Albert Wainwright was born in 1898 in Castleford in the borough of Wakefield. The youngest of three children, he had a Methodist religious upbringing and was expected by his father to follow in his footsteps and become an engineer. It was thanks to the help of his perceptive art teacher at Castleford Secondary school, Alice Gostick, who spotted and nurtured Wainwright’s artistic talents, that Albert’s father allowed him to leave the engineering apprenticeship that he hated and attend Leeds School of Art in 1914.
Whilst at Leeds School of Art, Wainwright drew on a wide range of influences including the work of Aubrey Beardsley and Léon Bakst together with the brave new wave of European art created by the Viennese Secessionist art group. The work of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt captivated and inspired the young Wainwright who was drawn to their exaggerated forms, fluid use of line and dynamic use of colour and pattern within the works.
After serving in the Royal Flying Corps Wainwright left military service to re-join his family who now lived near Pontefract. Here he transformed a room of the family home in to a studio where he could continue his work as an artist and designer. Around this time, he began to attend Saturday morning pottery painting sessions at the local Grammar School with Miss Gostick, his former art teacher, along with his sisters Hilda and Maud. At the same classes was the great sculptor Henry Moore, also a former pupil of Miss Gostick’s.
In 1920 Wainwright received his first one-man exhibition at Leeds City Art Gallery aged just 22. The show was very well received and drew the attention and support of Sir Michael Sadler, Vice Chancellor of Leeds University and notable art collector, and Frank Rutter, the influential art critic and curator. It also led to Wainwright being represented by the Goupil Gallery in London where they held solo shows of his work in 1921 and 1922. His art nouveau-inspired watercolours received great praise in the Sunday Times who lauded his ‘great ability in decorative design’.
In 1927 Wainwright was made temporary art master at Castleford School for two years when Miss Gostick fell ill. It was during this time that he made his first visit to Germany on a school excursion. The visit had an overwhelming effect on him and he fell in love with the countryside and the people. It would become the first of many journeys Wainwright would make touring around Europe either solo or with his lover George Collins. This was a particularly fascinating time to be journeying around Europe, predominantly Austria and Germany, because it was a time of great social and political change, with the rise of the fascist movement in Germany. As a result, Wainwright produced a large number of beautifully illustrated sketchbooks featuring the people and landscapes he came to adore.
Wainwright also filled countless sketchbooks with views much closer to home featuring everything from the rolling landscapes or industrial towns of his home county, Yorkshire. In 1930 the family bought a cottage at Robin Hood’s Bay where he spent every summer for the next 20 years painting watercolour portraits of holidaymakers, scenes of the beach and the town’s red roof tops.
Albert (seated) and his partner George Collins.
Wainwright met George Collins, schoolmaster and friend of the Wainwright family, and became life long lovers. Wainwright often refers to his sexual identity as a gay man in his work and his sketchbooks are not only filled with studies of landscape views and women but also endless beautifully observed studies of athletic male figures or men in uniforms at rest or play. These sketchbooks were personal and private documents and not intended for public view. It is also noted that much of his work contain many secret symbols that allude to his own sexual identity and the fact that these subtle references are hidden reflect the covert nature of gay culture and a rare document of gay love in Britain of the 1920s and 30s.
Despite having grown a moderate reputation for himself in Yorkshire, Wainwright never achieved the same level of commercial success or recognition as his school-friend, Henry Moore. A possible reason for this was that Wainwright was not a keen self-promoter and happier to operate within his local circles. In addition, Wainwright received many commissions to design the sets and costumes for local theatres including the Leeds Civic Playhouse and the Leeds Art Theatre, for plays ranging from Greek tragedy and restoration comedy to the modern dramas of Ibsen, Chekov and Shaw.
These would eventually amount to more than 100 productions, the most ambitious of these was the Miracle Play held at Kirkstall Abbey in 1927 for which he designed over 700 costumes. Due to the finite life span of theatre production, it is possible that many of his works just haven’t survived.
While Wainwright only lived to the relatively young age of 45, he made a very valuable contribution to the art scene of the 1920s and 30s and is arguably one of the most talented illustrators at work in Britain at the time. He left a body of work including watercolours, drawings, painted ceramics and costume and theatre designs to George. After George’s death in 1985 the collection of works were left to family members and it is with great pleasure that a large part of the collection has been re discovered and featured in this exhibition. Over recent years there has been an ever-growing awareness and appreciation of his work with auction prices rising steadily and his work featuring in publications, online blogs and one man shows. It is with this in mind that the aim of this exhibition is to reveal and celebrate Wainwright as a prolific artist of powerful inventiveness and ability.
These beautifully decorated line illustrations from 1918 are only but a sample of what accompany verses from the 1859 translated into English Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Edward FitzGerald. Beautifully stylised, the drawings particularly symbolise the notion towards the Art Deco movement. With big areas of empty white page and incredibly detailed and intricate patterns we cannot overestimate the influence of the 19th century English illustrator Aubrey Beardsly, particularly exploring themes of the erotic and the elegant, the humouros and the grotesqe.
Wainwright received many commissions to design the sets and costumes for local theatres including the Leeds Civic Playhouse and the Leeds Art Theatre, for plays ranging from Greek tragedy and restoration comedy, to the modern dramas of Ibsen, Chekov and Shaw. These would eventually amount to more than 100 productions, the most ambitious of these was the Miracle Play held at Kirkstall Abbey in 1927 for which he designed over 700 elaborate costumes. With so much of Wainwright's work his love of theatre and theatrical designs is clearly established in many of his finished works.
These recently discovered portrait studies clearly show Wainwright's huge talent for observational portraiture while simultaneously illustrating his love of the male form. These works cover both rapid prepartory sketches through to more finished figurative works but all works illustrate Wainwright's intese emotional connection with men.
Wainwright had a clear interest in the human form and it is explicitly illustrated through his many studies of female and male nudes. His use of line and dynamic use of colour are expressive of his many influences including Egon Schiele and Aubrey Beardsley. However, Wainwrights depiction of the erotic lacks the dark, threatening and macbre element of Schiele and Beardsley. Instead, his imagery deploys a rather mischievous, but sohpisticated, humour within the details that are affectionate and gentle pointers to subjects he considers erotic. Multiple other nude studies can also be seen in his sketchbooks.
As a brilliant and gifted artist, Wainwright assimilated a wide range of influences from the decorative flourishes of art nouveau to the expressive intensity of the Viennese Secessionists. While his book illustrations call to mind the erotic and decadent drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, his watercolours evoke the jewel like colours and fluid lines of the traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e (Floating World) woodblock print-makers that flourished in the 17th century. Wainwright can be seen to incorporate all of these and yet still totally transform them into exceptional finished works with an intuitive feeling for line and stylised form all of their own.
During his travels across Europe Wainwright filled countless sketchbooks of places, spaces and faces he came to adore. Albert was himself gay at a time when it was illegal and therefore much of Wainwright's sketchbook studies were a very private and personal form of artistic documentation and were not intended to be seen by the public and sadly much of his work was later destroyed by his sisters after his death in 1943. However, this new discovery of sketchbooks display multiple beautifully observed sketches and very revealing studies that complete the picture of a young gay artist of the early 20th century.
After serving in the Royal flying Corps Wainwright left military service to re-join his family. He transformed a room of his family home into a studio where he could continue his work as an artist and designer. It was also at this time he began to attend Saturday morning pottery painting classes with Miss Gostick, his former art teacher. With his strong use of colour and brilliantly abstracted motifs his work is totally unique.