the penzance art gallery

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Robert Borlase Smart

Robert Borlase Smart RBA ROI RBC RWA SMA (1881-1947) 

Public Collections include Imperial War Museum, National Maritime Museum, Bristol, Leamington, Plymouth, Sunderland, Swindon, Truro and, abroad, Nova Scotia (Dalhousie) and Bombay.

 It is impossible to overemphasise the importance of Borlase Smart in the history of Cornish art.  His enthusiasm and energy revitalised the St Ives art colony in the 1920s and 1930s and his grand vision -  of combining in one Society the best Cornish-based artists, not only of his own but of previous generations, and of promoting that Society the length and breadth of the country - was fulfilled with astonishing success.  His desire and ability to understand more modern movements set him apart from many of his fellows and, during the 1940s, he presided over exhibitions that combined and celebrated both the new and the old.  His importance as a leader and moderator can be judged by the unseemly squabbles that broke out shortly after his death, and from the fact that both the traditionalist and modern camps sought to improve their cause by claiming him as their inspiration and guiding light. 

Born in Kingsbridge in Devon, Smart initially studied under F.J.Snell in 1896 and then at Plymouth College of Art under Shelley in 1897.  He obtained an Art Class Teacher’s Certificate, with first class honours, at South Kensington in 1901.  From 1903-1913, he was art critic for the Western Morning News and contributed a number of sketches, mainly of naval craft, to Navy and Military Record.  His first RA exhibit in 1912 was Moonlight on the Cornish Riviera  Eager to learn from the master of such scenes, Julius Olsson, he came to study under him in St Ives in 1913 and maintained the highest regard for him throughout his life.  During the war, he served in the Artists’ Rifles, the London Regiment, the Queen’s Regiment and as Captain in the Machine Gun Corps, and a series of charcoal and wash drawings of his experiences in the trenches and of the devastation of northern France were exhibited at the Fine Art Society in July 1917 (and subsequently in Plymouth) under the title, Sketches of the Western Front, Vimy Ridge to the Somme.  Thirty-two of these sketches are now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum.  

In the same year, Smart married Irene Godson, the daughter of his platoon sergeant, who had been killed in action, and, in 1919, upon demobilisation, they settled in St Ives.  He soon entered fully into the community life of the town, serving for a time on the Council, becoming involved with the Chamber of Commerce and forming the Sea Scouts.  On the artistic front, his impact can be seen immediately in the heightened coverage given to the art colony in the local press.  His own work was felt to be promising and a series of charcoal drawings with coloured washes of old St Ives, which combined his skill as an architectural draughtsman with “frank” and “vigorous” colour, was well received.  Two of these works now hang in the St Ives Museum.  However, it was as a painter of seascapes in oils that Smart wished to be known and he soon won himself a reputation in this line.^[1]  In 1919, he was elected to the RBA and, that year, he was included in British Marine Painting, a survey of the best British marine painters of all time published by The Studio.  In 1922, he became a member of the ROI and he was successful at the RA with two outstanding marine oils, Morning Light : St Ives (RA 1922) and Cornish Cliffs (RA 1923, Paris 1924, Cheltenham 1925), both of which are now owned by the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro.  Another work Jewels in a Granite Setting won a Mention Honorable at the Paris Salon in 1923.  

In 1924, Smart went on a painting trip to Venice.  He termed this a long-delayed honeymoon and it was a productive time  In addition to trying his hand at etching for the first time, a medium for which his drawing ability made him ideally suited, he also produced some large oils of which Gondolas and [] are fine examples.  The former is a daring composition, with the bulk of the painting being given over to the effect of light playing over the waters of the canal.  Even the figures in the foreground have been left ill-defined so as not to distract from the principal motive. 

