This carefully worked drawing was made by Ruskin Spear when he was teaching at the Royal College of Art in the mid-1960s. The composition shows a model posed amidst the clutter of a studio at the Royal College of Art, an anatomical skeleton is shown hanging in a cupboard, whilst a drawing board is shown propped up in the foreground. Spear has included copious colour notes, suggesting his intention to work the design up as a finished painting, although no such canvas appears to survive. The identity of the model is so far unknown, but a tantalising clue to her identity as a professional artist’s model survives in the form of two completed works by Spear’s friend and colleague at the Royal College of Art, Carel Weight. Weight’s canvases, entitled African Girl no.1 (private collection) and African Girl no.2 (Nottingham City Museum and Art Gallery) show the same sitter posing nude. In African Girl no.2 the setting for the painting is clearly identical to this drawing, Weight even includes the skeleton and row of lockers.
Spear was a central, if largely overlooked figure, in the British art world of the mid twentieth century. Born in Hammersmith, Spear was the son of a coachbuilder and cook and considered himself ‘a working-class cockney’. Physically impaired as the result of contracting polio as a child, Spear was prevented from active service during the Second World War, he did contribute noteworthy paintings of working life on the home front, commissioned and purchased by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. Spear became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1944 remaining a regular exhibitor for the rest of his life. He revelled in exhibiting a wide range of subjects, as Marina Vaizey has noted: ‘his facility with paint, and his fascination with low life and high life, and the foibles of both, often made his contributions newsworthy. Pub characters, members of the royal family, and politicians were his favourite subjects.’
Spear was a celebrated teacher during a golden age of the Royal College of Art. Spear is featured prominently at the heart of a group portrait of the teachers in the Painting School made by Rodrigo Moynihan for the Festival of Britain in 1951. Amongst Spear’s colleagues was Carel Weight, who became a close friend. The pair taught a stream of talented younger painters at the Royal College including R.B. Kitaj, Frank Auerbach, Peter Blake and David Hockney. Spear celebrated Weight and Hockney in a portrait of 1961, Weight is shown in an ill-fitting tight coat buttoned up, his eyes concealed by the mirror effect of strong light bouncing off round glasses, as Tanya Harrod has observed ‘behind, in profile, stands David Hockney, then a student, looking towards one of his own paintings – a classic pastiche by Spear but close to Hockney’s Grand Procession of Dignitaries in the Egyptian Style.’[1] Spear was a passionate and respected teacher at the Royal College producing a series of portraits of his colleagues, including the rector, Robin Darwin, the Royal Academician Rodney Burn and furniture designer David Pye. In this beautifully realised drawing, Spear captures a model posing in his studio at the Royal College of Art, the same model is recognisable from two canvases painted by Weight. Both Spear and Weight capture the interior of the Royal College, then situated on Exhibition Road in cramped quarters attached to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Spear’s carefully plotted ink drawing presents a striking portrait of the sitter, offering a rare window on the Royal College during its most successful decade, whilst it was training a diverse group of young painters from Pauline Boty to Frank Auerbach.
Carel Weight
African Girl no 1, 1965
Oil on canvas
39 15/16 x 29 15/16 inches; 1015 x 760 mm
Private collection
Carel Weight
African Girl No. 2
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 inches; 1016 x 762 mm
Nottingham City Museums & Galleries
