Robert Medley, 1905-1994

ROBERT MEDLEY (19 dec 1905 - 20 oct 1994)

1905 Born 19th December in London.

1919 Educated at Gresham's School, Norfolk. Began to draw and paint. Christopher Nicholson, brother of Ben, was also at school as was W. H. Auden, who became a close friend.

1921 Enrolled at Byam Show School of Art and attended the Royal Academy School for two months, where he was impressed by George Clausen.

1923 Saw performances of the Diaghilev Ballet at the London Coliseum. Succeeded in entering the Slade, where Tonks and Steer were teaching.

Began a friendship with Henry Moore and met Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and the Bloomsbury set. Admiration for Cézanne, Derain and Matisse. Learned a great deal from Fry, read Ogden and Richards's "Principles of Literary Criticism", the metaphysical poets, and books with a philosophical content. Occasional meetings with Stanley Spencer and Mark Gertler

1926 Travelled to Paris, where Medley lived for most of the following two years in rue Jacob. Copied paintings by Poussin and Chardin in the Louvre and drew and painted at the Academie Moderne under Jean Marchand.

Met Marcel Duchamp and attended the first night of Cocteau’s “Orphee”, which greatly impressed him. First real impact of Picasso, Braque, Rouault, Leger and Matisse. Read Paul Gleizes.

1927 Exhibited first painting in “Young Artists” show organised by the Sunday Express.

1928 In Paris again, met Berard and Tchelitchev, Tzara and Picabia. Returned to London, lived in Fitzroy Square. Exhibited in the London Group and at the Goupil Gallery.

1929 Frequently in Paris. The artist’s experience there taught him the necessity of allowing physical sensuality into his painting, which had been hard to realize before.

First visit to the south of France, going to Duncan Grant’s villa at Cassis.

Through Rupert Doone, the artist met dancers and artists connected with the Diaghilev Ballet.

1930 Member of the London Group, and the London Artist Association which was formed by Maynard Keynes and Samuel Courtauld as an artist co-operative venture, revolving round the personalities of Duncan Grant and Roger Fry.

1931 First one-man show at the Cooling Galleries. A series of drawings commenced of dancers in movement.

1932 Began to teach at Chelsea School of Art. Moore and Sutherland were also on the staff. Medley’s work became more calligraphic: figure subjects, and the first imaginative landscapes verging towards surrealism. In Cambridge, helped to lay the foundations of the new and experimental Group Theatre.

1933 Renewed contact with W.H. Auden, who wrote the “Dance of Death” for the Group Theatre. Henry Moore was commissioned to design a mask for Death and Medley designed the costumes and lighting. Rupert Doone devised the choreography and was co-producer with Tyrone Guthrie.

1934 Met Christopher Isherwood and painted his portrait. Visited Berlin, where Rupert Doone produced the dances for “La Belle Helene” for Max Reinhardt.

1935-36 Produced sets and costumes for the Group Theatre season at the Westminster Theatre, London.

1934-36 Work as a painter disrupted by theatre activities. Medley painted mostly in gouache. Began to try to relate work to social context.

1936 Helped to establish the Artists International Association with Misha Black, Herbert Read and others.

Moved away from the ideals of the Bloomsbury set and became more friendly with more abstract artists including Henry Moore, Sutherland, Piper, Zadkine, Wadsworth and Paul Nash.

Attended the first meeting to launch the surrealist movement in England at Roland Penrose’s house - “The Jokers” was exhibited at the first surrealist show in London in 1937.

1937 “Ascent of F6” by Auden and Isherwood produced at the Mercury Theatre: sets, costumes and masks were by Medley; the production was by Doone and William Devlin and Alec Guinness were in the cast.

Exhibited six pictures, including “Tenement Buildings” and “The Jokers” at Agnews with Francis Bacon, Roy de Maistre and John Piper.

1938 Returned to the theatre to design sets and costumes for “On the Frontier” by Auden and Isherwood. Won the competition for the Old Vic safety curtain design - as a memorial for Lilian Baylis. Painted “Red Street Scene”, a more social-realist picture with expressionist-caricature elements of distortion and “artificial”, invented colour.

Moved to Wharton Street, Islington. After six years work in the theatre Medley got much more involved in painting again. Fearing sentimentality, Medley began to eliminate elements of fantasy.

1940 Visited Newcastle, Nottingham and Grimsby as official war artist. After the fall of France, Medley volunteered for the army.

1941 - 45 Posted to Middle East, based mostly at Cairo G.H.Q. Intensive travels in Middle East from Syria to Algeria.

