Tatham Art Gallery

Apples (1921)

oil on canvas

Mark Gertler (1891-1939)

by Val Maggs

Gertler was an artist working with the Bloomsbury Group of English artists, poets and writers in the early 20th century, creating art forms in England on a new impetus from European, particularly French, styles and influences.

Gertler's Jewish parents had emigrated to east London from the Polish region of the Austro-Hungarian empire. With the support of William Rothenstein and the Jewish Educational Society, Gertler became a student of the Slade School of Art, where he won a scholarship and several prizes. He also received a sound academic training in the traditional forms of drawing and painting. As a practising artist, Gertler received acclaim for his still-lives and portraits of family and friends. The Tatham Art Gallery has a fine portrait of his mother preparing a typical Jewish evening meal.

His personal life was haunting and tragic. He was the ardent admirer and lover of Dora Carrington, who left him for her obsession with the homosexual writer Lytton Strachey. Carrington took her own life after the death of Strachey and, although Gertler married and had a son, he too followed Dora's path as a result of acute depression. The movie Carrington tells the tale of these gifted artists.

As a teacher of the mechanics of painting, I go back time and time again to Gertler's little painting of nine apples and a white paper bag. How can such a simple subject hold the viewer's attention with such energy? There is nothing dynamic in the content of the painting. Firstly, it is the well-considered composition of this painting that is so special. Two green, three red and four yellow apples dance around the picture plane in repetitive circular rhythms creating a sense of harmony. Identical coloured apples are cunningly arranged in triangular motifs. As a contrast to the whole composition, the rather angular white paper bag acts as a an anchor for the complex arrangement of the apples. Gertler's crisp and generous application of paint models the rotund forms of the apples with knowledge and vibrancy. To round off this feast, there is great subtlety in the thin, delicately painted, colourful reflections the apples cast onto the shiny wooden surface.

In this contemplative painting everything is well considered and lovingly painted. It is not a blockbuster but a stunning masterpiece in the tradition of academic painting.

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