me most were a group of three, rising straight out of the flat ground, looking like giant gossips. I could not find a place to sit in out of the sun, however, to paint these, so I had to settle for a gigantic rock that looked as if some mighty hand had come down on it and cracked it asunder. This effect of rocks being cracked open, was everywhere. I supposed it was because of the cold interior of the rock and the extreme heat of the sun on the exterior. I sketched this big rock in my note-book and put in crayon colours to guide me, then conveyed it to canvas back home. I got my escort friend to stand in front of the rock so that I could get the rock’s proportion against human beings and in my picture I put the figures of an Indian man and woman to give comparative size of the rock. “Rocks, Begumpet, Hyderabad”.

Since Secuderabad was nearer our home than Hyderabad, we went there more often, not only to browse but to buy things. One shop we went to was the Indian sweet shop in Market Street. Market Street was full of small wayside traders, most noticeably those with little pyramids of many-coloured remnants of cloth so attractive to women who could pick out a cheap skirt length or a piece to drape over their shoulder.

One day I decided to sit in the shop and sketch the building opposite. This could be a background for a picture.

“She is doing a picture of the gallery in New York” explained the proprietor to customers who came in and saw the unusual sight of a memsahib sitting there and drawing. A trader with a handcart of fruit came by outside and I did a quick sketch of him.

In the canvas I began, back in the house, which had its top half taken up with the structure of the building I had seen, the bottom half would be filled with figures. I needed at least one figure up in the top half. So instead of the actual closed-in Muslims veranda that had the intention of women being able to see out without being seen, I opened up the veranda so that I could have a women looking out behind its waist-high, decorative railing. Then I chose to make the shop underneath a restaurant so that I could cover it with some of the wrought-iron work that was evident everywhere and attracted me so much. Behind it I could show people sittings and a man coming out of the exit after paying at the desk. In the road were rickshaws with passengers; the lower centre was taken up with his pyramid of cloth and women around feeling the quality of pieces they fancied. To the right I put in my trader with his hand-cart of fruit serving a customer who had, tailing her, a coolie with a basket of her purchases already on his head. Lying down in front of the picture, just above the frame was a dozing coolie, taking advantage of no custom and a shady place, his head resting on his basket. At his feet was a dozing pie-dog.

We would have an objective each day.

“I want to see if rickshaws can be any colour or if they are all of the same”

“Today I want to look out for pie-dogs, to see if I can find one sleeping.”

They were emaciated, pitiful-looking animals. I did not find one sleeping, so I had to make one up. All this resulted in the picture “Market Steet Seconderabad”

One day, my escort took me in a new direction; across a stretch of flat ground its sparse grass drying up in the drought we were experiencing, towards its rim of rocks. Weaving our way in and around the humps and bumps of these rocks we came to where they bordered the reservoir that served both Hyderabad and Seconerabad. From our perch on the rocks we were looking down on one corner of it. Straight in front of us were a close group of three rocks like gigantic rhinoceros’ horns; another case of what was once whole rock, split down the centre; beside it were some smaller pieces of rock. What most intrigued me about these rocks were the bands of different tones of grey girdling them, showing where the water had once been and how it had dropped to different levels leaving its mark where it had rested a while. On either side of this stretch of water were banks of green, cutting this corner off from the main body of the reservoir. In times of rain they had been under water. The rocks cast their reflections in the shallow water, Fishermen, the water only up to their knees were catching what they could, and making water rings on the still surface.

It was enjoyable sketching this, rocks behind us and on either side of us; no-one to see us. I began the canvas at home and we went back next day to gather even more information. To my surprise the reservoir was now dry, (at least on part of it was) and herder was driving his cattle across it, taking a short cut. This picture was “Husainsagar in Drought”.

Besides these three pictures, I did a portrait of my young grand-daughter, in a dress that I had made for her. We were in the garden and I put in some jasmine, I like adding flowers in a portrait. But my grand-daughter was the sort of model that has always put me off portrait painting. Impatience comes over them and grows into opposition; one had to plead with them to stay a bit longer. Their feeling conveys itself to the painter and has the effect of hastening the painting to its possible detriment.

