2. Paradox of a Disappearance. Accidental Rediscovery.

DISAPPEARANCE

Taylor was an active member of and a regular exhibitor with the Penwith Society, between 1956 and 1964. He also exhibited in group and solo shows in London, Bristol, Gloucester, Nottingham and around the UK in Arts Council touring shows.

In spite of the fact that by 1958 he had his work acquired by private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, who acquired a wood sculpture, none of his works are mentioned, discussed or reproduced in any art history books about St Ives.

Regrettably, works known to have been originally acquired by public museums can no longer be traced (MOMA, New York; Arts Council Wales, Leicester…). 

Three or four mentions of his name, in passing, is all that remains in books about St Ives.

The fact that Taylor's works are still in private hands or have been lost or destroyed has made tracing and documenting his oeuvre difficult.

The last recorded sale of a work by Taylor, is of a sculpture titled May bug, first exhibited at the Drian Gallery in 1958, and acquired by the Paisnel Gallery in London, over ten years ago from the Belgrave Gallery.

The international auction record does not list any work by Taylor.

The neglect by art historians and curators is somewhat surprising given his active presence in St Ives and the distinctiveness of his approach, in the context of both St Ives and Britain. The fact that Taylor refused to play the 'art game' and preferred to experiment without networking with the London galleries, combined with the fact that he produced a small 'oeuvre', and finally his decision to emigrate to the South of France, may explain his fall into oblivion. The fair quota of artists selected by art historians to represent the history of British Art in St Ives may also explain this lack of interest.

BRIEF HISTORY OF A PROJECT (2010-2014)

CHANCE ENCOUNTER

This project started, by accident, a few years ago, in North Catalunya, when I came across an oil painting (Ore stream) and a long ceramic dish (below), both signed  'Bruce Taylor' and dated 1957, at an antique fair. 

The painting had a distinctive British quality, with an echo of Graham Sutherland's incisive calligraphic lines; the ceramic was strikingly different from the Leach-Cardew ruralist St Ives style, and seemed to reference a 'free form', abstract pictorial, continental ceramic modernity.    

The ceramic dish, an earthenware dish of elongated form, was press-moulded by hand, and decorated with an 'abstract' design, applied using a wax-resist process:

Although not representational (like some of the popular ceramic sea gulls he produced for the tourist market), the organic form of this piece invites us to read its glaze as 'markings'. 



A little girl of eight (in 1956) told me she remembers placing five red apples into this dish half a century ago; in preparation for a party at the Taylor's home… where Alan Davie and his family would have been guests:

Surprised by the distinctive quality of these works, which bear the stamp of both English and Continental Modernism, and wondering how works of this quality had ended up at a 'brocante', inspired me to find out. 

IDENTIFYING THE ARTIST

1. The first reference I found to Bruce Taylor's work, on the net, concerned the sale of a sculpture by the Paisnel Gallery, in London. 

The gallery website provided a short (but truncated) note that read:

'Born in Yorkshire. He studied at Bath Academy of Art. Taught in Hertfordshire and in the late 50's in Cornwall. He lived in St Ives and worked in welded sculpture. He was a member of the Penwith Society and became chairman in 1957. Exhibited in m…'

This was the only work the gallery had ever come across by this artist.

This short biographical note, was taken from the entry in the catalogue of the 'British Abstract Art of the 50s and 60s' exhibition, organised by the Belgrave Gallery, London, in 1992; in which that work was exhibited, without a title.

In 1994, the same work was exhibited again at the Belgrade Gallery in an exhibition titled Affordable Abstract Art (2-25 December 1994), when it was probably acquired by the Paisnel Gallery.

The work is now in a private collection.

2. David Buckman's dictionnary of 'Artists in Britain', published by the Goldmark Gallery (01572821424), available on line at [http://issuu.com/powershift/docs/dictionary_t], seems to be the only published source of information currently available [beside this blog and a short article I wrote for Arts Cornwall] about Bruce Taylor. It provided the Belgrave and the Paisnel galleries with biographical data about the artist:

'Bruce Taylor (1921-) - Sculptor and teacher, born in Yorkshire, who studied at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham. He taught in Hertfordshire, then in Cornwall, living in St Ives. Was a member of the Penwith Society, becoming chairman in 1957. Showed in many mixed exhibitions in Britain and abroad, including 19 Young Sculptors, Hillfield Gardens, Gloucester, 1962,when he was resident at Pitchcombe, Stroud. Had a solo exhibition at Drian Gallery, 1958. Taylor had work in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Leicester Education Authority. He was featured in Belgrave Gallery's 1992 show of British abstract art of the 50s and 60s'.

The text reproduces information Taylor prepared for the catalogues of Taylor's various exhibitions  with the Penwith Society of Arts (1957,1958,1959,1960-…), at the Drian Gallery (1958), in Arts Council Touring exhibitions (1957, 1960?), at Arnolfini (1961, 63, 66), etc. and must be accurate; for its content was supplied by the artist.

Any other information needs to be teased out from family, friends and people who knew him. Correspondance with family members and friends enabled me to retrieve the vissicitudes that made up his life: from his birth in Salford, his childhood and youth in Yorkshire, military service in the airforce, studies at Corsham, move to St Ives, etc., till he finally emigrated, with his family, to the South of France, in search of a different life.

WRITINGS ABOUT ST IVES: A 'Ghostly Presence' at the back of a photograph

St. Ives Revisited: Innovators and Followers by Peter Davies (1994) reproduces a photograph showing a group of up-and-coming St Ives artists: Roger Leigh, Bruce Taylor, Gwen Leitch, Denis Mitchell, Brian Wall, Misome Peile. 
It was very probably taken on 30th June 1958, at the Drian Gallery, in London, at the preview of the exhibition '4 sculptors . 2 painters'( 1-9 July 1958).

