Wet Afternoon

Among the woman artists now recognized for their transformative role in Australian modernism were three talented individuals who were drawn to London to study printmaking under artist Claude Flight at the renowned Grosvenor School of Modern Art. These women were Dorrit Black, Ethel Spowers, and Eveline Syme.

Born in Melbourne, Spowers (1890–1947) produced color woodcuts and later turned to Japanese woodblock printing before studying with Flight in 1928 and again in 1931. She experienced artistic success in her lifetime—her linocuts were purchased by institutions including the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the National Gallery of Victoria.

The scene depicted in Wet Afternoon is typical of the Grosvenor School, a faceless London crowd sheltering under umbrellas, evoked through the signature rhythmic patterns that Flight instilled in his students. Yet Spowers differed in her emphasis on organic movement, as opposed to Flight’s favored expressions of mechanized speed and dynamism. Her subject matter is consistently affirming, showing an affinity with the joy that she experienced through observing everyday physical activities such as children at play. In this way her art provided a welcome counterweight to the themes of alienation and panic present in so many other depictions of urban life in the interwar years. 

The Japanese influence seems unmistakable in Wet Afternoon. The bold slashes of rain, sea of umbrellas, and rich hues of red and green all recall the Ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world) that aimed to represent everyday life in Edo-period Japan, much like the democratic art of the Grosvenor School.

You can see Wet Afternoon on display at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London until 8 September 2019 as part of Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking, the first major exhibition of The Grosvenor School.

P.S. Here's another beautiful depiction of rain and an umbrella.