NAVVIES IN ART

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 556, 8 January 1929, Page 13

NAVVIES IN ART

EAST END BRUSH CLUB LABOURERS SHOW PROMISE Painting pictures Is not the monopoly of Chelsea and Hampstead, say the workers in the East End of London, who have a fully-fledged art club of their own.

Although it has been in existence for only a short time, its members are arranging to take the Whitechapel Art Gallery for an exhibition. So impressed is Sir Joseph Duveen, the millionaire art dealer and connoisseur, by the abilities of some of the members of the club, that he has become its patron, while other public men have sent subscriptions. Mr. Walter Sickert, the artist, has offered to give free lectures to the club.

Apron Cloth as Canvas It has 30-odd members, including dock labourers, navvies, clerks, artisans, printers, and a bricklayer. The secretary, Mr. Archibald Hattemore. a labourer under the Metropolitan Water Board, sprang to fame a year or two ago with the first picture he had ever painted. This picture was an interior of the front room in his small house in Hackney, and it was painted on a piece of cloth left over after his wife had made an apron.

When he sent it to the New English Art Club exhibition it was immediately accepted, and a few days later it was bought for the nation to be hung in the Tate Gallery. The East London Art Club dreams of becoming famous like the great school of painting at Norwich a century ago. Mr. John Cooper, who, although not an East Ender himself, has become its president, told the “Sunday Chronicle” that these working men are painting honestly and naturally from the life they gee around them.