I released her eventually and the result was framed and hung on the wall. When guests came to a dinner party, they walked up to the picture

“Oh! Is that you Puchko?” They took no notice of the other pictures on the wall.

My grand-daughter came up to me and asked quietly

“Do you want me to pose a little longer for it?”

I did two more portraits whilst in India that time. They were for hosts who put me up. I wished to give them something in return. One was a double portrait of Man Mohan Singh and his wife. He was a very busy man. He said he could only spare me an hour between 7 and 8 in the morning, I asked him to wear the clothes he wanted to be seen in in the picture. Only at the first sitting did I see him in this outfit of a particular shirt and turban. After that he came, sometimes in his nightclothes hardly awake, always in a hurry to get off, often interrupted by the arrival of business people. His wife sat in the daytime, patient and beautiful, always the same. I finished Mon Mohan’s shirt by stuffing a pillow in it and sitting it in the chair. He was disappointed with himself in the portrait though pleased with the painting of his wife.

“You have made me no different than when you painted me as a boy of 15,” he complained.

“How can I paint you as a dignitary when you come to sit bleary with sleep? Not wearing your office garb?”

The other portrait was of the young daughter of Bala Subramanian. She was sitting on a stool and I encouraged her to laugh and talk. I painted it in a new way, to me. She was colourfully dressed and I did the ground-painting in the complementary colour to the actual and then covered it with daubs of the actual colour. I do not know what I would think of it now. I’ve not seen it since, nor seen a coloured photograph of it.

In Bala’s house, beside my picture of drunkards I saw one of a night-scene in which workers were repairing a road by the light of the street lamps.

“Who did that?” I asked intrigued.

“You did” he replied. How may have I forgotten?

Returned back in England I did some ‘weather’ pictures. “Rain is Coming” was of housewives hurrying to pick the clothes from the clothes-lines. One is reaching up to un-peg a sheet which the wind is wrapping around her. Her little daughter is standing by, her arms full of clothes, while a plump elderly woman is leaning over holding down the clothes in the clothes basket to prevent them from flying away. The background is the repetition of similar gardens such as we had then, with houses going across the distant top and black clouds in the sky. A woman is seen next door rushing indoors with her clothes.

I put the picture in an exhibition where I saw someone stoop to slam the backside of the elderly plump woman. However the picture came back unsold. One day I get a phone-call. A man’s voice said he had been going to all the exhibitions trying to find that picture. Then he thought of contacting the Harrow Art Society for my address. He wanted to buy it and he fixed up a time to come and collect it.

He came, a big burly chap in black leather and motor-cycle helmet, He almost filled my small room.

“How are you taking it?” I asked

“On my motor-bike”.

I thought how happy Van Gogh would have been if this had happened to him. He had always dreamed of painting for the ordinary working people.

The other weather picture was “End of Autumn”. A youth with his girl, snuggling into him for warmth, is walking towards us, into the wind. A woman has passed them, almost pushed along by it. The last leaves are scuttling around, the young tree at the side, naked. The background is of typical council houses. I am going into winter after being in the heat of Hyderabad.

Winter was a period of dull light, sometimes almost no light at all. Not the sort of light one wants to paint in. Yet I thought I should be doing something. I had brought back some showy pieces of material from India, glittering with gold. I decided to start appliqué work. The colours of materials would be the same whether in good light or dull light. One could stitch in natural light or artificial light.

My first work was “Three Beauty Queens”. The centre one in one of these tinselly pieces, orange in colour, from India had fair hair flying around her. The two on either side were in satin and velvet of colours between brown and gold ochre.

I found a lot of cheap net in the local market. This started me on “The Sun Maiden”. The sun was cut out of the most golden of my Indian pieces, encouraged in its glitter by a smaller circle within it of sequins. Coming from the sun was the transparent body of a girl in two stages of descent, accompanied by pieces of the sun. All this was within violet shapes of net, one upon another on a red cloth back-ground. I finished both appliqués with a fringe at the bottom intending them for hangings.

