'A Crisis of Brilliance' - Dulwich Picture Gallery

The new exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery is called, 'A Crisis of Brilliance' and is a collection of works by young British artists at the start of the 20th Century who all attended the Slade School of Art in London. They were Paul Nash, CRW Nevinson, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and David Bomberg. The exhibition was inspired by David Boyd Haycock's book of the same name from 2009 and features 71 works from between 1908-1922 chosen by Haycock.

It's an inspired decision to have a group exhibition so we see the artists experimenting with different subjects and media, from early student works to finding their own styles. The period covers the First World War and included are some war paintings, depictions of ravaged countryside and ravaged humanity. Some are quite painful to look at. Early student sketches and portraits give way to increasingly individual paintings. A sketch of a naked standing woman by Carrington is really quite special showing that from an early age she was an astonishing draughtswoman.

The surprise for me was Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, an artist I'd never actually heard of. He seems to have had a checkered life but I liked his angular paintings and shied away from his disturbing war paintings like the bombardment of Ypres and 'La Patrie'. 'La Patrie' depicts dead and dying soldiers lying on straw in a barn, left (in all likelihood) to die since there were so many of them on the Western Front. It is a dark painting in so many ways and made me think of my Granda who was there at the time and wounded.

Two of my favourite paintings were by Mark Gertler, both due to the rich colours and shapes on the canvas - 'The Fruit Sorters' and 'Gilbert Cannan and His Mill' with Gilbert and two huge dogs in the foreground. 'The Fruit Sorters' is an interesting composition with barefoot workers carrying fruit and I peered at the woman with the fruit basket 'hat' to work out where her hair ended and the basket began. I wonder - is it based on reality or just a whimsy of Mark's when he began it? Whatever, it's a nice antidote to the pain and destruction in Nevinson's war paintings.

Gertler also painted a lovely portrait of Dora Carrington, titled 'Portrait of a Girl in Blue Jersey' and the title describes it perfectly. Carrington is shown with her severe haircut wearing a blue jersey and sort of smiling. The colours are  a lot richer and deeper than in this version. I like that painting in all its simplicity.

Carrington is probably the most sympathetic of all the featured artists and the only woman. I saw a rare screening of the film about her life and love for Lytton Strachey a few years ago (with Emma Thompson as Carrington) so am vaguely familiar with her life  but what has never been fully explained is her apparent reluctance to be an artist - an exhibited artist. She was quite prolific in some ways and produced a sound body of work but she drew and painted for herself and for Lytton, for her friends, not for the public. She was an astonishing portraitist, finding the detail that makes a portrait come alive and we see that in her portrait of 'Mrs Box', a farmer. It's the fine detail of very gently sketched lines around the mouth and eyes that made me look twice - elegantly depicting age and weary labour over the years.

Her masterpiece is her portrait of Lytton Strachey which is part of the exhibition. She focuses in on a few details that make the portrait come alive and you need to see it in front of you to see the details. At first glance it's the oddly elongated fingers that draw the attention but up close you can see the carefully painted glasses, his ear and nose, the nails on both hands with the rest of the image being sketched in. It really is marvellous to see it up close, particularly surrounded by the other paintings in the exhibition to give a context in time. After the exhibition it will, I expect, return to the National Portrait Gallery.

Carrington killed herself shortly after Lytton's death from cancer. She wrote, "Everything was for you... I see my paints & think it is no use for Lytton will never see my pictures now, & I cry".  That's a terrible sadness. Everything was for Lytton

Dulwich isn't in the centre of town but it's easy enough to get to - if you get the chance go and see this great exhibition and marvel at the works and dreams of a set of young artists that we should hear more about.