Cyril Mann (lots 11-22)

I am convinced that Cyril will one day be recognized as one of the ‘greats’ of British art
(Renske Mann)

Introduction
Although London born, Mann's parents had come from Nottingham. After Mann's father was invalided out of the Great War suffering from shell-shock, the family moved back to the Midlands. With her husband incarcerated in Nottingham mental hospital, his mother raised her four children on his meagre War pension. Aged twelve Mann became the youngest student to enrol at Nottingham School of Art, but was obliged to leave two years later to earn his keep and help his mother. Later, however, he travelled to Canada to become a missionary. But the vast, arresting landscapes and his meeting with the Canadian Group of Seven painter Arthur Lismer rekindled his passion for painting.

Returning to England in 1933 Mann enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools, his tuition supported by the benefactor and patron of the arts Erica Marx (1909-1969), niece of Karl Marx. He also spent time in Paris studying with the Scottish colourist J. D. Fergusson (1874-1961). In the Second World War he served as a gunner in the Royal Artillery but later became a conscientious objector, painted London’s bomb-scarred landscapes and taught at the London County Council Central School of Art.

The 1950s marked a stylistic shift in Mann’s work as he developed his ‘solid shadow technique’ of hard-edged, stylised outlines. The style emerged when Mann was living in a council flat above a gold bullion dealer on Paul Street in Shoreditch. The barred windows left him reliant on artificial light, and under the stark glare of a bare bulb he began producing heavily worked canvases with bold outlines and exaggerated shadows. Works such as Still life with pomegranate (lot 11) exemplify this distinctive phase. After he moved to a light-filled flat in Islington, however, the darkness dissolved, the shadows giving way to a softer, more natural treatment of form and light (lot 12), which coincided with his burgeoning relationship with Dutch-born Renske Van Slooten.

Renske became his muse, model and wife, shaping many of his works of the 1960s which typically explore the intimacy of their shared domestic world. Her memoirs describe both devotion and difficulty: the long hours spent posing, the instability of his health, and the precariousness of life with a mercurial, uncompromising artist. She recalled Mann’s intractability, including his resolute rejection of the gallery system: 'They’re not interested in art, only money, and I won’t give them the satisfaction of rejecting me. They don’t know what I know.'

Despite his intransigence, from the 1950s when he was teaching at Kingsway Day College and the Sir John Cass College he had enjoyed a string of exhibitions, including in the West End at the Brook Street Gallery and Hanover Gallery. And in the 1960s Mann was given further shows in Mayfair at St Martin’s Gallery and Alwin Gallery.

Through Renske’s eyes Mann emerges as a man fiercely devoted to his vision, for whom love and creativity were inseparable even as financial pressures mounted. Over half a century he sought to break new ground in figurative painting, exploring dynamic light effects and shadow shapes. But the strain on his mental health took its toll, and ultimately proved overwhelming, leading to Renske leaving him after twenty years together. After spells sectioned in Claybury mental hospital in 1979, he died from heart failure a year later. Renske Mann’s book on her husband The Girl in the Green Jumper, My Life with the Artist Cyril Mann was published in 2022.


CYRIL MANN (BRITISH 1911-1980)
STILL LIFE WITH POMEGRANATE
intialled M upper right; oil on board; 29.5 x 29.5cm; 11 3/4 x 11 3/4in (38.5 x 38.5 xm; 15 1/4 x 15 1/4in framed)

Painted circa 1957.

Exhibited
London, Piano Nobile, Cyril Mann, The Solid Shadow Paintings, 2018-19, no. 23