Greenwoods
Lionel Bulmer

After having been demobbed, Lionel Bulmer studied at the Royal College of Art, first at Ambleside - having been moved there during the War - and thereafter back in its historic location on Exhibition Road, South Kensington. Whilst there can be no doubt that the dramatic landscape in the Lakes must have exerted a profound impact on Bulmer - and, perhaps inspired his lifelong sensitivity to the light and atmosphere of rural and seaside locations - the years he spent in the post-War streets of London were at least as significant. Likewise, his tutors in London, including Carel Weight and Ruskin Spear, proved highly influential. The impact of their work - often focused on urban scenes, hinting at isolation and a sense of melancholy, often composed as if from a bird’s-eye view, often sombre and subtle in colour, often with a hint of wit and even irony - can be seen in Bulmer’s early paintings.

On leaving the RCA and until the mid-50s, Bulmer and his partner, Margaret Green, lived in post-War Chelsea – then a good deal less salubrious than the area became in later years. But, the couple was busy and found employment, Bulmer at the art school in Kingston. Thus, although the residential streets were widely damaged and pock-marked, lending the atmosphere a thread of despair, there was also hope for the future. One can read something of these complex emotions and ambitions in Bulmer’s paintings of the 1950s.

This picture, ‘Greenwoods’, is characteristic of some of these early works. But.. there is a challenge in determining the whereabouts of the shop. W.F. Greenwood & Sons was a well-known and long-established antique shop, established in York in the 1820s. Later, it also had shops elsewhere; and the suggestion of pewter plates and mugs in the shop window might confirm this identification. In which case, it was probably not painted in London. But.. the glass bottles and the striped awning might suggest a chemist’s … and there was (and remains) a Greenwoods chemist on the High Street in Wood Green – not very far from Walthamstow College, which was where Margaret Green was teaching!

So, something of a puzzle: but, above all, a very powerful painting, infused with a sense of mystery, executed with a characteristically sophisticated array of closely-toned colours and perpetually entrancing.

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