Peter Brannan's Potboilers
Post date: Oct 08, 2017 9:46:0 PM
Critical evaluation, sometimes using just a single deadly word or phrase, is able to consign the work of an artist to oblivion. And once that work has been consigned to dusty oblivion it is unlikely to be seen again; unlikely, at least, to ever have the opportunity to justify its precarious existence as a bringer of visual delight.“Derivative”, “pale imitation”, “clichéd” and “second-rate” are just a few of the deadly verbal assault weapons available to the critic whose job it is to define good taste and to supposedly protect us all from cultural mediocrity.
A particularly potent disapproving phrase which has sometimes been used to describe a painting, or more damningly, an artist’s entire work, is “potboiler”. The word has been used since the C19th to describe paintings produced solely to generate income for the artist and to put food on the table. The word seems to have had pejorative connotations for most of its existence as a critical descriptor, implying that there is a clear qualitative distinction to be made between art produced solely for commercial gain and art rooted in more worthy intentions and aspirations. In its negative connotations, the word was perhaps a casualty of broader C19th cultural tensions between the socially useful and the spiritually uplifting.
The etymology and subsequent linguistic misfortunes of the word seem to have been pre-dated by a mode of artistic production common in the C18th. The activities of limners, itinerant painters who produced ad hoc family portraits, topographical views and pictures of prize animals on commission, in a sense prepare the way for the negative concept of the potboiler, as an on-demand product, rapidly executed and therefore lacking any artistic integrity. The limner gave people, especially the landed gentry, what they wanted to enhance their lives, including perceived social prestige, rather than what high culture perhaps thought they needed. The C19th potboiler, it appears, was just a more generalised version of the C18th limner, wearing the same artistic clothes and involved in similar suspect commercial transactions.
Whilst never applying the term ‘limner’ to Peter Brannan, Rigby Graham in his Introduction to the 1995 Goldmark Gallery Retrospective Catalogue, compared him to these C18th itinerant artists who eked out a living producing commercial paintings for interested customers. The comparison was in no sense deprecating, but merely stated as a self-evident truth that Peter Brannan knew his market – or at least a lucrative part of his market, and met the needs of paying admirers. East Coast beach scenes certainly figure throughout his artistic career, as do pretty evocations of Lincolnshire country life, in particular cornfields, which seem to have become more abundant towards the end of his life: not so much providing for the basic necessities of life, but more as an income stream to fund Brannan’s keen interest in collecting oriental porcelain and other beautiful objets d’art to furnish his Welbourn cottage.
To some extent, the concept of being a potboiler was accidently rescued from its abject status by Stanley Spencer, who famously described his paintings of gardens and
flowers as ‘potboilers’. The description was probably intended as a contrast to what he saw as his more spiritual visionary paintings, and indicates the economic pressures Spencer had at the time due to his domestic difficulties. However, despite the self-effacing label used by Spencer, as well as derogatory remarks from some commentators on his work, these idyllic representations of aspects of the Englishlandscape have many admirers. Spencer may have produced the paintings quickly and in the hope of making quick money, but nevertheless, their power to captivate and engage the imagination contrasts markedly with the negative associations of the word.
Throughout his life, Peter Brannan painted scenes of his home town of Cleethorpes which sold well. As early as 1948, he exhibited “Cleethorpes Beach Scene” (Exhibit 64) at the 42nd Lincolnshire Artists’ Society Exhibition, alongside “A Fair Ground” (Exhibit 18) and “The Asylum, Chester” (Exhibit 63): all three were priced at 8 guineas. Forty-five years later, in 1993, at the 87th Lincolnshire Artists’ Society Exhibition, he exhibited a “Cleethorpes Beach Scene” (Exhibit 39), alongside three Still Lifes (Exhibits 37, 38 and 40): all four paintings were priced at £350. The Cleethorpes beach picture, which depicts children playing in front of a snack bar with a partial view of the iconic Ferris wheel in the background, was subsequently bequeathed by the artist to the Usher Gallery, Lincoln.
The work, completed in 1992, was probably part of the series of eight beach paintings recorded in Peter Brannan’s diary as having been created, in quick succession, between January and April of that year. One of the paintings, now in a private collection and titled “On the beach”, which can be identified from Brannan’s description of a “male figure sitting in a chair with wife and child – sea wall near”, was completed to his satisfaction in four days. Another work, possibly the Cleethorpes picture in the Usher Gallery, was typically started, finished and then in part re-painted - a child in the foreground proving unsatisfactory - despite Brannan’s initial pleased assessment of the work being “nice and bright and fresh”, eleven days earlier. At least two of the beach scenes painted during this period Brannan was working on simultaneously, one of them being a re-working of a painting which he had once considered finished, but then had second thoughts about. Another known work, undated and now in the Newark Town Museum Collection with the title “Forty Winks”, was also probably amongst this group of paintings, given its similarity to the composition of “On the Beach”.
Whilst only one of the paintings mentioned in his diary is specifically described by Brannan as a Cleethorpes beach scene, it is likely that the other seven typically draw upon the resort for their images, either directly or indirectly.
The rapidity of their production suggests in one respect the appropriateness of the word ‘potboiler’ during this period, although a detailed awareness of the context of their production cautions against any temptation to dismiss this group of paintings as art reduced to easy production-line commerce.On the one hand, they were clearly products of a life-long personal obsession with a theme which happened to meet with popular approval and therefore was a commercial success. Brannan himself was aware of the fact that he had re-visited the theme many times over and was not entirely comfortable with it. “The place and the figures are all old favourites”, he ruefully commented in the middle of a struggle to paint “fiddly figures” created “from memory and invention”. More self-critically and almost resignedly, he recorded on one occasion during this period, whilst working on a small beach scene, that he had “done similar ones dozens of times.”
On the other hand, whilst the imaginative visions of beach scenes were familiar, rapidly produced variations on a theme, Brannan was clearly working under the severe pressures and demands of circumstance. During these four months, he had to meet the requirements of a local collector who wished specifically to purchase a beach scene, as well as having to put together a representative collection of around sixteen paintings for a gallery just outside Henley-on-Thames, which was to
include some recent beach scenes. In addition, practical issues surrounding framing and re-framing were an additional burden, whether it was doing the job himself or negotiating with his usual picture framer. Further, during this period of almost frenetic creativity, there is a sense of the artist’s deteriorating health pressing upon him and being driven by a heightened awareness of time passing, as he struggled to produce work which he felt had artistic integrity and, at the same time, like the C18th limner and the C19th potboiler, gave the customer what they wanted: a visual enrichment of their life.
Malcolm Moyes