In 1971 when I retired and before I went back to India, I was often looking after my little grandson. He was three of four when I first painted him, looking with rapt attention as I told him stories with himself as hero, doing good deeds for people and gathering all-round approval. I had no more than two stories, but it didn’t matter how often I repeated them. He was absorbed I added little details as I went along. It was difficult thinking out a story and keeping my mind on the painting at the same time but perhaps the slow telling of story made it more fascinating. Later I did the boy walking with his little black dog beside him. I was not entirely pleased with it, though the dog, seeing his portrait in a dim room, barked at it, thinking it real and a threat. (Alexander with Dog)

After my stay in India I came back to my two young grandchildren. The grandson had been joined by a grand-daughter. When she was about two, I thought of painting Alex again. Someone had given him a knife, dagger-like, for a present. His father had taken it away from him saying “Granny should keep it” and so the knife was in my possession. I made a subtle approach to Alex;

“Pose for me and I’ll let you hold the knife”

Michelle was hanging around, so I thought she could be in the picture, too.

“I know!” said Alex inspired

“I’ll hold the knife at her throat”.

“No! Just hold it” I said. So Alex was sitting cross-legged on my bed, holding the knife; Michelle was standing on the ground at the corner of the bed. I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I didn’t know how much of one. Alex posed beautifully and I soon had him sketched in, in paint. I was able to get Michelle’s head and frock but whenever my eyes concentrated on her face; she grimaced at me, showing all her teeth, like a monkey. I could not get her to stop making faces at me. Her mouth remained a smear as I gave up, defeated, It was only completed many years later when Doris found the painting. I then did the mouth for her from a photograph. (Alex with knife and Michelle)

Looking after the two children, taking them out to different parks, gave me children as subject matter, for several years. As they enjoyed themselves on the swings, slides and roundabouts at Barham Park, I had hours of watching how children perch themselves on the round-about in various unconventional ways. A young black boy came along to give them a push and went round running with them; a small cyclist came, circling them too. In the background I had the lace-like frame-work of the slide. It was like the dollar sign. This picture was “Children on Round-about”.

I went with them to a firm’s sports’ day. There was a gigantic helter-skelter there; a wooden thing; a survivor from the past perhaps and therefore worth recording. I did a quick sketch of the thing. There were many children there, queuing up to get on. For it was free, though in my painting of it I chose to have it a paying affair so that I could get in a boy pestering his mother for money. This was “Sky-high Helter Skelter”.

Another visit with the children was to a hospital fete. There I made a note of the colourful stalls with trees behind them and customers in front. Mid-ground were two mothers chatting, whilst taking the weight off their feet, on some chairs. was just ready to depart but not before a boy was pointing to a particular balloon he wanted” The Balloon Man”. A little girl has hers and the crawling baby had just lost hold of its balloon that had begun to float away. Two boys were running in the distance between sitting women and the stalls. Just about the lower picture frame were the blackberry brambles in flower and fruit showing the time of year.

As the children grew up and had a birthday party in the new house. I watched them from my window. There was a game of musical chairs where some of the little girls, who had come demurely dressed in long frocks, were rushing around like tomboys to be sure of getting a seat. The boys were in the foreground. One played the tune on his pipe, while the other covered the musician’s eyes with his hands so that he would not favour a particular one. Parents were in the background, looking on. This picture was called “Musical Chairs”, later sandpapered away by me to be re-primed for a less successful picture.

The same party gave me another subject when the young guests all sat on a striped blanket and my grand-daughter in her long frock, served them with food. I called this “The little Picnic” and placed it, not in a garden, but in a field. The picture was sold on first showing at the Harrow Art Society Exhibition. The buyer spoke to me.

“I was told it was not of proportion” she said

“but I said I liked it.”

I suppose the critic thought the figure in the long frock was supposed to be an adult.

Another picture involving children and their ways, but not in any way to do with my grandchildren, was sparked off by the sight of an ice-cream van before a house in Pinner when there was a Fair on. I did a drawing of both van and house and later put in the customers. In the foreground are three little girls with ice-cream cones, One takes the top off hers, Another licks around the sides, sculpturing her ice-cream into a smoother more pointed pyramid, The third girl leans forward to prevent any dripping on to her dress. This is “Ice-cream Van”.

