Forgotten gems

A Countryman in Town: Robert Bevan and the Cumberland Market Group
Southampton City Art Gallery, until 14 December

The Women’s Land Army — A Portrait
St Barbe Museum, New Street, Lymington, until 10 January

The recent Camden Town exhibition at the Tate was a useful reminder of the originality of one of the few significant radical groups of modern British artists. It’s often said that the English aren’t joiners, but at the beginning of the 20th century when the Royal Academy dominated the London exhibiting scene, there were a number of rebel coalitions organised to provide mutual support and venues in which to show avant-garde work. The Camden Town Group was one such, and its successor, the much less-known Cumberland Market Group, was another. Robert Polhill Bevan (1865–1925) was a key figure in both, and in fact belonged to five different groups altogether, indicative not of a sociable nature but of the need for peer solidarity in the face of an uncomprehending public.

It’s been a good year for reassessing this generation of British artists. From Sickert to Gertler: Modern Art at Boxted House followed the Tate show, first in Edinburgh and subsequently at Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury (where it closes on 13 December). Bevan featured in both shows, and now Southampton really does him justice. There are 93 works on view, most of them oil paintings, with a good sprinkling of drawings and watercolours. The exhibition starts in a small antechamber containing a couple of his self-portraits and a drawing of Cumberland Market where he took rooms in 1914 in order to observe the horses and carts which worked in the square. (Cumberland Market was London’s centre for horse feed and building materials after the hay market at Piccadilly closed.)