Harold Gilman: Beyond Camden Town

Artist: Harold Gilman
Authors: Neil Walker (ed.), Wendy Baron, Lily Foster, Lara Wardle & James Rawlin
Publisher: Djanogly Art Gallery
Date: 2018
Condition: Very good, some minor handling marks but essentially as new.

There are some artists whose public awareness is built on just a handful of really well-known images, and Harold Gilman could be counted as one of these.

His Mrs Mounter at the Breakfast Table in the Tate collection is rightly recognised as one of his major paintings, but there is a lot more to him that that.

In around 1910, Gilman's painting style began to change; his palette became bolder, his handling more textured. His understanding of Van Gogh, then still a fairly niche interest, grew and he began to create a remarkable body of paintings that even now feel remarkably modern.

Yet in 1919, the day after his forty-third birthday, he died, a victim of the influenza epidemic which swept Europe after WWI.

There is still a lot of research to be done on Gilman and his life, but even now it is easy to see how his images of London, of working people, of women, still have plenty to say.

This publication accompanied the 2018-19 exhibition, the first dedicated to Gilman since the early 1980s. It focussed on the years from 1910 until his early death in 1919 and includes thought-provoking essays by Wendy Baron and Lily Foster and several previously unexhibited paintings.

A scarce catalogue now