The only mention of Bruce Taylor in Davies's text is as someone who initiated his fellow artist Roger Leigh to 'practical pottery' (p.69).

[This photograph, and its caption led me to source a copy of the catalogue. Peter Davies, later put me in touch with Nick Leigh, son of Roger Leigh who was a friend of the artist and visited him every Summer at his farm house in the south of France. But Nick was too young to remember anything useful].

St Ives 1939-64 Twenty Five Years of Painting, Sculpture and Pottery, London, Tate Gallery (1985).

This publication only makes one reference to Taylor: his election as chair of the Penwith Society in 1957, but no reference to his work (p. 109). 

The St Ives Artists: a biography of place and time, by Michael Bird mentions Bruce Taylor once, in passing.

After Trewyn: St Ives Sculptors since Hepworth, by Peter Davies (2001) mentions Bruce Taylor as one of four sculptors who exhibited at the Drian Gallery in 1958.

Painting the Warmth of the Sun St Ives Artists 1939-1975, by Tom Cross (1984) does not mention Taylor at all.

The fact that these books were written twenty or more years after Taylor had left the country, when his name was already forgotten (except by a few friends), and could not be contacted, whilst his work lay invisible in private collections, explains the silence around him and his work. 

The fact that he left a small body of works — still scattered in private hands and in a few public collections in the UK [the Arts Council of Wales acquired 'King and Queen' in the late 60s; Leicestershire Education authorities and Cornwall County Council also acquired works, as well as the Museum of Modern Art, New York] — and his 'turning his back on the art world, explain why he disappeared from the British art scene. 

Less pushy and self-assertive, in the competitive art environment of St Ives — fraught by tensions and disagreements, and dominated by artistic cliques and hierarchies — and having to teach to support his family and fund his artistic work, Taylor avoided the tensions and frustrations of the 'art race', and eventually opted for a new life, with his wife and family, and a utopian life-style in the south of France.

His absence from official accounts of the history of St Ives art testifies to the existence of an 'Other St Ives' that has been edited out without much sense of loss.
A painting by J. Jillard shows an other aspect of St Ives that is alluded to in diaries but never made it into painting. It is a regrettable for it reflect a different version of 'La Bohème' in a rural setting.

FROM METEORIC RISE TO SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE 

Taylor's artistic life is an enigma, even to his family.

The limited known biographical data [see above] states that Taylor was born in Yorkshire (in fact his marriage certificate indicates that he was born in Salford, on 26th January 1921; but he spent his childhood in Huddersfield, where his mother came from), that he studied at the Bath Academy (Corsham) [1950-51], lived [and taught?] for a while in Welling Garden City [an address on the back of a photograph of a commission for Harrogate Museum reads: 'A.B. Taylor, 5a, Hollycroft, Welling Garden City, Herts.']; then moved to Cornwall (1956), where he taught and became an active member of the Penwith Society of Arts, during the golden years of St Ives [1956-1065].

FROM ACTIVE MEMBER OF THE PENWITH SOCIETY & UP-AND-COMING ARTIST

Member of the Penwith society of Art since 1956, Taylor was elected chairman in 1957, and remained an active, exhibiting and devoted committee member till 1965.

The catalogue of 2nd July-30th September 1964 exhibition lists him as a member, but does not include any work in the exhibition. 

His name last features as a member and as an exhibitor (with two works) in the catalogue of the 12th Nov. 1964-5th January 1965 exhibition.

The catalogue of the 19th August-2nd October 1965 no longer lists him as a member.

This suggests that he left St Ives sometimes during Summer 1965.

It seems, as fellow artist and friend Roy Conn told me, during a visit to St Ives, that Taylor had sold his properties (house and studio) and had temporarily moved to Gloucestershire, where he had had an exhibition in 1962.

In 1961 and 1966 he also exhibited at Arnolfini, Bristol.

The fact that he restored a house Beagetodn on the site of an old house that had been damaged by a storm, at Towednack, in 1961, suggests that he only moved away temporarily — and reluctantly — but shifted his exhibition focus away from St Ives, in an attempt to gain recognition.

The last documentary evidence of Taylor's presence in St Ives is a newspaper photograph in The St Ives Times & Echo dated 3.03.1967, showing him, alongside Bernard Leach, opening an art exhibition of 'schoolchildren art' at the Penwith Gallery in St Ives, in March 1967. By then he had moved to Grantham, in Lincolnshire, to take up a teaching position, with his wife, in a school. Their plan was to save enough money to be able to move to France, and start a new life. 

Sometimes during the 60s (1966?), the Arts Council of Wales acquired one of his largest sculpture, King and Queen,  and was in contact with him till 1969-70. 
An enquiry to the St Ives archive from Arts Council Wales in 1970, shows that Taylor had replied to a first letter, but could no longer be traced at his first French address. Communication ceased soon after, when Taylor settled at Mas de Fourtou (where he remained till 1979; when he moved to Taulis), in the Pyrénées Orientales. In both places he worked as a studio potter, to earn a modest living;  unable to fund his sculpture as he had originally intended. Soon illness prevented him from working, and he tragically spent the last six years of his life ill and bed-ridden.

The silk-screen print reproduced below, dated 1968-70, was promising. It shows a brighter palette and  a more painterly approach to color & mark-making, as well as a direct engagement with Catalan culture. Unlike PIcasso, however, he never became a bull-fight afficionado:

Whereas Picasso's representations of corridas convey a passion for the ritualistic fight between 'toro' and 'torero':



Taylor empathised with the 'victim'. His print shows the bull after the 'estocade' and his final collapse: