Jan and Cora Gordon

In the Liverpool Daily Post of Tuesday 16th April 1940, Jan Gordon wrote on "War Fancies in Paint." The first picture exhibition inspired by the war at the British Art Centre, Stafford Galleries, St. James's Place, London, W. has two notable features. The first that the subject was imposed on the artist; that is to say, as in older times, the painters were all asked to work deliberately to the theme, they had something for their imaginations to bite on, and were not merely following free fancy. The second is the title, "The War As I See It." The result is a curious paradox. Although few of the paintings can be called entirely successful, they constitute nevertheless a collection more interesting in lots of ways than would have been a normally successful everyday show by the same artists. It is a collection in which many of the artists, strongly moved to express something of the war that they have not seen but have felt spiritually all about them, have reach...

In the Liverpool Daily Post of Saturday 4th May 1940, Jan Gordon wrote on "The Royal Academy: Work of the Younger Painters." Somebody said that feature of this year’s Royal Academy, the first second Great War Academy, was marked by one type of war picture—young women artists who have got their fathers to pose in their tin hats.  That certainly about all of the war there is except for a couple of notes by Nevinson, a file of men marching in the style of his 1915 discoveries and a rhythm of searchlight and long anti-aircraft guns named “Suburbia —1940,” and two problem pictures, both excellently painted, tempera by Miss Louisa Hodgson, "The Sinking of S.S. Goodwood,” represented by a man with an injured leg sitting in a chair, and a breughilesque landscape by Frank Archer, imaginative Polish (?) landscape invaded by Germans, “ The Cries of Them Which Have Reaped.” Among the academicians, the dominating exhibits in painting are certainly three portraits by John, “H. S...

In the Liverpool Daily Post, Tuesday 25th July 1939, Jan Gordon reported on "England's Place in Art." For the first time the International Congress of the History of Art will be held in this country, centred at University College, London, opening on Monday and closing at the end of the week. Among the more important papers delivered will be Mediaeval English Embroidery,” by Mrs. Christie, Holbein and Henry VIII.,” by Professor Ganz, and The English Country House,” Professor Webb. The King has given permission to members to visit the treasures at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, and other visits to important historical collections have been arranged.  In many ways the present is a fortunate moment for the conference. At the Burlington Fine Arts Club an exhibition mediaeval art has been specially arranged and although admission can be got only through a member, such, with a little pertinacity, will not be found difficult. Another fortunate coincidence is the recen...

Jan Gordon had already lived through one war when WW2 broke out in 1939. As he had done at the beginning of WW1 (see The Sketch of 31st March 1915 ), he quickly wrote a short story ( The Sketch, 18th October 1939 ), beginning with "I suppose you'd call us old buffers, though we'd all done our bits, more or less, in the other war.." He had been active as an artist during WW1 and had written extensively on the topic . See, for example, " British Artists at the Front ." In a 1939 article in the Liverpool Daily Post (Tuesday 3rd October), he wrote, under the title "Art in War-Time," the following: The question of how the Arts, or what might be called the mental-emotional stimuli, can be kept up in war-time is one which might be called, in babu language, very moot. The first slightly hysterical catalepsy has worn off, and London cinemas no longer bear the legend: “Shut; nearest open, Aberystwyth,” but the National Gallery still might be label...

The Sketch of Wednesday 18 October 1939 carried the following "Tale with a Sting" by Jan Gordon, called "Unofficial." here it is: THERE were half-a-dozen of us. I suppose you'd call us old buffers, though we'd all done our bits, more or less, in the other war, and that young Flight Lieutenant was our meat. I mean, whatever way you look at it, this war has turned out to be a beastly news-less war, and the whisper that this young chap had had something to do with the pamphleteering of Germany from the air had us all on our toes. Hush-hush and all that sort of thing agreed to, of course, but all the same a little bit of something with a genuine personal touch to it does bring a bit of glamour into the rather dismal business of reading what happens to slip out from a crack in the Ministry of Information to the Press, or hearing what amounts to the same thing over and over again on the wireless, interspersed with selections by Shamus McOrgan. So, judiciou...

