Dod Proctor
Dod uncompromising in her vision ‘the psychological depth of the portraits she painted, most notably her figures of women in the 1920s’. The previous year her painting Morning was the sensation of the Royal Academy Summer exhibition, and brought her to international prominence.
Her contemporaries Laura Knight and Venessa Bell. Who influenced whom between Harold Harvey, Dod and Harold and Laura Knight hard to pin down.
Influenced by the earlier archetypal Newlyn painters she drew on influences from a much broader range
Cissie Barnes was the inspiration for three of her major works of portraiture in the 1920s
Since her first visit to France she was particularly impressed by Renior’s depiction of the female figures.
Conflicting responses in the present day to her portraits of adolescent girls are - she made clear in her letters that she emphasized an empathy and connection with the subject runs counter to some of the misleading insinuations made about some of her portraiture.
Dod took pleasure in observing all kinds of living things – hens on railway embankments, thrushes. A fondness for animals was very apparent with Dod acquiring and training various new pets throughout her life.
When Dod arrived in 1907, Newlyn as an art colony was already established. Common interest in the use of light demonstrated by Bastien Lepage. Frobes school was dedicated to plein air painting. Encouraged life drawing with posed models and nudes. Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes was a great influence on Dod.
Ddo thought nothing of painting or being the model for nudes. When Dod began painting the style and practice was still heavily dominated by the idealized approach of Victorian artist, exhibited at the royal academy, nudes stylized and carefully constructed, reminiscent of god –like statues of Greece and Rome. A change in ethos which she was to demonstrate in her nude paintings, shifted away from the impassive sublimated being into realistic recognizable figures with contemporary references. Not to say they did not integrate classical or symbolic elements. Some of her most controversial works would represent real and vulnerable rather than remote and idealized bodies.
She had a relaxed and matter of fact attitude to nudity. The only drawback being that it could be a ‘little chilly’ Lack of inhibition that Dod and her contemporaries felt was not shared outside her immediate circle. People were highly disapproving. Was there a desire to crate a stir or an effect amount the primmer members of her audience? Nudes impressed and unnerved the viewing public.
First met Laura Knight in 1907, and went on to befriend Munnings, S J Brich, Laura and Harold Knight mixed closely Dod was painted by Munnings several times
Newlyn provided her with a permanent base – studied at the Forbes School of painting, established in 1899, met her husband Ernest, saw Newlyn transform from a small fishing village special qualities of light and landscape which attracted artist such as Walter Langley, Frank Bramley and Stanhope Forbes. Described by Newlyn as a ‘sort of English Concarneau’.
This work was famously rejected by the Royal Academy’s hanging committee, probably for being too explicit, and which Dod Procter considered one of her most important works.
An ornithologist staying here recently pointed out that it is extraordinary that she is holding a Eurasian collared dove, since they did not reach Britain from the Balkans until the 1940s. Where did she get it?
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