In 1925, Smart moved to Salcombe and his presence in St Ives was sorely missed  The remaining artists felt that the colony had become moribund and, without any great expectations, they formed the St Ives Society of Artists (STISA) in 1927.  When Smart returned in 1928, he became a member immediately and was voted on to the Committee in 1929, with responsibility for publicity.  In 1933, he assumed the role of Secretary and was to retain it for the rest of his life.^[2]  What he fostered was a new unity of purpose and “an all pervading spirit of real endeavour”.^[3]  His objective was to make Art and the pursuit of Art in Cornwall a living and vital thing.  His great friend, Leonard Fuller (q.v.), commented, “He had vision - the long vision - and was not swayed by the success or failure of the moment.”^[4]   

Two strategic decisions were key to the success of the Society.  The first was Smart’s determination to ensure that any notable artist, who had at some juncture lived, studied or worked in Cornwall, became a member  The time and effort Smart spent in this regard was made all too clear recently in an auction of the effects of Fred Hall’s daughter, for amongst her father’s correspondence were numerous letters written personally by Smart.  Hall was just one of many non-St Ives resident artists that Smart will have contacted in this way, urging them initially to get involved and then coaxing them to continue to submit top quality work to ensure the standard of the Society’s shows was constantly improving.  The second initiative was to organise a series of touring exhibitions around Public Art Galleries all over the country which brought the work of the Society to a much wider audience.   Between 1931 and 1949, twenty-five separate Art Galleries hosted exhibitions by the Society, several more than once  The impact can best be demonstrated by giving some figures for visitor numbers.  In 1936, the best year during the 1930s, there were 4162 visitors to the Society’s St Ives exhibitions, whereas just one of the two touring shows they put on that year attracted 75,000 visitors!  This additional publicity resulted in increased sales not only to the public but also to Permanent Collections and led to more artists seeking to become members.  It also had a significant impact on tourism to Cornwall, as did the railway posters that Smart and others designed for GWR.  On behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, Smart also designed a map of the town for display on the Malakoff  Accordingly, many businesses connected with the tourist trade were yet further entities indebted to Smart.

In his own work, Smart concentrated on seascape painting and he had success at the RA with a series of large canvases, depicting the reef at Clodgy in gale conditions - violent, swirling, white-foamed water painted vigorously in thick impasto.  Examples in this Exhibition of seascapes of this nature are [] and [].  Design and pattern began to play an ever increasing importance in his compositions, as he sought to capture the power of ocean swells.  His book, The Technique of Seascape Painting, published in 1934, became the standard work on the subject for some forty years, selling particularly well in America.  Smart was also fascinated by the dignity and grandeur of cliffs and he was prepared to sacrifice topographical detail in order to portray their majestic immensity.  Geological knowledge enabled him to simplify seemingly random piles of rocks into their basic strata.  A fine example is Moonlight, Cathedral Rocks, Land’s End, one of the works illustrated in his book which is included in this show.  Smart had initially drawn the rocks from higher up but was unhappy with the foreground of the composition and so descended the cliffs until the additional buttress formations in front “served to simplify and emphasize the dignity of the bigger mass”.  He records “The first tones of shadow construction were laid in with Naples Yellow, a touch of Rose Madder, Viridian, and Ivory Black, with a very little Linseed Oil to help transparency.  The lighter portions of the cliff in strong moonlight were left pure canvas.  This, of course, enables you to tone your final light parts to the correct value.”^[5] 

In the early 1930s, an inheritance made Smart financially secure and he spent a part of each summer in Scotland.  He was particularly pleased in 1933 when the Duke of Sutherland bought from the ROI his two oils of Ben Loyal and the Kyle of Tongue, commenting that the wild west coast of Sutherland was a revelation as a sketching ground and “much more paintable than the immensities of the Alps”.^[6]  Several of his Sutherland scenes are included in this Exhibition.

 During the Second World War, Smart was adamant that STISA should continue and, due to his War work and a breakdown in health, he was helped to a significant degree by Leonard Fuller, an old friend from his Army days.  Smart had fretted for some years at the lack of a painting school in St Ives, as he felt this would attract further young talent to the town and, in 1938, he eventually persuaded Fuller and his wife, Marjorie Mostyn, to set one up.  As this is still in existence, there are numerous students who have benefitted from Smart’s foresight.  During the War years, Smart became friendly with the young Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and she spent much time discussing with him the pre-occupations of modern art.  She recalled “He was passionate for knowledge - eager to learn, for sharing and understanding of art, however much in contrast to his own work”^[7]  Smart came to the view that it was wrong that artists of the standing of Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth should be living in the locality and not be members of STISA and, in 1944, having obtained an introduction through Barns-Graham, he invited them to join STISA, believing that the Society must progress and embrace modern tendencies.   He himself began experimenting in his work with modern ideas and produced works such as [big rock?] and [?china clay pit], in which he abandons high-toned colour and thick impasto in favour of stark form, revealing his great skills as a draughtsman.  [Do add something here re his modern technique if you want to.  ?scratching out?]  Just before his death, he announced to Barns-Graham, hissing his S’s as was his manner of speech, “I have just done my firsst besst painting.”!

