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JOHN BLACKBURN (1932-2022) Browns, 1961 revisited 2019 Oil and mixed media on board Signed, titled and dated verso 121.9 x 121.9 cm (48 x 48 in) Provenance The Artist Thence by descent Having seen John Blackburn's paintings at Woodstock Gallery, in April 1962, Ede wrote to him: I'm old now, & have no room to put anything – but it made me feel what fun it would be to be young, with a great barn & fill it. I did the best I could in the meantime & talked specially to two go ahead dealers – Gimpel & Waddington. I hope I will see more, & also yourself. 1 It was the beginning of a friendship during which Ede sold paintings to Cambridge colleges, gallery directors and students, lent works to exhibitions and made introductions to, among others, the Director of the Fine Arts Department of the British Council, Lilian Somerville. A painting given to Ede in December 1962 was instantly nicknamed Pebble – 'so much there is in it of light & shape & water & wonder.' Ede hung it provisionally beneath Gaudier-Brzeska's Wrestlers, even being tempted to move a bedside painting by Nicholson. 2 Ede's letters to Blackburn reveal much about his approach to art. (Always reticent about photographs, Ede confessed, 'I never can get much from them – one wants the clear impact of the painting itself – its vibration which is so much of its design.') 3 In December 1962, Ede spread around him several of Blackburn's works: they do all stand!! I got to know better the tall one you like so – its of course far more complex & more of a painting in the traditional sense of pigment etc… I'm not sure that it is what I call "resolved" whatever I mean – that it is still in the searching stage. This house is really awful for painting just because it's a FULL HOUSE already – & if I could clear it all away or just have no distractions each new painting would be happy. 4 Ede studied each with intense attention, sometimes becoming excessively preoccupied by details of surface or form. One work, about which Ede initially enthused, seemed on reflection to have 'blemishes in a smudge – all part of the painter's work I know but not necessary [sic] helpful in a final performance – it's like a cough or a stutter or a mistake in a recording – O.K. while being done but a bother on constant repetition!' 5 Many paintings hung temporarily at Kettle's Yard. One such was Whites/Creams/Greys (1962), which Ede lent to the British Embassy in Paris as well as to a Cambridge college, where apparently a tidy cleaner cut off a rough end of canvas 'greatly needed for the balance of the whole' and dropped into her bucket. 6 Ede responded particularly to Blackburn's palette, 'variations of white and spaces of rich colour' that readily found a place in his collection. 7 The relationship appears to have been one of equality, Ede formulating his response to Blackburn's work at the same time as encouraging Blackburn's development as an artist. 8 A point of reference was the work of Roger Hilton and William Scott. Ede wrote, in 1964: Don't worry you are not Hilton or Scott – but what you are is hard yet for me to determine … I don't see Hilton – I don't see Scott – & I only see you comparatively. I believe you have a power & an urge & an integrity – & what is more needed, a vision 9 1 Ede, letter to John Blackburn, 14 April 1962, Blackburn Archive, quoted in Ian Massey, John Blackburn, Sansom & Company, Bristol, 2018, p.20. 2 Ede, letter to John Blackburn, 10 December 1962, Blackburn Archive. 3 Ede, letter to John Blackburn, 31 May 1962, Blackburn Archive. 4 Ede, letter to John Blackburn, 10 December 1962, Blackburn Archive. 5 Ede, letter to John Blackburn, 19 October 1965, Blackburn Archive, quoted in Massey, John Blackburn, p.28. 6 A Way of Life: Kettle's Yard, p.132. 7 ibid. 8 Frustratingly, only Ede's letters to Blackburn have been traced. 9 Ede, postcard to Blackburn, 3 September 1964, Blackburn Archive, quoted in Massey, p.32. Kettle's Yard with Ben Nicholson's sculpture in the foreground, John Blackburn's lead relief behind, and Elisabeth Vellacott's portrait of Gwen Raverat beneath. Photograph Jasper Fry, 2022. © Courtesy Kettle's Yard. 24