During this time I had also done another picture, which did not involve children. On the spring after my return from India, I was looking out of the front window at the narcissus growing in the garden and then across to the houses on the opposite side of the road, bathed in the weak spring sunshine, I decided to paint it, The tree outside was sprouting into bronze leafage. I put a vase of narcissus on the window sill then introduced some figures. My small grand-daughter became very interested in this picture.

“There is our front garden; there is aunt so and so’s house opposite; there is a mother with her baby in the pram, her little boy on his plastic tricycle. I explained to her

“On this side is granny, coming home, looking toward us who are looking out at her”

I’d have to repeat all this over and over again. She never got tired of it.

In exhibition, a woman came running after me

“Is that you in that picture back there?”

“Yes”

“Did your son paint it?”

“No! I did”.

Michelle had the last word

“I hope it doesn’t sell.” So I said it would be her picture. The picture is “Abercorn Crescent”.

She has also put a similar subtle bar on the picture “The Cartwheel”.

I visited my sister, where I saw her daughter, moving to a record of dance music in the manner of the time and I portrayed this movement in the orange light of a dance-hall with couples moving like birds performing their mating ritual, a yard apart, while in a corner the subsequent ‘snoggin’ went on. This is “Mini Skirt Dance”.

I now felt I had not portrayed one part of a multi-coloured community – the black man. I resorted to my old trick of summoning a figure to my mind. He was tall, lanky, lazily leaning. This produced “Leaning on a Lamp-post”. In the picture it is evening. Other men are out with their girls, passing by the lighted windows of the shops that cast their light onto the pavement. The black fellow, his back to them, is looking over his shoulder at them. He is bathed in the light from the lamp overhead. A woman passes by, taking her dog out for his regular walk, dragging him passed HIS usual lamp-post.

Feeling my supplementary pension was not quite sufficient to cover the cost of paints and frames, I decided to get a small job to supplement it. I found one- teaching the handicapped one afternoon a week. I was allowed to keep £2 out of the payment for this. This class was allotted a stall in the pavilion when the annual festival was held at Roundwood Park. I sat at the stall on a rainy afternoon, when one of the outside entertainment events came under the canvas. It was the “Hammersmith Morris Dancers”. I was thrilled to see these robust men, evidently with a few free drinks inside them, dancing with verve and gusto. I particularly liked the traditional Horse Dance, where the one dancing the horse holds a broom above him with a rough, blue sheet making the resemblance of a horses head, covering its hairs. I put some onlookers in the background of my subsequent picture and some children in the foreground clapping with delight of a trifle fearful.

“Whoever saw men like that?” commented my son. I had seen them. Movements of different sorts were always intriguing me, though I did not always succeed in getting them across.

I decided to join Art Classes to work alongside other painters. There was a Saturday morning class in the Harrow Art School. I am not particularly interested in Still Life, but I decided to stick it out. The set piece was a conglomeration of odd bits and pieces around a Persian Pot and some apples before a black velvet cloth. I selected the Persian pot and the apples. Clothing my eyes to the rest of the junk, I put a red background behind it.

“So you are giving it a red background” said the tutor

“No! I am glazing it with black”

It was a challenge to convey the bright brass of the pot by getting the correct colour values. The tutor thought I had gone as far as I could with this bit of virtuosity. But No! “Oriental Pot and Apples”.

The next subject was a loaf of bread amongst a lot of clutter. I did it but without enthusiasm. I decided to bring my own ‘still-life’, an orange-patterned cloth for background, orange pottery plate, green bottles and Indian figurine standing in a shiny ochre-coloured cloth.

After that, the tutor brought me a bowl of roses. That was a challenge! A single rose, yes, but a bowl of them! One has to work fast to get it done in one morning. The roses won’t keep until next week. I dug into it and had completed all but one rose when the bell went. I know my next door neighbour grew similar roses, so when I arrived home, I asked her for one to finish my painting. She gave me two. I only wanted one. I placed the unwanted one on the table beside the single rose in a glass. I included the selected rose successfully into the vacant place in the oil painting. Then I noticed the unwanted rose. It had been crushed into an oval shape by its own weight. I introduced it into the painting; the rose that had fallen out of the bowl. It made the picture.