Smart was also largely responsible for organising STISA’s acquisition and refurbishment of the old Mariners’ Chapel as a new Exhibition Gallery in 1945 and, when the young moderns put on their own show in the Crypt, it was Smart who opened it, being unbowed by the furious reaction of Harry Rountree and others to his perceived treachery.  He continued to organise touring exhibitions not only around this country but also to South Africa.  On being elected President of STISA in 1947, he urged members “to think widely and work vitally” and considered the exhibition at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff in 1947 to be STISA’s finest yet, combining the best of traditional and modern art.  Sadly, he died as it came to a close and, with him, died all hopes of maintaining unity between the factions in STISA. Smart might, if he had lived, have come to accept the inevitability of a split in STISA - although he would have fought tooth and nail to have avoided it - but he would have had little truck with those seeking to operate in his name thereafter.  Just as he abhorred reactionary comments about the moderns and their ”rubbish”, he would also have been horrified at the exclusion of works by long-standing members, simply because they did not fit in with a section of the Society’s view of what constituted “Fine Art”  Like many of his former STISA colleagues who initially joined forces with the moderns, he would not have tolerated the move by the Penwith Society towards complete abstraction.

After his death, a Memorial Fund was set up in Smart’s name and this, with considerable aid from the Arts Council, saved the Porthmeor Studios, thus ensuring that these remarkable spaces are still enjoyed by artists today.  A Memorial Exhibition was held in 1949 and, in the catalogue, Fuller paid tribute to Smart’s “large hearted generosity and sympathetic understanding”.  He observed that he had “yet to meet the individual, old or young, who ever went to Smart in vain”  This assistance could take many forms.  He would give freely of his time to assist young painters, like Peter Lanyon  On being impressed by a Hyman Segal show, he arranged for the local reporter to do a feature in the paper.  On hearing that Wilhelmina Barns-Graham wanted a studio, he arranged with his old friend, George Bradshaw, that she could use his while he was away on active service and he saw to it that Bradshaw’s paintings were still included in STISA shows, despite his absence.  His son, Michael, also recalls humane gestures like allowing the penniless Sven Berlin to come round for a weekly bath and not bothering that John Park would always put in an appearance at mealtimes.  These are merely a few examples of the myriad of ways that Smart gave generously of his time and Fuller concludes, “One feels that had he allowed himself the time for his own work that he devoted to the service of others, he would have reached great heights.”^[8]  

It is now fifty-seven years since Smart’s death and another appreciation of his life and work has been long overdue.  However, should we still not be learning from his open mind and broad view?  What would he have made of the situation today?  Surely, he would have been astonished that, over fifty years after the split, in an age when abstract art has almost become outmoded itself, the two Societies should stubbornly pursue their separate paths, the one still rejecting representational art, the other still not embracing abstract work.  The fact that many of the best artists in Cornwall are members of neither Society would have appalled him.  And then there is the question of Tate, St Ives.  One of the few objectives Smart did not fulfil was the establishment in St Ives of a Public Gallery.  He campaigned for such a Gallery on numerous occasions, at various times putting forward Treloyhan Manor or The Retreat (now The Guildhall) as appropriate venues.  He would, therefore, have been delighted at the establishment of the Tate and would not have been surprised at the impact that such a Gallery has had on tourism.  Smart is about the only representational artist that is mentioned favourably and occasionally hung by the Tate but he would never have countenanced a policy that promotes just one era of St Ives art, that ignores completely the first fifty years of the art colony, and that fails to offer a proper or balanced historical perspective  Smart was an extraordinary man and, even in a supposedly more enlightened era, there are few that can match his broadness of vision, let alone combine such vision with a seemingly limitless supply of energy, enthusiasm and selfless endeavour. 
David Tovey   January 2005