Artists And Writers

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31007, 12 March 1966, Page 4

Artists And Writers

Summer’s Lease; Autobiography, 1901-1938. By Sir John Rothen stein. Hamish Hamilton. With 22 illustrations of pictures and drawings, and an index. 260 pp.

Here, indeed, is a very human story combined with a broad history of famous artists and writers, their philosophies and conversations. For the student, the book must have a great deal of information, and for the general reader a great deal of pleasure because of its closeups of notable people.

Now director of London’s Tate Gallery, the author was, as it were, born into the

purple; for his father. Sir William Rothenstein, was an artist of distinction, and his maternal grandfather, W. F. Knewstub, was an artist too. So from boyhood at the beginning of this century, John Rothenstein was surrounded by world names in art, literature and politics. His parents’ homes, wherever they might be, were a friendly rendezvous for geniuses. Name the artist or writer you would like to meet, and you will be sure to find him here: Shaw, Ed'ward Sackville-West, Lord David Cecil, Evelyn Waugh,

John Strachey, T. E. Lawrence, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Stanley Spencer, Wyndham Lewis, Joseph Conrad, Paul and John Nash, the Sitwells, Max Beerbohm, Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, Cunninghame Graham, Oscar Wilde—to note but a few.

So the young Rothenstein was reared in a stimulating atmosphere in which critical talk and accepted and contentious art were an everyday affair. He went to Bedales preparatory school and from there to Worcester College. Oxford, to read history and j acquire knowledge, friend’ships and debts, but not a [degree. Then to France, Germany, Italy—mainly with the [cost of living and travelling [borne by his parents. Mean|while he had been converted ito Roman Catholicism. ' He wanted to be a writer. I but, failing to make a living [in London, and wishing to from, the intellectual domination of his father, he j hied himself to the United [States and Lexington. There, ias a poorly-paid university arts lecturer, he found a strange style of living against a background of the long-past Civil War and the abolition of slavery, and there he acquired valued friends and a wife-to-be. Pittsburgh, steely and grim, was his next university post; but he was still searching for contentment in an occupation, so he got married, returned to England to take a Ph.D. in the history of art at London University College, and directorship first of the art gallery at Leeds and then of the gallery at Sheffield. He found these posts confining and exasperating but rewarding as well for their experience and friendships. He has some critical things to say of the standard of cultural appreciation in these Northern England manufacturing centres, and some pleasant things, too. in his summing up of provincial outlooks.