A Garden in Winter

A painting by Evelyn Dunbar and wintry, comfort reading

“Winter Garden” - Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960) c.1928 - 37 © The Tate Gallery 30.5 x 91.4 cm

In this week’s post I am focusing on one painting by a favourite artist, Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960), as I know no better evocation of the closing days of December, when all is quiet in the garden. I hope you enjoy it too.

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In 1993, soon after I moved to Norwich, an exhibition of women’s art was held at the Castle Museum. On loan from the Tate, it was called “Writing on the Wall” and each piece of art had been chosen by a woman writer and their response, in either fiction or a personal essay, was placed alongside their chosen piece. It was an exhilarating exhibition, featuring work that included Paula Rego, Winifred Nicholson and Gwen John. But there was one painting that held my gaze and which I have never forgotten: “Winter Garden” by Evelyn Dunbar. (See above.)

At the time I was creating my own cottage garden, with brick edged paths, formal fruit trees and hopefully what were to be brimming borders, and perhaps this is partly why it held me, but more than this, it captured a garden at rest in the fading light of a December afternoon. Garden paintings in art rarely show gardens out of season, more often they celebrate burgeoning midsummer, but here we see the bones of the garden, the carefully laid out structure that will later support the planting. The letterbox format allows us to see the sweep of the plot and each detail is tenderly rendered. It is a place that has not just been observed and recorded, but understood too.

I love December. There is a quality of light that only exists in the days leading to the Winter Solstice that is captured here. For as much as this painting is about a garden, it is also about those moments before dusk slips into dark, when the gardener retreats inside after a hard day’s digging, to warm against the chill. A rosy haze bathes the formal paths and lights the jagged edges of the side edged bricks. The clouds have shifted to that particular shade of smoky blue which is reflected in the roof tops that can be glimpsed over the far hedge to the left of the garden. The beds look freshly dug and the remains of the summer crops removed, ready to rest until spring returns. There are glass cloches too, now empty, which suggests that it is predominantly a vegetable garden, and there are neatly pruned espalier fruits trees running alongside the wall. This is a garden that is loved and orderly.

Through the trees, to the right, a grander building can be glimpsed with a tower, and this is the house to which the garden belongs: The Cedars, the family home of the Dunbar’s from 1924 - 1946 in Strood, near Rochester in Kent. A three storey house, with 17 rooms and a garden of two and half acres that looked out across the town and the river Medway, it was certainly a substantial residence.

“Winter Garden” was painted over the course of several years, begun in 1928, just before Evelyn attended the Royal College of Art, and only completed in 1937. It was painted en plein air in the garden and, was perhaps the reason it took so long to complete, as the hours available to paint are so few as December reaches its ebb. The tower that we see in the distance was in fact Evelyn’s studio and was one of the key reasons her father purchased the house. A painting (shown below) survives of their home, with the eponymous cedar trees at its door, and was made when she was just 17, and which she kept all her life.

The Cedars Oil on canvas c.1924 Photograph ©Liss Llewellyn. Private collection

Early Spring by Evelyn Dunbar c.1936 Oil on canvas 19.7 x 44.5cm ©Tate Gallery

Evelyn was as much a gardener as a painter. Taught and encouraged by her mother, Florence, who was also a painter, the garden features in much of her work, documented through the seasons. Above is a smaller study, this time focusing on the left hand side of the garden which depicts Florence digging in the borders, just as the soil begins to warm again. The cloches are still empty, but we can see acid green euphorbia, the first fresh shoots of bulbs and some early narcissi. The sky is now a sharp cerulean, with bright clouds, and the garden lit by sunshine. We see her below too, bent over weeding, much later in the season, the borders filling and edged by pinks or perhaps lavender?

Evelyn Dunbar, ‘Herbaceous Border at The Cedars’ (c.1934), © Liss Llewellyn

Florence Dunbar in the Garden at The Cedars c.1938 oil on canvas Photograph: ©LissLlewellyn Private collection

Here, Evelyn’s mother, takes a moment of rest on the garden bench, her foot propped up and a chequered blanket across her lap. It must still be early Spring as the first daffodils can be seen.

Evelyn Dunbar, ‘The Dunbar family in the Garden at The Cedars, Spring’ (Version 1), c.1928 (HMO 75), via Liss Llewellyn

Here we see the whole family in the garden, all busy and involved, but what is her father showing her mother - are they bulbs or potatoes?

Evelyn and her mother had help in the garden, provided by Alf and Burt, one of whom, we are not sure which, came in to work an eight hour day each Saturday. The two are pictured below in a lively drawing by Evelyn, their limbs being controlled by puppet strings, looking like early incarnations of Bill and Ben. It suggests that Florence and Evelyn certainly had them under tight control.

Alf and Bert 20th October 1936. Tate Archive: ©Estate of Evelyn Dunbar

The Cedars, which was sold in 1946, briefly became a hotel, was then divided into flats and is now a private home. The garden is sadly no more and lies, like so many gardens of that period, buried beneath concrete and a housing estate. But thankfully it remains preserved in the wonderful drawings and paintings of the artist, who I shall return to again in Spring, when I shall tell how this remarkable woman was discovered after being silent and unknown for many years.

Evelyn Dunbar c1935 with bessom broom in hand, perhaps sweeping the lawn of worm casts?

© Modern British Art Gallery

Further Reading

Evelyn Dunbar: The Lost Works Edited by Sacha Llewellyn and Paul Liss

Evelyn Dunbar: War and Country _ Gill Clarke

Evelyn Dunbar: A Life in Painting - Christopher Campbell - Hughes

Sanctuary: Artist-Gardeners 1919-1939 The Garden Museum - Paul Liss and CHristopher Goodward

Something to Read

Woods in Winter - Stella Gibbons

I read this at the end of last year and realised that I had never mentioned it here. Though set between the wars, it was was Stella Gibbons’ last published work (1970), and it is certainly one of my favourites novels. It tells the story of Ivy, a char lady living in a rented room in London, struggling to manage. She longs to live again in the countryside of her childhood and, by a sudden change in fortune, she gains her wish. It is a tender tale of ageing, solitude and unexpected friendship and her writing of the countryside in winter is delicious. Here is a snippet to entice you:

The mist was drifting rapidly away, and the moon was riding in a clear sky. Down the lane marched Ivy, along the top of iron-hard furrows, between the narrow pools of glistening ice. She looked about her, now; at the leaves withering on the hedges, at wreaths of bryony, colourless in the moonlight, at the twigs making a black pattern along the top of the hedges against the sky.

If you are looking for a comforting, warm blanket of a book to see you through 'til Christmas, then look no further.

Just before Christmas each year, I have a reading ritual, I turn to either “The Dark is Rising” by Susan Cooper or “The Children of Green Knowe” by Lucy Boston. (See my post from last year here and you can read about Lucy Boston by Ann Kennedy Smith here. ) And when I read that Katherine May is conducting a readalong of “The Children of Green Knowe” through December - how could I resist? Do let me know if you have a favourite December novel, I am always keen to discover more.

Thank you for your company this month and for sharing your time with me. I shall be back in a couple of weeks and I look forward to seeing you then. In the meantime, if you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to press the heart as it really helps spread the word!

Another reason the love December: the rooks returning to roost at dusk.