Court on Canvas opened at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in May this year, promoting itself as the first exhibition to explore lawn tennis in art.
Thematic shows are always a good way of taking a new look at a subject, but why here at Birmingham University?
Well, tennis is the summer game, and it was developed in nearby Edgbaston in the 1850s. And Ann Sumner, the director of the Barber, has long-cherished combining her passions for art and tennis.
If this was not enough, Athena’s famous Tennis Girl poster (you know the one) was shot on Birmingham University’s tennis courts. The introduction to the show also states that the game was played by a number of artists, some of whose work is represented here.
The result is a fascinating insight into artistic responses to tennis, mainly from a British perspective. Given that the game’s development took place here before photography could record players in action, this is understandable.
The work is hung in the coolly elegant gallery on a green background that works well for the subject. The gallery is broken down into themed areas: an introduction; lawn tennis’s heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; tennis parties; urban tennis; photographic responses; and sketches.
Hazy summer days
The earliest work on show is an anonymous portrait of a male player of 1767 standing before an old-style court wearing a white silk waistcoat and a turban.
Lawn tennis developed as a game for country-house parties and the lawns of affluent suburbia. It was one of the cultural changes that led to more freedoms for women, allowing them to exercise and meet men in public.
The earlier works reflect these concerns with artists such as Edith and Mary Hayllar and George Kilburne producing works that portray idealised images of endless summers that were about to be blown away by the first world war.
Tennis clubs boomed in the 1920s and 1930s and the pace and popularity of the game picked up. The Wimbledon Championships were established and its centre court opened in 1922. Tennis parties became a part of the social scene.
This section is dominated by Glasgow boy and society painter John Lavery, whose beautifully composed works capture the movement of the players, especially the women in their long dresses.
There is also a small 1927 Lowry depicting the back of a girl in tennis whites with a long black plait tied in a ribbon falling from her cloche hat; an earlier and possibly more innocent expression of one of his obsessions.
The Dudley artist Percy Shakespeare is also represented with his Tennis. Bold and direct, it has the feel of a suburban Edward Hopper with a little nod towards the English painter and war artist William Roberts. Shakespeare’s more conventional portrait of a seated Tennis Player illustrates the change in women’s costume.
The interwar years produced some truly imaginative work inspired by tennis, although this cannot be said for the paintings’ names. André Lhote’s Tennis Players demonstrates an active cubism while Christopher Wood’s Tennis Players of around 1925 depicting two female players has echoes of Picasso, Matisse and Chagall.
Paul Nash’s Event on the Downs looks as English as tuppence at first glance, but the strangely placed tennis ball displays his fascination with landscape and abstraction.
Athena poster
The section on urban tennis also has some fascinating work, including Laura Knight’s Spring in St John’s Wood, which shows a game going on in a back garden.
Nearby is the Eric Ravilious sketch for the model he was commissioned to produce for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition depicting tennis, football and cricket. Sadly, this model now longer exists but the design is typical of his imagined versions of reality, incorporating racket shapes and lawn rollers.
It’s also a shame that his Tennis in the Park triptych has remained in Bristol. Ravilious was a keen tennis player, Eric Gill and Duncan Grant were probably less so and their work in the section on sketches both depict a version of the game probably not played in suburbia; nude tennis.
Tennis as a subject for artistic inspiration seems to have waned in the postwar period as the game became more professionalised.
The final section on photography offers a clue to why this happened. Shutter speeds were now able to capture the players in motion. The professional players were becoming popular heroes and posed for studio photographers such as Bassano.
There is a lovely portrait of the English player Betty Batt perched on an Alvar Aalto Paimio chair, her wooden racket leaning into its sinuous curves.
There are some recent works however, most notably Tom Phillips’s Seven Ages of Man, which marks a life “measured out in Wimbledons” through his greying hair applied to seven shaved tennis balls.
The smaller gallery opposite houses a short history of the local development of the game and an array of tennis equipment showing that without good lawn mowers and rubber balls, the game would never have developed.
A Gem of a Game has a small section on tennis fashion and accessories, which has some lovely things but rather peters out and misses the contribution to male style in the form of Fred Perry sportswear, Dunlop Green Flashes plimsolls and Lacoste and Björn Borg-clad casuals.
