CYRIL MANN (BRITISH 1911-1980)
WILD AGAVE ON THE BEACH, IBIZA
signed Mann lower right
oil on canvasboard
21.5 x 30.5cm; 8 1/2 x 12in
27.5 x 36cm; 10 3/4 x 14 1/2in (framed)

Painted in 1955.

Cyril Mann (lots 5-14)

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

Introduction
Born in London, on the outbreak of the First World War Mann's father was conscripted into the army, and his mother took her four young children north to live in Nottingham. In 1923, at the age of twelve, Cyril Mann became the youngest student ever to enrol at Nottingham School of Art. After finishing his studies Mann 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 he enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools. His tuition was supported by the benefactor and patron of the arts Erica Marx (1909-1969; niece of Karl Marx); Mann also spent time in Paris studying with the Scottish colourist J. D. Fergusson (1874-1961). When the Second World War broke out he was conscripted and served as a gunner in the Royal Artillery. Later he 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 so-called ‘solid shadow paintings’. Defined by hard-edged, stylised outlines, the style emerged when Mann was living in the basement council flat above a gold bullion dealer on Old Street in the City of London. 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 Milk Bottle and Wild Agave on the Beach, Ibiza (lots 5 & 6) exemplify this distinctive phase, their bold, unnatural colours and densely painted surfaces reflecting both the intensity of his method and the unusual conditions under which he worked. 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 (lots 8), which coincided with his burgeoning relationship with Dutch-born Renske Van Slooten, an art student almost thirty years his junior.

His first marriage, to Mary Jervis Read, had been marked by financial strain, ill health, and the lingering effects of war. By 1950 the relationship had collapsed, Mary later remarking, To live with Cyril you had to love him very much. I suppose that in the end I didn’t love him enough. But maybe no one could have done… A decade later Renske took on the task. She became his muse, model and wife, and shaped many of his works of the 1960s, which often explore the intimacy of their shared domestic world. Renske's 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.

Renske 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 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. The strain on them both, however, proved overwhelming. Renske ultimately left him, and in 1979 Mann was admitted to Claybury mental hospital, and died 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.