Waspish traditionalist

Randolph Schwabe (b. 1885) was a measured man in art and in life. His drawings are meticulous, closely observed models of draughtsmanship and represent a school of art that has now largely been lost or dismissed as irrelevant. To some, though, Schwabe seemed old-fashioned even in 1930 when he ascended to the position of Principal of the Slade school of art, taking over from the formidable Henry Tonks.

The publication of his diaries from 1930 until his death in 1948 offers a welcome insight into the divergence in British art between the traditionalists and the new breed of modernists. Schwabe was emphatically of the former camp, and never lost his scepticism about the merits of the latter.

He was mostly a reserved and understated critic, although Picasso, Arp, Klee, Moore, Nevinson, Nicholson and Hepworth all come in for some degree of opprobrium. It is Paul Nash, however, who emerges from the diaries as the unexpected enemy, with Schwabe and his friends making repeated, waspish little assaults upon his work and character. ‘Paul Nash looked very thin (his work, I mean),’ he says, after seeing an exhibition. And of his brother John, he says: ‘Most artists agree that he is a sounder man than Paul.’

Much of the diaries are taken up with more tiresome matters. Details of his duties at the Slade, his work on various committees and endless rounds of judging and interviewing dominate the early entries. There is a preoccupation with the selling prices of his and others’ work and several references to the demands of the taxman — concerns familiar to most artists today.

The war brings out the best in Schwabe as a diarist. The Slade relocates to Oxford, where it cohabits with the Ruskin.