One Saturday morning I did not go to the class. On the next Saturday the tutor said

“I was waiting for you last Saturday. A Home for the Elderly approached me. They wanted to know if any students had a picture they could buy. I thought of you. Bring your Persian Pot next week and any other you might have”.

I brought “Persian Pot” and “The Bowl of Roses”. The tutor returned me my Persian Pot on the following week and said they had chosen the Bowl of fruit. He handed me £20. It was small money. I was glad the Persian Pot had been rejected.

The Saturday morning classes closed down so I joined evening classes, once a week, doing either portrait of life. Practice on the figure would hemp me in my imaginative figure work. I always looked upon this as exercises and not as works of art in themselves. In figure-painting I found other students often arguing about the posing of the mode. They could never agree as from week to week they tried to put the model back into the original pose. I was very sure that I was exact in drawing and therefore I made it a point to be exact in my placing myself. I took careful account of where I sat, observing where the overhead light was or any fixed feature of the room so that I could come back to it. I took to coming earlier than the others to make sure the model’s throne was in the right place as well as whatever prop there had been on the throng. One tutor wholeheartedly backed me in this, making a plan in her sketchbook of the throne’s placement by indicating the correct linoleum squares on which two of the corners had been resting, so that the angle of the throne would be correct.

A previous tutor had not been so precise. One day my bus was late; the class had already started when I arrived.

“The model is not correct” I said

“I’m not going to move any more” protested the model in a tone of finality as if he had been bandied about by instruction and counter instruction.

I could not carry on with my work as he was. The tutor edged toward me and said in a whisper

“I was waiting for you to come.”

I had drawn model, chair and all, so I could see the chair was wrongly placed and it was that which was upsetting the pose. In the interval I put the chair right and then when he was ready, re-sat the model.

“Now! That’s right!” said all the class

One day, waiting at a bus-stop halfway down Station Road for a bus to Wembley, I saw a group of women traffic wardens on their way to duty. The question came into my head;

“What if the all went mad and started sticking tickets at random on all the cars?”

This was the source of the picture “Dance of the Wardens”. I put in, as a background a shop I always studied when waiting for a bus. There before the present one-way system was introduced. It was next door to a butcher. I curved the pavement towards me so that I could show the windscreen of one car and the back of another, both parked on the yellow line. In the later re-designing of Harrow, making a one-way thoroughfare for buses, the road was narrowed in favour of larger pavements, the former curbs parallel to the shop-fronts, gave way to ‘wavy’ pavements as I had foreseen in my picture.

A friend gave me a book on wild flowers of the world. In it I came across some lilies, like hooded heads of snakes. I had seen such in the Dow Hill forest. This set me off on the nostalgic picture; “Nepali Wood Gatherers”. The lilies with ferns were large in the foreground. The women wood-gatherers, weaving their way up through the hills with bundles of sticks on their backs, passed beyond the lilies and ferns and were moving under a Rhododendron tree.

The Harrow Art Society announced the intention of holding an exhibition of ‘Churches of Harrow’. They expressed a wish that a certain church should not be painted. I suppose they knew they had or would get sufficient paintings of that particular one. Not being church-conscious myself, I did not know which one it was but felt sure it must be one in the Harrow towns centre or on Harrow Hill. So I decided to go up into the park at the top of Abercorn Crescent, look around for signs of a church (one could always spot them from any open space) and make my way towards it. Thus I came to “St.Peters’ Harrow”. I spent a couple of days drawing pieces of it in detail and then returned home and built up the whole of one end of the church on canvas. Thus ‘St. Peters’ was done, an old man walking towards its entrance, two regular church-goers coming along the path at right wondering “Who is that stranger going into the church?”

On first coming out of hospital I put down my experience of that on canvas. The patient is lying on the bed, the light from the wall lamp shining on her. She has pushed off the orange cover from one leg. A nurse I lifting her head, another in nearby with medicine and water, a third is taking her pulse. The blue curtains are drawn around the bed. The ward doctor is pushing his head through, white coat open, tie flying. The doctor on the ward was an Australian and he always had his white coat open and the tie flying, I do not remember what I named the picture, Perhaps it was “Crisis”. I gave it to the hospital.

