The Brighton artist who went green: Robert Bevan’s landscapes

‘How many greens can you count?’ This is the question posed in a description to be found below a painting currently on exhibition in Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.

The picture is by the local Hove-born artist, Robert Polhill Bevan (1865-1925). It bears the title, ‘Fields at Applehayes’, of around 1922. Bevan maintained a strong commitment to landscape painting throughout his career, and his later years developed and refined his handling of a predominantly green palette in his rural scenes.

Fields at Applehayes, by Robert Bevan, 1922. FA001267

The painting is included in Down from London, Spencer Gore and Friends, a collection on show at present at Brighton’s Museum and Art Gallery. The exhibition reflects the relationship between the artists of the Camden Town Group and Brighton and Hove. The society was not long lasting, founded in 1911, and dissolved just two years later, in 1913. Its name, while the group was in existence, did not escape occasional critical comment. Did it sound too urban or metropolitan? Indeed, was it misleading?

Many of the sixteen member artists and their wider circle did base themselves in the capital certainly, and painted scenes of city life. However, some of them did range more widely, during the years 1911-13, and at other times in their careers. Bevan, for example, painted in his home county of Sussex, but also in Brittany, on Exmoor, in Poland, and Devon. He became more noted, perhaps, for his depictions of the disappearing world of the horse-drawn cab and horse-sale auctions in London.

The Cabyard, Night by Robert Bevan c1909-1910. FA000121

Brighton’s collection of works by Bevan represents a sizeable body of his output: his ‘green’ landscape paintings of East Devon. Bevan’s ‘Rosemary la Vallee’ of 1916 hangs alongside the slightly later, ‘Fields at Applehayes’. ‘A Devonshire Valley, No. 2’ of around 1913 is also to be seen. This has a companion piece in fact, ‘A Devonshire Valley, No. 1’, held within the collections of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery (RAMM) in Exeter.

Rosemary la Vallee by Robert Bevan, 1916. FAH1988.14

Brighton’s version appears to be a looser and lighter study for the more ‘finished’ copy at Exeter. Both, though, show Bevan’s post-impressionist style, which he shared in common with other Camden Town Group painters. The Gallery’s description below its ‘No.2’ emphasises one of the main characteristics of much of their art, the bolder use of line – to be seen here in the edging of trees, fields, and buildings. There is also the strong and rich use of colour, much favoured by the artists of the Group, and, in Bevan’s case, clearly in his many varied and vibrant green tones.

A Devonshire Valley no 2, by Robert Bevan, 1913. FA001266