Courbet’s ‘La Diligence dans la neige’

Leonardo, Vol. 12, pp. 151-154. Pergamon Press Ltd. 1979. Printed in Great Britain. COURBET’S ‘LA DILIGENCE DANS LA NEIGE’* Edward Wakeford (1914-1973) INTRODUCTION second book did not find a publisher-probably quite When, in 1967, the London publishingfirm oj Cassell had the happy notion of commissioningpractisingpaintersto do a series of monographs on individualhistoric paintings that had inspired them, they were looking for more than arthistory . What they hopedfor, and sometimes found, were insights into that network of associations, creative debts and personal projections that constitutes the community of metaphor to which all artists belong. Edward Wakeford’s text has remained unpublished (for the series foundered before it reached ‘Courbet’). This extract is of interest today for the way it unites details of his own autobiography-the landscapes of his own childhood in Switzerland and of his wartime days in Egypt, with his emotional reactions to Courbet‘s great painting. The perceived world and the symbolic incident penetrate in WakefordS own work (Fig. 1) and this is why ‘La Diligence dans la neige’ (a genre picture rather than a straightforward landscape) was so important to him. In writing about Courbet. Wakefordrevealedmore of his own creative processes and of the continuity of imagery and feeling in art than he could have achieved by introspection alone. And through his eyes we learn more about Courbet and about ourselves. Edward Wakeford was an Associate of the Royal Academy hut a far from ‘academic’artist. He was a wellknown teacher at Chelsea School ojArt. He died in 1973. London, 23 May 1978. Peter Lloyd Jones 1. It was odd to be painting again [after being in the British Army during World War 111. I suppose I felt rather like a golfer who, after an enforced absence from the game, is surprised he can still make the ball rise in the air, heedless at present of its direction. But I soon began to feel increasingly dissatisfied. For I saw myself as outside the movement. The face-value given to abstract work at that time, in the fifties, made me feel that as a ‘figurative painter’ (that wretched term) I was working under a disadvantage. I wished I were away from London, working quietly in some place not an art centre. Birmingham or Torquay, I used to think, would have suited me admirably, And then suddenly I stopped. I gave up painting for six years. During this time I attemptedto write. My first book got a friendly reception but did not sell very well. And my *An abridgedversion by Peter Lloyd Jonesof an unpublished essay by Edward Wakeford, whose widow, Aileen Wakeford, 108Beaufort St..Chelsea.London. SW36BU. England provided the original manuscript and approved the abridgement. rightly. Then I started painting again, and’it was Courbet who set me off. I remember the occasion fairly clearly. It was a hot day -in August. Oppressed by the density of London, I had gone down to Eastbourne to be confronted by a further and even more repellent density there. However, when I had left the promenade and its crowds, among which appeared hunger-marchers hungry for freedom, when I had left the hotels all behind and found a path across the cliffs, here, it seemed to me, was the beginning of an enquiry of some sort into the nature of a personal freedom. But when 1 reached the top of Beachy Head where the crowds started up again, it looked to me-potbellied elderly gentlemen in panama hats were standing carelessly on the very edge of the void, young people were gaily swinging down vertical paths to the beckoning seawe were all dallying not only with the idea of freedom but with death, the two ideas confused and became one. In a cafeteria surrounded by a car park I further considered this dreary theme, and then I returned to Eastbourne. Looking back at the Head, I found the blue sky had gone and had been replaced by a vaporous sheet of gold. The sea and the sky were one substance upon which two distant grey trawlers dangled like insects caught in a web. The cliff was alive with colour-ochres, chromes, vivid greens. But there was...