The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (84 page)

 
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Camden Town Group
.

Group of British painters formed in 1911 who took their name from the drab working-class area of London (as it was then) made popular as a subject by
Sickert
, who lived in the borough for several years. In addition to being the prime inspiration of the group, Sickert suggested the name. The group lasted only two years, but its name is also used in a broader sense to characterize a distinctive strain in British painting from about 1905 to 1920, and as Wendy Baron , the group's leading historian, has written, ‘If we define Camden Town painting as the objective record of aspects of urban life in a basically Impressionist-derived handling, and recognize it as a distinct movement in British art, then we must accept that the heyday of Camden Town painting was over by the time the Camden Town Group was born.’ Many of Sickert's disciples showed their work at the exhibitions of the
Allied Artists' Association
, founded in 1908, and several of them also did so at the
New English Art Club
, but for some of them these institutions were not progressive enough, which led to the decision to form the Camden Town Group in 1911. Women were excluded and it was decided to limit the membership to sixteen, who were originally: Walter Bayes (1869–1956), Robert
Bevan
, Malcolm Drummond (1880–1945), Harold
Gilman
, Charles
Ginner
, Spencer
Gore
(president), J. D.
Inness
, Augustus
John
, Henry
Lamb
, Wyndham
Lewis
, Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot (1886–1911), J. B. Manson (1879–1945), who was secretary, Lucien
Pissarro
, William Ratcliffe (1870–1955), Sickert himself, and John Damon Turner (1873–1938), an amateur painter. After Lightfoot's suicide in 1911 he was replaced by Duncan
Grant
.
These artists varied considerably in their aims and styles. Their subjects included not only street scenes in Camden Town, but also landscapes, portraits and still lifes. Several of them painted with a technique that can loosely be described as
Impressionist
, with broad, broken touches, but particularly after Roger
Fry's
Post-Impressionist
exhibitions of 1910 and 1912, the use of bold, flat areas of colour became characteristic of others, notably Bevan, Gilman, Ginner, and Gore. These four best represent a distinctive Camden Town ‘style’, one that was much imitated by painters of the urban scene up to the Second World War and beyond. The Camden Town Group held two exhibitions at the Carfax Gallery, London, in 1911 and a third in 1912. They were financially disastrous, and as the gallery then declined to put on more exhibitions, they merged with a number of smaller groups to form the
London Group
in November 1913. The new body organized a collective exhibition in Brighton at the end of 1913, but although the exhibition was advertised under the name of the Camden Town Group, it may be regarded rather as the first exhibition of the London Group.

 
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cameo
.

Carving on gemstones, glass, ceramics, or similar materials in which the surrounding ground is cut away so that the design stands up in
relief
above the surface. It is the opposite of
intaglio
. Often, the term refers to a portrait cut in a gemstone; this form was highly popular among the Greeks and Romans for jewellery and it was revived during the Renaissance. Commonly a banded or multicoloured stone, such as agate, was used, in such a way as to exploit the different layers of colour—with one colour for the background and another for the carving, for example.

 
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(Latin: ‘light chamber’). An apparatus for drawing and copying, patented in 1807 by William Hyde Wollaston (1766–1828), a well-known man of science. It received this misleading name—for it is not a ‘chamber’ at all—because it performed the same function as the
camera obscura
, but in full daylight. It consists essentially of a prism on an adjustable stand. The draughtsman sets the prism between his eye and the paper in such a way that he can see an image of the object apparently lying on the paper and can trace its outline. Various refinements were added to the basic format, including a lens to aid focusing.

 
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(Latin: ‘dark chamber’). An apparatus which projects the image of an object or scene on to a sheet of paper or ground glass so that the outlines can be traced. It consists of a shuttered box or room with a small hole or lens in one side through which light from a brightly lit scene enters and forms an inverted image on a screen placed opposite the opening. The optical principle is essentially that of the photographic camera. For greater convenience a mirror is usually installed, which reflects the image the right way up on to a suitably placed drawing surface. The principle was known as early as Aristotle, but the first written account of its use for drawing is ascribed to Giambattista della Porta , a physician of Naples. His description in his work on popular science,
Magiae Naturalis
(1558), did much to make the device widely known, and by the 18th cent. the camera obscura had become a craze. Both amateurs and professionals—among them
Canaletto
—were using it for topographical painting, and we hear of an apparatus, somewhat like a sedan chair, inside which the artist could sit and draw, at the same time actuating bellows with his feet to improve the ventilation. More modest versions were easily portable and even pocketable.

 
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