It was several months between the operation and ensuing radio therapy (28 sessions), In those months I went to my class for the handicapped and also the evening Art classes, sitting in a chair to allow for weakness. A student offered to take me home in his car one evening and told me he had applied for admission to the S.Glamorgan Summer School. He said it was not only for drawing and painting. Many activities were going on there. I said I’d like to go. He proposed we should travel together in his car. I calculated my radio therapy would by then be over.

I went to Barry, S.Glamorgan the week following the end of radio therapy. Jack Crabtree, painter of Coalmuri subjects, was the tutor in the painting class. He came to me and asked bluntly

“Why are you here?” (In the entry form asking for previous experience, I had put ARCA)

I replied that I had been told many activities were going on in the school. I thought I’d find subject matter for my painting.

Jack Crabtree asked me what I had been doing all my life. I explained I had been in India for thirty years, doing a variety of things. I had painted pictures of Nepali’s and even did a picture of the assassination of Gandhi.

He said

“You should now stick to Jazz Musicians. Take this as your special subject.”

“I’m sticking to nothing” I replied

Of course, what I did in the studio was by no means complete. I had to take them home to work further on them. I had made many sketches during my regular evening attendance at the Jazz Club, but I did not want to use them in further compositions.

I went on my own to the Barry Summer School in the next year, 1977. On the first day, the model was sitting on the floor, her skirt, a lot of little pleats, making a mess of lines and hiding all form. I disliked it. Decided I’d draw the figure small with the background of half cupboard crowded with objects, wide high windows and a clutter of other things. The tutor for that year came in. He walked round the seated students, glancing at their work then stopped at me

“Are you the one who did the assassination of Gandhi?” he asked.

“Yes, I am”. So Jack Crabtree had told him about me and he had spotted me by my drawing. This tutor instructed us to go out into the town, find something we were interested in and bring back working sketches.

I found the Merry-go-round in the Fairground. It was out of the Fair’s working time, so few people were about, which suited me. I sat myself down and drew this old contraption of wooden horses and chickens.

“That’s good” came a voice at my elbow. Two young boys had sat themselves with me.

“My sister paints pictures; but you can’t understand them” said one.

I returned to the studio and put down the “Merry-Go-Round” on a board with children sitting on them and the Fair-man directing from its centre.

“Are you going to leave out those on the far side like everyone else does?” asked the tutor

“No! “ I said, “They’ll be put in.”

It was a case of getting the outlines of the spaces on tracing paper and composing the back ones so they would harmonise with those in the foreground; the boy is pestering Dad for money, a mother dragging her boy away, because of the threatening sky. Each boy having a will of his own.

The promise given by manufacturers had been richness and an all-over sameness in shine, oil-paints being so uneven in this respect. I had bought a sample box of Alkyd to try it out and found myself swearing all through the ordeal of painting with it because the paint dried hard on the palette whilst still being used. I tumbled to a solution; a palette with indented places for the paints, so that they could be put in them with a quantity of turpentine. Once the palette was found, however, some of the paints had hardened in the tubes, so I was discouraged from buying the larger standard tubes. The painting looked well. A line of standing figures reaching from top to bottom of the picture frame; their legs, making a sort of fringe, were painted dark against a light orange ground. The line was broken in the centre by one youth sitting on a chair. Above him and either side of him could be seen the three bassists, two women and a man, the light falling brightest on the central figure, woman and instrument in yellow ochre.

I had gone to the last night of the Jazz club. The musicians were making merry. The piano was a fixture, but all the bulky instruments had been packed away ready for departure. A flute was more easily available. The metal waste-paper bins were brought into service as drums. Whilst one player directed the noise to the boisterous piano-playing a couple danced; tipsy ones draped themselves over the piano. Light shone from the ceiling on to the dancing couple. I did the drafting of this as soon as I got home, whilst the memory was still with me. I had made no sketches. I did the prima colouring in burnt sienna, leaving it for the next year to do the final colouring, whilst in touch with the atmosphere. I named it “Last Night at the Jazz Club”. The head of the school said it was the best picture that had ever been painted at the school and if anyone wanted to give him a leaving present he would like that painting. No-one took the hint.