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A PICTURE OF HUMPHREY JENNINGS BY CHARLOTTE JENNINGS 'HUMPH', as he was known to his friends was left handed. He demanded not to be interrupted when he was painting - but was happy to have his wife and daughters sitting in silence, around him. Often the radio was on with Classical music, which he loved. Only his most intimate friends saw his work and only once in his lifetime at the London Gallery in 1938 did he attempt a comprehensive exhibition. His reason was not modesty but a desire on his part to concentrate without interruption on his most intimate expression and development of a style. From a very early age it was clear his strongest wish was to become a painter. In fact it was the stability of a regular wage that finally persuaded Jennings to join a profession that he had vehemently rejected a few years earlier,'I should hate doing films really simply I want to draw,' he had written in a letter to Cicely on 23rd April from Pembroke College. In the 1930s he was a close friend of the Surrealists. Jennings attempted to run a Modern Art Gallery with Julian Trevelyan. Roland Penrose, Paul Eluard, André Breton and Peggy Guggenheim all had paintings of his in their collections. In 1938, Jennings bought the work 'Au Seuil de la Liberté' from Magritte. A moderately large painting, it hung in our sitting room at 8 Regent's Park Terrace - a daunting image. In the 1930s it was often the habit of the Surrealists, when they sold a work, to give to the buyer a smaller work. Magritte gave to Jennings a watercolour, very similar to his 1933 oil 'La Réponse imprévue' (The Unexpected Answer). Before we finally returned to London in 1947, we lived at Titly Hill, near Dunmow, Essex. It was a fair sized house belonging to the artist John Armstrong and the poet John Pudney. One of the rooms was locked off. It contained paintings by Armstrong. As a child, I never passed by it without thinking there were people in there! After one more move from Tilty we returned to London, 8 Regent's Park Terrace. Jennings had lived at this address since 1944. Nearby was Colour Merchants Roberson's, from whom he purchased his art materials - always of the finest quality. Disillusioned of the scarred peace that the ending of the war had brought, Jennings 'reverted', as in a childhood state of innocence, to the simplicities of pre-Industrial Britain - the rural, the pastoral. The pigments of his oils are thinned, closely resembling watercolours. To my father, art was an essential ingredient of life, which continues in developing and changing forms. On a bus ride in 1947, to look at the ''The Cleaned Pictures', at the National Gallery - I asked him why he didn't make pictures (both paintings and films), like others do? ''Because'', was his answer, ''they're not real''. It was to my great delight that on Tuesday 9th May 2006, my father was honoured for his services to the arts with an English Heritage blue plaque at 8 Regent's Park Terrace, London. Charlotte Jennings is the younger daughter of Humphrey Jennings. She is an artist and has documented much of the art work of her father and has lectured on aspects of his work in the UK, USA and Australia. She lives in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Humphrey Jennings (1907-1950)

Smoke No.2

Details

Humphrey Jennings (1907-1950)
Smoke No.2
with studio stamp (on the stretcher)
oil on canvas
14 x 18 in. (35.6 x 45.7 cm.)
Painted circa 1949.

Exhibited

London, Mayor Gallery, Exhibition of Paintings and Works on Paper - Humphrey Jennings, November-December 1993.

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