1943 - 44 The artist travelled intensively in America with the British Military Mission. Medley saw modern French art again in American Museums, met Keynes and Lopokova again, on an economic mission, as well as Leger, Lincoln Kirstein, Granville Barker, Geoffrey Gorer and others.

1945 Following demobilisation, the artist returned to London and taught at Chelsea School of Art, where Ceri Richards was on the staff. Influenced by Delacroix’s Orientalism, Medley tried to formulate Middle-Eastern experiences through allegory by exploiting mythological themes.

Met Minton, Vaughan and Colquhoun, and admired their work whilst mistrusting certain English romantic roots.

1948 - 49 Lefevre Gallery exhibition. After this, a radical shift in attitude to painting: less interest in successful picture making, far more awareness of the immensity of the individual mark. Medley began to make a heightened use of touch and accident.

1950 “Cyclist” pictures commenced, still showing the need to impose form and pattern.

1951 To Slade as visiting tutor in reformed stage design department.

Began concentrated phase of reassessment of painting, and felt the need to disrupt much of what he had earlier formulated for himself. Became suspicious of stylisation.

1952 - 54 “Antique Room” series. Some of Medley’s last paintings to retain a closed, naturalistic space. The paintings, were, however, also an attempt to get more layers of association into a painting, in depth. Increasingly trusted intuition and appreciated that visual appearances were merely an accidental starting point.

Distrust of decorative colour, search for organic colour, to express experience and knowledge. Restricted his colour, and began to consciously consider getting away from all props. Contemporary Art Society show: “Figure in a Setting” included the first “Antique Room” painting.

1953 Retrospective touring show in the north of England.

1953 - 57 Seeks to construct a poetic space within a strictly figurative representational subject matter. Uses his linear gift to explore space, rather than to detail or describe a form. Frequent contact with Ceri Richards and Francis Bacon.

1955 - 57 This was a difficult period for the artist, but landscapes such as “Gravesend: Path to Factories” succeeded in a way which took him a year or two to consolidate and remain an important landmark for Medley.

1958 Left the Slade School and went to LCC Camberwell School of Art and Crafts as head of department of painting and sculpture. Exhibited a collection of pictures at the Royal West of England Academy at Bristol with Keith Vaughan and Ruskin Spear.

1959 Painted landscape and figure subjects with more use of colour, trying to integrate it with the freer kind of drawing which enabled Medley to record the varying degrees of emphasis given to objects that make up the natural visual theme. Painted “Studio Interior” in which Medley sought to cut out anything inessential to his feelings or any irrelevant description.

1960 Exhibition at the Leicester Galleries.

1960 - 63 The impact of American painting gave Medley great encouragement in trusting to instinct. He had, however, always felt the need for terms of reference. He became increasingly concerned with the act of seeing and feeling.

“The closer I look as an isolated act, the more illusory nature becomes. Appearance is purely accidental. Prolonged attachment to and contemplation of a subject leads me to the conclusion that I am not dealing any more with objects but with analogies. I need to break down a separation between myself and the subject. Neither can take place without the presence of the other.”

The problem for Medley with “Action-Painting” was that it removed the conflict he had in testing the experience of the picture against reality.

1963 First retrospective at Whitechapel Gallery, London. Exhibition curated by Bryan Robertson. Catalogue essay by John Berger.

1965 Medley retired from Camberwell Art School.

1966- Following the Whitechapel exhibition Medley continued to make pictures that featured a deliberately biomorphic imagery. However, by the late 1960s he began to move away from the use of open-ended forms discovered by chance and the sensuous involvement in paint as paint. Instead, Medley turned to straight-edge abstraction, and to techniques and media (acrylic mostly) which made alterations to predetermined structures difficult to effect.

1972 Successful exhibition of new paintings at the Lisson Gallery.

1978 Exhibited at the Artists’ Market in Earlham Street, Covent Garden. The works were a trial run of sixteen large-format screenprints illustrating the poem Samson Agonistes, and specimen pages of a projected book.

1980 Published the book in a limited edition with twenty-four screen-printed images corresponding to passages in the text. Regarded by Medley as one of his greatest achievements. The making of the Samson illustrations directed Medley once again towards representation. After their publication he returned to painting the figure, and to the looser, more expressive handling that characterized his work in the early sixties.

1984 Second retrospective at Museum of Modern Art, Oxford

1994 Exhibition at the Coram Gallery. Won the Charles Woolaston Prize, awarded for Preparation for the Execution , the most distinguished work in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Died 20 ^th October 1994.


Adapted and extended from the biography of Robert Medley included in the catalogue for his Whitechapel Gallery Retrospective in 1963.