A wartime exhibition in Oxford

The collection of Kern-related publications formerly belonging to Jean Watts, kindly shared with me by her son Gerard (see these posts), includes an edition of Art Notes from the summer of 1943. According to its front cover, the magazine was published on a quarterly basis by St. Michael’s Workshop, whose address was 28a Cornmarket Street in Oxford, just opposite the ancient church of St Michael at the North Gate. This particular issue was the second number in the seventh volume and was sold for the price of one shilling and threepence.

From the names of its ecclesiastical patrons, and from the contents of previous issues, given on the inside cover, one can deduce that this was a Catholic publication. Its editor was Joan Morris, S.P., who was herself an artist, writer and champion for women’s rights in the Church.  Most of this issue is taken up with a long essay, ‘Towards a philosophy of art’, by E.I.Watkin, whose works are also listed on the inside back cover. Edmund Ingram Watkin (1888-1981) was a convert to Catholicism and a prominent pacifist and anti-fascist. He was the father of Magdalen Goffin (1925-2015, who wrote a biography of him, as well as Maria Pasqua, a life of her Italian grandmother, which I read some time ago with great pleasure.

The contents of the issue are given on the cover page of the magazine and include ‘Paintings by Theodor Kern’. There is also a handwritten note on the copy in my possession – almost certainly by the artist himself – ‘See Page 4’. At the foot of that page is a brief paragraph, also headed ‘Paintings by Theodor Kern’, reading as follows:

Theodor Kern is an Austrian and a specialist in fresco painting. He has painted many a church in his own country. Exiled here he has continued his fresco work in a church in Letchworth where he is living. He is showing some of his paintings, landscapes and portraits at St. Michael’s Workshop during May, also two stained glass pieces. His colour is rich and warm and he is at his best when he allows himself a form of expression which is free and spontaneous.

Alongside this paragraph is a monochrome reproduction entitled ‘Detail of Stained Glass Window’ which is possibly part of a window illustrating the story of the wedding at Cana and is perhaps one of the two stained glass pieces that Kern was due to exhibit in Oxford in May 1944. It would be interesting to see more details of this exhibition, but so far I’ve been unsuccessful in discovering anything further about it, or indeed about the activities of St. Michael’s Workshop.

In 1943, Kern was still living in Letchworth and had yet to move to the house in Hitchin where he would remain for the rest of his life. The church mentioned in the piece is almost certainly the Catholic parish church of St Hugh of Lincoln. As Karl Heinz Ritschel relates in his brief biography of Kern, the early 1940s found the artist working in hospitals in Hertfordshire ‘drawing and painting with wounded soldiers’, which according to Ritschel ‘was a profound experience for him, giving him an understanding of human suffering, both physical and mental’. Ritschel continues [my translation]: ‘A move to Letchworth became advisable for reasons of distance; a priest gave him a place to live, for which in turn he had to create a nativity scene.’ In time, Kern would create other works of art for the Letchworth church, including two stained glass windows and a wooden crucifix. I haven’t seen any other references to the frescoes mentioned in the article. I believe Kern’s works were created for the original church building, founded by the antiquarian and scholar Father Adrian Fortescue in 1908 and influenced both by Byzantine architecture and the Arts and Crafts Movement, which became Fortescue Hall when a new church was consecrated in 1963.

‘Lime wood statue for chapel by local artist’

I’ve come across another cutting from the Citizen newspaper, on the excellent Garden City Collection website (see previous post). Ostensibly about Kern’s creation of a statue for a school chapel, the article – from early 1946 – contains a wealth of information about the artist’s life and work at this period, shortly after he had moved from Letchworth to Hitchin.

The article reports on, and includes a photograph of, Kern creating a statue of the Madonna and Child for the chapel of All Hallows School in Cranmore, Somerset. At the time, this was an all boys’ Catholic school, though I understand that it is now co-educational and that its Catholic affiliation is rather more tenuous. Apparently the chapel is still there, but I’ve been unable to find out whether the statue is still on display. The newspaper article compares Kern’s statue to the famous Madonna and Child statue at Buckfast Abbey, which dates back to the Middle Ages. (A modern version was recently created for the abbey by the contemporary Devon artist Isabel Coulton, whose work I wrote about here.)

The Buckfast Abbey Madonna (via https://allaboutmary.tumblr.com)

Kern also created a gilded Madonna for his parish church in Hitchin (see this post) and another for the church of Our Lady and St Alphege in Bath (see these posts).