The Sketch of Wednesday 1st November 1939 carried "A Tale with a Sting" called SUIT FOR A SIREN by Jan Gordon. Here it is: MISS JANET AVERY looked at her new Siren Suit with delight. It solved a problem. Ever since the black-out started, Janet had been compelled to sleep in her lounging pyjamas, and she was one of those young women who still infinitely preferred the "nightie." After a sleep in pyjamas, she always got up feeling as if she had been to bed in her clothes. But with the menace of air raids, and only some seven minutes from the moment that the "warbled" warning note began, it simply had to be pyjamas. Dressing would have taken up too much of the precious time. But now she had tested it with the alarm clock in two minutes one could easily slip out of bed, scramble into one's undies, thrust arms and legs into the Siren Suit, and, zip there you were. Fully dressed and ready for any emergency, with five minutes to spare. So, having duly ...

The Sketch of Wednesday 26 March 1919 makes mention of an exhibition of Jan Gordon's art works at the Little Art Rooms, Duke Street, London. Marthe Troly-Curtin writes, " I have an idea that many of the fancy costumes worn at the Razzle-Dazzle Ball on the 12th were inspired by the show of dazzle ships which Jan Gordon, Lieutenant R.N.V.R., is having at the Little Art Rooms in Duke Street. I searched there in vain for some works by Jo Gordon too, as generally Jan and Jo are as inseparable in art as they are in life but "Jo" explained quaintly to me that they are trying the experiment of being "cats that walk on their lone" as regards picture shows only! " The exhibition of water colours ("War and Peace") she mentions was reported on by P.G. Konody (The Observer, March 16, page 9), Jan Gordon's mentor at "The Observer." Konody wrote: " He, too, has been attracted by the witchery of the " Dazzleship " which ...

The Sketch, Wednesday 30th December 1942 makes mention of an exhibition of the works of Jack Bilbo  (1907-1967). This was the year after he opened "The Modern Art Gallery" in London. The exhibition was held at the Lefevre Gallery in January 1943. Jan Gordon wrote the preface to the catalogue. Jan and Cora Gordon had also exhibited at the Lefevre, for example in 1934 and from March-April 1937 . Details of their other exhibitions can be found here . Following Jan Gordon's death in 1944, Jack Bilbo wrote a tribute to Jan Gordon in the October 1944 issue of The Studio magazine, commenting, “ I remember when he and Cora used to sit in my den on Saturday afternoons when the gallery was closed, when we exchanged travel experiences from Spain and Yugoslavia, from Mexico and Scandinavia, or talked about artists and paintings, how the four walls of my little room seemed to move away into far distances .” References - Jan and Cora Gordon and "Many-sidedness...

The Sketch of Wednesday 25th October 1939 carried a "Tale with a Sting" called CAMOUFLAGE by Jan Gordon. Here it is: MR. OSWALD IMPEY, R.O.I., was not tough. Definitely not. He was emaciated, he stooped, wore thick spectacles, had a wispy, straggly beard; and as for his hair, it was thin on the top, and what ought to have been up there seemed to be trying to crawl down between his neck and his open collar. He was an enthusiastic landscape-painter and, like very many other artists, had sent in his name for the camouflage corps, but had never had an answer. So on that October day, which had started out fine but had afterwards clouded over heavily, he was standing before his easel in a field in Norfolk, painting autumnal tints. We are accustomed in these days to have all sorts of aeroplanes playing all sorts of pranks overhead, but we are also accustomed to their making a noise while doing so. In consequence, Mr. Oswald Impey had really a disturbing shock at the sudden and ...

"The Sketch" of Wednesday 5th February 1919 has a segment on "A DIAGNOSIS OF DANCING" by MARTHE TROLY- CURTIN, author of "Phrynette's Letter from London." Jan and Cora Gordon get a mention: "There was a jolly party on the 18th at the quaint Futurist little house in St. John's Wood of Miss Ella Erskine, the actress. The costumes were varied and amusing, ranging from that worn by Mr. Leoneff, the Russian dancer, to the Quaker like grey dress worn by the beautiful Eve Balfour, whose portrait by Take Sato you have lately admired in Colour.  I also noticed, dancing in gay clothes and gay mood, Jan and Jo Gordon , of Serbian, as well as of artistic fame. Lady Dorothy Mills wore black with green things." Like the Gordons,  Lady Dorothy Mills  was a traveller, thought to be the first "white woman" to visit Timbuktu ("The Road to Timbuktu" 1924), and a later explorer of the Orinoco River ("The country of...