Neglected master

Every so often, about once a decade, the work of Mark Gertler (1891–1939) is rediscovered and exhibited. I remember seeing excellent shows of his work at the Ben Uri Art Gallery in 1982 and in 2002, and at Camden Arts Centre in 1992. Each time a well-selected body of his paintings is gathered together, we are reminded of the extraordinary talent of this young artist, who tragically took his own life. Yet for many of those who care about art, Gertler is still best remembered as the wild bohemian obsessed with the Bloomsbury siren Dora Carrington. Certainly, Gertler’s 1913 portrait of her, a striking example of his Neo-Primitive tempera style in the key of blue, and one of the many treats of this exhibition, doesn’t quite explain the attraction. More beautiful and more mysterious is the girl he portrayed as ‘The Violinist’ in 1912, a painting of seductive colour and mesmeric clarity.

The show opens with ‘The Artist’s Brother Harry, Holding an Apple’, a Gauguinesque postlapsarian come-hither painting of surprising simplicity and much presence. At right-angles hangs a subdued but effective self-portrait of the youthful artist at his easel. Gertler drew like a Renaissance master, as can be seen in his pencil study ‘Old Man with Beard’ on the wall opposite. Here, too, is the very peculiar ‘Creation of Eve’, its focal point the fork of Eve’s widely parted legs. Another superb drawing, this one a study for the famous portrait of Natalie Denny, and then comes a lively oil landscape from 1916, entitled ‘The Pond, Garsington’. X-rays have just revealed that this is in fact painted over the only known oil study for Gertler’s most famous painting, his 1916 anti-war statement ‘The Merry-Go-Round’, now in the Tate. If you look carefully, you can see the outlines of the tented top of the carousel on its side on the left of the picture, coming through the green of the trees.