The Camden Town Group in London

The Camden Town group was not a long-term group. As a matter of fact, the group held
just three exhibitions, all at the Carfax Gallery in fashionable St Jamess, London, in 1911
and 1912., but its name has become synonymous with a distinctive period in the history of
British art before the First World War. Its name comes from an area of north London where
a number of the artists lived and worked, the group aimed to reflect the realities of modern
urban life. It started out in weekly gatherings held by Walter Sickerts Fitzroy Street Group
since 1907 and which in 1913 developed into the larger and intentionally more diverse
London Group, still active today. The Camden Town Group was composed of sixteen
artists, judged by an inner core to be the best and the most promising of the day.
Controversially, women were not allowed to join, though they formed part of the groups
circle1.

Its members valued originality of expression and accepted different approaches,

although they related more to a shared ethos and ambition which was to respond to the
social and cultural life of modern Britain, just as impressionist painters had painted scenes
of modern life in France a generation before. These artists produced small scale, modestly
priced paintings showing the everyday surroundings and pursuits of typically lower middle
and working class people. Social reportage was incidental to the painters attempts to make
art based on truthful observation, in order to discover scenes of visual and even
psychological fascination within urban life and also with landscapes and rural scenes or
glimpses of nature seen in the city2. It was this choice of subject matter which marked them
1Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt and Jennifer Mundy, Introducing The Camden
Town Group in Context, The Camden Town Group in Context. May 2012.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-towngroup/introducing-the-camden-town-group-in-context-r1106438
2Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt and Jennifer Mundy, Introducing The Camden Town Group
in Context, The Camden Town Group in Context. May 2012.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/introducing-thecamden-town-group-in-context-r1106438

as a distinctive force in the art world at the time. Nowadays, their works offer tantalizing
insights into the sometimes jarring experiences of modern urban life in the period leading
up to the First World War. Through these paintings we see, set amid reminders of Londons
past, a world of motor vehicles, electric lighting and a modern Underground system,
combined with unmistakable signs of shabbiness and decline in areas like Camden Town3.
Their notably excluded women artists; Stanislawa de Karlowska, Sylvia Gosse, Nan
Hudson and Ethel Sands, had complex motivations, which emerged from the time in which
they lived. It was a time of suffrage agitation and the development of the modern woman.
Through their paintings they redefined the concept of the domestic interior. Originally, the
British home was inextricably linked to social and moral values, gender roles, economy and
the function of taste. The Camden Town painters presented color schemes, furniture tyepes,
textures and ornaments to form specific room-types whose meanings were read against
the character of their inhabitants. Thus, to demonstrate that the domestic interior was a
space where they could exercise their own creativity and enter into conversation and
exchange ideas4.
The Camden Town Group experienced a degree of critical neglect for many years.
Later scholars tended to pay more attention to the groups more stylistically innovative
contemporaries: Bloomsbury and the Vorticists. Although the group dissolved in 1913, it
represented a determined effort by painters to explore new ways of representing the
everyday realities of urban life in Edwardian Britain regardless of style5.
3Helena Bonett, Ysanne Holt and Jennifer Mundy, Introducing The Camden
Town Group in Context, The Camden Town Group in Context. May 2012.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-towngroup/introducing-the-camden-town-group-in-context-r1106438
4Nicola Moorby. Her Indoors: Women Artists and Depictions of the Domestic
Interior, Helena Bonett, Helena et al. The Camden Town Group in Context, May
2012. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-towngroup/nicola-moorby-her-indoors-women-artists-and-depictions-of-thedomestic-interior-r1104359
5Lisa Tickner. Modern Life and Modern Subjects. British Art in the Twentieth
Century. New Haven and London, 2000. 193.

Bibliography:
Bonett, Helena et al. Introducing The Camden Town Group in Context, The Camden
Town

Group

in

Context

May

2012.

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/researchpublications/camden-town-group/introducing-thecamden-town-group-in-context

r1106438

Nicola Moorby. Her Indoors: Women Artists and Depictions of the Domestic Interior,
Helena Bonett, Helena et al. The Camden Town Group in Context, May 2012.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/camden-town-group/Nicola
moorby-her-indoors-women-artists-and-depictions-of-the-domestic-interior
r1104359
Lisa Tickner. Modern Life and Modern Subjects. British Art in the Twentieth Century.
New Haven and London, 2000. 193.