30 1/8 x 41 1/2 ins
For once I had to be at College and for one week I didn’t care a damn whether or not Mother fainted. I was locked up in a little cubicle, as we all were, and left alone. That was why this was painted. And it is the only thing, other than those drawings, that comes out of my college years. I’m only sorry I couldn’t have purchased a decent canvas for myself. It was poor quality board and cheap student paints. But one tried to make something of it.
There were two subjects for this diploma ‘Supper at Emmaus’ and ‘Charity’. But I’d already had my boots given to me. This mysterious walk back from the grave is an amazing subject. I couldn’t have imagined a more marvellous subject. At that time everyone spoke always of colour; and through sheer perversity, I used browns instead of greens, although I know this was painted in summer time.
I started painting straight away on this panel. I didn’t draw anything. I didn’t make studies. I didn’t square anything up. You see the thing and you paint it. It isn’t in any sense a literal translation. I didn’t think about Jerusalem or the Walk to Emmaus. This is Keats’s Grove which by then had all become overgrown. These are the walls and trees that I saw there. The Dutch house, the sea that I knew.
These three are going to sit at this table. And whilst I was painting, I thought ‘This chair knows it is going to receive Christ and so it glows with a halo’. I don’t really like talking about it but I think that this is filled with the idea of a man who has come back from the grave. If you think of the immense robustness of some of the Italian paintings, this man has been crushed and he feels his way, just as these two discuss whether it can be the Master. And this table suggests an alter.
When one talks about philosophy in relation for instance to a picture like this, I think that every picture you make,every drawing you make, is a self-portrait. If they have anything in them at all, anything real, they must reflect something that comes from within.All sorts of things were said about this picture. Arthur Simmonds, a Cotswold sculptor and puppeteer, a kind man, looked at it and said ‘You see the light you have on this head. Well, with the light falling from this angle, this moon should be round the other way’. A fellow student at once said to me ‘How have you worked out the perspective of those table legs? If it were right, then that back leg wouldn’t be visible’. But to me it was more important to make the perspective wrong for the sake of this piece of design. Afterwards, one saw this in picture after picture, the really great ones.
I went to College absolutely thankful to have the chance to be able to work. But what I needed was imaginative instruction. By that I mean you get more out of a student by giving him every possible encouragement you can. It’s a very subtle business. One was criticized whereas life itself was a desperate enough struggle. I’m talking about this in quite a general way. It’s a very simple and natural situation. Artists to be any good must be inspired by some sort of fervour, whereas at College there was a flatness in the teaching.
Had it been possible, I would undoubtedly have worked on my own. All one wants is a small private income, a roof and even two meals a day, because what you learn on your own and through oneself is really learnt. A great deal of teaching can only be something which is not in true accord with oneself.
Walk to the Moon - the Story of Albert Houthuesen, The Putney Press 2008
Provenance
Sir John RothensteinPrivate Collection