The article also reports that another of Kern’s statues, and a number of his stained glass designs, were on display at Burlington House in Piccadilly at this time. I’ve found the following photograph of that exhibition on the RIBA website:

(Photography by Sydney W. Newbery, via ribapix.com)

Also of interest is the information in the article that by 1946 Theodor Kern had already begun his relationship with Hitchin Art Club, which would continue until his death (see this post). However, perhaps the most interesting piece of information comes at the end of the piece, when we learn that at this time Kern was engaged in teaching art to patients in local hospitals, encouraging ‘mainly discouraged people by interesting them in drawing and in the appreciation of art.’ This would appear to be a continuation of the wartime work which, I believe, was the original cause of Kern’s move from London, where he initially lived on his arrival from Austria, to Hertfordshire. According to Karl Heinz Ritschel, ‘Kern wanted to help his host country, so he worked in hospitals, drawing and painting with, and helping to care for, wounded soldiers. Numerous drawings and sketch sheets, also humorous sketches, resulted.’ I remember reading somewhere that this work with wounded serviceman may have taken place in or near the village of St Paul’s Walden near Hitchin. However, Father Andrew O’Dell recalls Kern’s widow Frieda telling him that, on his arrival in the area in the early 1940s, her late husband also taught art to psychiatric patients at the Three Counties Asylum in the neighbouring village of Arlesey. In all probability the full extent of the charitable work undertaken by this most modest and unassuming of artists will never be known.

‘Letchworth artist at women’s club’

In the previous post I mentioned that, in the early 1940s, Theodor Kern lived briefly in Letchworth Garden City, before finally settling in the neighbouring town of Hitchin. In the excellent online Garden City Collection, I’ve found a number of local newspaper cuttings which refer to Kern, including this report from the Citizen of 16th December 1944:

It says something about the humility and unassuming demeanour of the man that this distinguished émigré artist, whose work had been displayed in galleries in Vienna and Salzburg, should agree to speak to a lunch club in a provincial English town. I recall Father Andrew Odell, from the church of Our Lady Immaculate and St Andrew in Hitchin, telling me about a similar talk given by Kern in the local parish hall, when Father Andrew was a teenager (this would have been in the early 1950s), at which the artist gave a ‘hands on’ demonstration of stained glass production, and even invited the young people present to try their hand at glass cutting.

Kern’s murals at Notts Bakery

I’m grateful to Ros Allwood, Cultural Services Manager at North Hertfordshire Museum, for sending me two photographs of murals created by Theodor Kern for Notts Bakery in Letchworth. The photos are part of the Hitchin Art Club archive which is held by the museum. I’ve written before about Kern’s involvement in the art club as a tutor and critic, and we recently enjoyed an excellent exhibition at North Hertfordshire Museum, celebrating the club’s 80^th anniversary.

Theodor Kern lived briefly in Letchworth in the early 1940s, before moving to the house at 55 Bearton Green, in nearby Hitchin, where he and his second wife Frieda Frank would remain for the rest of their lives. During his time in Letchworth, Kern created three stained glass windows for the Catholic church of St Hugh of Lincoln. According to the catalogue of Kern’s work included in his nephew Ernst Ziegeleder’s biography, he also produced a number of secular works in this period, including eight frescoes 1943 in the restaurant at Icknield Hall, Letchworth, a popular venue for social events.

Ziegeleder appears to be describing the Notts Bakery murals when he writes of 11 frescoes created by Kern for a factory canteen in Letchworth in 1944. Apparently the bakery was a key feature of Letchworth life for 60 years until its closure in 1966. At least one of the murals in the photographs reproduced above seems to show the bakery in the process of demolition: like other murals by Kern that had the misfortune to be placed in buildings that would later be condemned, it would appear that these did not survive the process, though the label on one of the photos above suggests that the murals were still extant in 1969.

Notts Bakery, Letchworth in its heyday (via http://www.gardencitycollection.com)

The murals captured in the photographs are interesting in that they seem to bear no relation to the activity of baking, instead featuring, on the one hand, groups of women in bucolic settings, perhaps in southern Europe, gathering and cooking fruit, or simply relaxing by the sea, and on the other hand a male artist painting a landscape while a young woman in traditional dress looks on, in what could be a rural Austrian setting. The murals bear some resemblance to the paintings and sketches from Kern’s sojourns in Italy and are perhaps based on his personal reminiscences of the time before his emigration.

It’s possible that, since this was a canteen where bakery workers came for rest and refreshment, the artist made a conscious decision to provide them with escapist scenes that would allow their imaginations to wander away from the world of work. Moreover, since this was still wartime and Kern had only recently been forced to leave his homeland, he could perhaps be permitted to indulge a nostalgic longing in these murals for the life he had left behind.