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Fred Jackson at Staithes with Laura Knight
Britain has a strong tradition of landscape painting reaching back to the eighteenth century. It is in this genre
that British painters have produced some of their finest work: the poetic vision of Palmer, the intense naturalism of Constable and the majestic vision of Turner all represent
pinnacles of artistic achievement. Despite this strong native tradition however, it was the nineteenth century French landscape painters that attracted the young artists of Fred
Jackson's day.
As a young artist, it was inevitable that Jackson should be drawn to France, which had superseded Italy as Europe's
artistic centre. One finds George Moore urging his fellow artists to go there:
"Everyone must go to France. France is the source of all
the arts. let the truth be told ..." It was in France that painting was undergoing radical and exciting changes, and it was at the tiny village of Barbizon on the outskirts of the Forest
of Fontainebleau that such changes were taking place. The artists working in Barbizon had exile themselves from the sterile, academic values of the day. They rejected Neo
Classicism and Romanticism and, instead, focused their attention on a study of nature and the realities of contemporary life. They wanted to capture an immediate
response to a scene and this resulted in a more painterly and spontaneous technique. Eventually, this became a vigorous experimentalism, typical of the scientific tradition
of the nineteenth century. It reached its culmination in the paintings of the Impressionists who strove for ever greater naturalism, devoid of social or sentimental implications.
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Jackson has much in common with the Barbizon painters and, in his large scale
works, especially those of the fishing scenes of the North East coast, it is Millet whom Jackson most clearly resembles. It was Millet who retained and stressed the human element in landscape painting. He emphasised that the beauty of a landscape could not be considered in isolation from the people who lived in it and advised, "When you paint picture, whether of a house, a wood the sea or the sky, always be mindful of man's presence." He was the first artist to faithfully and systematically interpret the lot of the peasantry. He depicted the stonebreakers, ditchers, woodcutters, gleaners and winnowers involved in their daily tasks and invested them with a biblical dignity.
In England at the turn of the century, there had been an acceleration of industrialisation
and urban development and only in the fishing communities could there still be found a group of people involved in an unchanged, constant struggle with the elements. It is the fishermen who, for Jackson, is the equivalent of Millet's peasant. It is interesting to note that whilst Jackson was chronicling the Staithes fishermen, another local artist, Edward Stott, was following a similar path. He retreated to Amberly in Sussex and painted poetic, rather melancholy pictures of the English countryside under threat of a rapidly advancing mechanisation. Like many of his contemporaries, including his colleagues of the Staithes Group, Fred Jackson is often referred to as an English Impressionist. Strictly speaking, this title is not correct.
English artists of the time never wholeheartedly subscribed to the true principles of Impressionism. They
considered the Impressionists too extreme and their work an ephemeral craze. The Impressionists, in return, were dismayed at what they considered a lack of real comprehension of their work. Monet, living for a time in London, is recorded as feeling isolated and as thinking our artists conservative and insular. He despised them for the affectations of the Arts and Crafts Movement and for their attachment to the sentimental. Pissarro was so disappointed by the English scene that he tried hard to dissuade his son from settling in London.
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It was Bastien Lepage who had most influence on
those artists visiting France. He belonged to a group of artists who were known as Juste Milieu (Middle of the Road). These artists adapted certain aspects of the Impressionist technique, such as their light palette and loose handling, making them more acceptable to public taste.
They exploited the new
technique but preferred to keep solid draughtsmanship and a sense of form. More than anything else, they served to popularise one very important aspect of the Impressionist method, 'plein air' painting i.e. painting out of doors.
Jackson doggedly pursued these principles of "plein air" painting throughout his life, and encouraged the younger artists of the Staithes Group to follow his example.
Staithes
did not have anything like the Mediterranean climate of the other English "plein air" colony at Newlyn in Cornwall. It was exposed to the harsh winds of the North Sea and work in
out of doors there must have often involved considerable discomfort. Jackson's perseverance in battling with these conditions is recorded in Laura Knight's description of him:
"He
painted out of doors in any weather. Under the mittens he wore, his hands were swollen, stiff and chapped, as were the edges of his ears and the wings of his nostrils". T. W. Butterworth, who
accompanied Jackson on his visit to Russia, also comments on the artist's determination in contending with a severe
climate. It is his pictures of Russia which are the culmination of Jackson's work as a "plein air" painter and, though often small and seemingly slight , these works could be considered his finest.
Michael Cross
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