Home  Catalogue Wartime St Ives
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Wartime St Ives |
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With the outbreak of war in the autumn of 1939 many artists turned to St. Ives. At the westernmost edge of England, it was as far away as one could get from the destruction theatening the heart of the country. Sculptor Naum Gabo and painters Adrian Stokes and Margaret Mellis fled there from London. Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth also arrived with their five year old triplets. And it was to St. Ives that Francis Barry returned when forced to leave the Continent.
The natural isolation of St. Ives, exacerbated by wartime petrol rationing and communications cuts, forced the artists of the community into an artificial closeness. Many of the new modernists had difficulty integrating with the previous generation of artists like Alfred Munnings – who later, as President of the Royal Academy, accused modernism of 'shilly-shallying' and 'affected juggling.' Barry however rejoined the St. Ives Arts Club and unlike many of his contemporaries he had no difficulty befriending such newcomers as Hepworth and Nicholson.
Back in St. Ives Francis Barry and Violet moved into 10 Richmond Place. Barry's daughter-in-law recalled that when, during the war, the billetting officer saw the nudes painted by her father-in-law he sent soldiers instead of evacuees to be billetted with the Barrys.
Despite his dislike of England, Barry's second stay in St. Ives was as productive as his first. He rented a studio on Porthmeor Beach, which had been used previously by Alfred East – a vast, draughty, glass-fronted sail loft with an awe-inspiring view of the sea. Barry's friend and fellow artist Misomé Peile described it: 'No one who goes to see Francis Barry in his studio will ever forget that experience Most of the glass was blacked out, and he would answer your knocking wearing an ancient eye-shade, cigar stump hanging from his lips. Inside among stacks of huge canvasses was a small table holding an immaculate palette and hundreds of clean brushes. On it also stood a cup of Bovril for the guest who sat in a black horsehair armchair. It was a world far removed from the Atlantic rollers roaring outside the flimsy glass.'
Perhaps it was the freedom of a large studio, perhaps it was simply the lack of etching facilities; whatever the reason, on his return to St. Ives Barry gave up etching and concentrated on oils. Working on huge canvasses he created some of his most powerful works. Misomé Peile described: 'day after day the explosions of colour grew, painstaking charcoal designs, studies from life Barry was never satisfied, he complained he could not draw, was troubled over human anatomy, could not get high enough colour' Herself a noted critic, Piele claimed of Francis Barry: 'no one, I felt, knew more about the theory of colour'
In some of the paintings of that period Barry deviated from his characteristic bright palette and produced grey, sombre works: glowering skies, bleak landscapes, barren paths marked by teetering crosses. His daughter Kathleen speculated that he may have suffered from recurrent depressions which would have been exacerbated by the dark news from the continent.
But as in the First World War, Barry's artistic instincts were stirred by the spectacle of battle. In 1943 he created the dramatic pointillist Blitz on St. Paul's, depicting London's mighty cathedral lost behind the diagonal bars of searchlights. Other wartime paintings such as London Blitz employ the same combination of pointillist technique and vorticist framing that he had perfected two decades before.
In 1944, three weeks before the end of the Italian campaign, an American bomb exploded in Milan, destroying all Barry's etching plates. This might explain his disaffection towards the allies. Politically na•ve, Barry often antagonized strangers by claiming to admire Mussolini. The fact that the dictator bought his etchings may have endeared him to Barry, but correspondence with his school friend Harold Beresford-Hope as early as 1900 reveals an early attraction to tyrants. Beresford-Hope says: 'I differ greatly from the sentiments expressed in your letter: you ask me to look at Germany as an example of the good done by a despot. The Kaiser is hated by his people, they dare not mention his name for fear of the government spies The papers dare not criticise the government for fear of imprisonment They are like Russia, terrorised by government spies'
While Barry was professing allegiance to the fascists, his son Rupert was engaged in dangerous wartime intelligence-gathering Ð an activity for which he would later be decorated. During the war Barry seems to have had a reconciliation with his son; his personal papers contained a Christmas card from Rupert sent from Germany in 1941.
In 1945 the war ended. As soon as it was safe to travel, Barry held a final exhibition at his studio and announced that he was leaving St. Ives. Perhaps the community held too many painful memories of his earlier life, perhaps he was growing cantankerous or intolerant of his fellow artists, perhaps it was simply his perennial restlessness provoking him to move on.
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