East London Group

The East London Group of Artists was a group of artists who worked and showed together from 1928 to 1936. They were mostly working class, realist painters whose formal education had often stopped at elementary school.

The group developed from an art club at the Bethnal Green Men’s Institute to a group of artists showing and selling in London’s West End and beyond. They exhibited alongside prominent artists of the day, and attracted enormous press coverage and support, taught by John Albert Cooper, Phyllis Bray, Walter Sickert and others. A few members had trained at the Slade School of Fine Art. The East London Group’s drawings and paintings show buildings, streets, and ways of life that no longer exist.

In 1923, a warehouseman, a house decorator, three deck hands waiting for a ship, and a haddock smoker started an art club. It met twice a week at the Bethnal Green Men’s Institute in Wolverley Street in East London. They found time and money for materials, despite having families and working long hours on piecework or for poor wages.

The Art Club grew strongly and held its first exhibition in 1924 at the Bethnal Green Museum. The very tightly-knit community of Bethnal Green turned out in force. There were around 30 active members, 15 of whom showed 88 works in this first show.

John Cooper, who taught at Bethnal Green, eventually severed his connection with it after a disagreement. From the 1924-25 session he began teaching at the Bow and Bromley Evening Institute in Coborn Road, E3. To this he eventually attracted key members of the Bethnal Green Art Club, such as Walter Steggles, Harold Steggles and Elwin Hawthorne, whom he asked to join him at Bow in 1927.

The charismatic Cooper had served in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War and then attended the Slade School of Fine Art. Newly graduated, he was a professional painter of portraits and landscapes, supplementing his income by teaching evening classes. His advice was to paint what was around, straight from life, rather than painting images for greetings cards or copying posters of film stars or seed packets.

Walter Sickert also lectured to and mentored the students. His message was the same as Cooper’s: students did not need to go on expensive excursions to find landscapes to paint. ‘There is no need to go to Bognor,’ he said. ‘You can go into the Tube.’

Some artists connected with the Slade occasionally provided teaching assistance and showed with the Group. These included Phyllis Bray (to become Cooper’s wife for a period), William Coldstream and Charles George Hamilton Dicker.

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Wikipedia