Report by HM Inpsectors on the Borough Polytechnicm 1947
P30-31, on the Art Department
(ii) Composition
The teacher is a painter of wide experience who has developed a very personal style in his own work.
The Composition class takes place on two mornings each week in the Life room and is attended by both full-time and part-time students. The room is badly lit and there is hardly adequate accommodation for the full number of students working on large-scale pictures.
The subject of each student’s work is carefully related to his interested and potentialities, and the students are then encouraged to develop their ideas in a direct and spontaneous manner concentrating from the beginning on the main construction of their pictures and evolving of forms expressive of the particular theme. Sketches are enlarged and revised in a number of stages until the final work is carried out, usually on a large scale.
By means of considerable personal effort the teacher has been able to give confidence to his students and to maintain a high level of interest in the work. Although the majority of students have had little previous experience, their work shows a remarkable imaginative intensity and feeling for design. Most of them have at present small ability as draughtsmen and much of their work is characterised by a certain vagueness of form.
The ultimate value of these rather unorthodox teaching methods will depend very much on whether the students can bring a strong personal perception of nature to the technical understanding of picture making they are now acquiring and thus avoid mannerism.
(iii) Life Drawing. A Life Drawing class is taken by the same teacher on one afternoon during the week. It is attended by full-time and part-time students, and, as the number has grown too large for the size of the Life room, the Head of Department proposes to split the class.
The approach to Life Drawing is related to the methods used in the Composition class. The teacher rightly insists on an atmosphere of concentration being maintained in the Life room and he aims at making the student regard each drawing as a creative exercise rather than a piece of passive copying. Many of the drawings in the Students’ folios had been done using charcoal or chalk in a broad sweeping manner which brought out the beauty of the material and gave an attractive suggestion of the main forms and movement of the figure. This method has enabled students of little experience to acquire rapidly a means of expression. If, however, the student came to rely too much on one approach, there is a danger of their developing an empty facility rather than a sound conception of drawing, and it was felt that these drawings should be supported by studies of a more detailed nature.
The Tuesday and Thursday evening classes are attend mostly by part-time students and the instruction is given on orthodox professional lines. Most of the students are amateur draughtsmen who apparently make no use of their drawing either for producing pictures or for any other purpose. Life Drawing is best studied as a means to some end and it would be valuable if the Sketch Club that formerly used to run in the school could be revived so that these students could be encouraged to produce work for its competitions and put their drawing to some use