The final section features that Athena, poster, whose appeal remains undiminished, the shop having already sold out of the postcard.
This fascinating exhibition is supported by an excellent illustrated book. It has much in common with the A Day in the Sun: Outdoor Pursuits in the Art of the 1930s at Nottingham University’s Djanogly Gallery in 2006.
It is understated, with well-written labels that place the works in a historical and social context. It has no audiovisuals and interactives and, frankly, you don’t always need them. Well-arranged and interpreted work can be enough.
Mark Suggitt is the director of the Derwent Valley World Heritage Site
Thematic shows are always a good way of taking a new look at a subject, but why here at Birmingham University?
Well, tennis is the summer game, and it was developed in nearby Edgbaston in the 1850s. And Ann Sumner, the director of the Barber, has long-cherished combining her passions for art and tennis.
If this was not enough, Athena’s famous Tennis Girl poster (you know the one) was shot on Birmingham University’s tennis courts. The introduction to the show also states that the game was played by a number of artists, some of whose work is represented here.
The result is a fascinating insight into artistic responses to tennis, mainly from a British perspective. Given that the game’s development took place here before photography could record players in action, this is understandable.
The work is hung in the coolly elegant gallery on a green background that works well for the subject. The gallery is broken down into themed areas: an introduction; lawn tennis’s heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; tennis parties; urban tennis; photographic responses; and sketches.
Hazy summer days
The earliest work on show is an anonymous portrait of a male player of 1767 standing before an old-style court wearing a white silk waistcoat and a turban.
Lawn tennis developed as a game for country-house parties and the lawns of affluent suburbia. It was one of the cultural changes that led to more freedoms for women, allowing them to exercise and meet men in public.
The earlier works reflect these concerns with artists such as Edith and Mary Hayllar and George Kilburne producing works that portray idealised images of endless summers that were about to be blown away by the first world war.
Tennis clubs boomed in the 1920s and 1930s and the pace and popularity of the game picked up. The Wimbledon Championships were established and its centre court opened in 1922. Tennis parties became a part of the social scene.
This section is dominated by Glasgow boy and society painter John Lavery, whose beautifully composed works capture the movement of the players, especially the women in their long dresses.
There is also a small 1927 Lowry depicting the back of a girl in tennis whites with a long black plait tied in a ribbon falling from her cloche hat; an earlier and possibly more innocent expression of one of his obsessions.
The Dudley artist Percy Shakespeare is also represented with his Tennis. Bold and direct, it has the feel of a suburban Edward Hopper with a little nod towards the English painter and war artist William Roberts. Shakespeare’s more conventional portrait of a seated Tennis Player illustrates the change in women’s costume.
The interwar years produced some truly imaginative work inspired by tennis, although this cannot be said for the paintings’ names. André Lhote’s Tennis Players demonstrates an active cubism while Christopher Wood’s Tennis Players of around 1925 depicting two female players has echoes of Picasso, Matisse and Chagall.
Paul Nash’s Event on the Downs looks as English as tuppence at first glance, but the strangely placed tennis ball displays his fascination with landscape and abstraction.
Athena poster
The section on urban tennis also has some fascinating work, including Laura Knight’s Spring in St John’s Wood, which shows a game going on in a back garden.
Nearby is the Eric Ravilious sketch for the model he was commissioned to produce for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition depicting tennis, football and cricket. Sadly, this model now longer exists but the design is typical of his imagined versions of reality, incorporating racket shapes and lawn rollers.
It’s also a shame that his Tennis in the Park triptych has remained in Bristol. Ravilious was a keen tennis player, Eric Gill and Duncan Grant were probably less so and their work in the section on sketches both depict a version of the game probably not played in suburbia; nude tennis.
Tennis as a subject for artistic inspiration seems to have waned in the postwar period as the game became more professionalised.
The final section on photography offers a clue to why this happened. Shutter speeds were now able to capture the players in motion. The professional players were becoming popular heroes and posed for studio photographers such as Bassano.
There is a lovely portrait of the English player Betty Batt perched on an Alvar Aalto Paimio chair, her wooden racket leaning into its sinuous curves.
There are some recent works however, most notably Tom Phillips’s Seven Ages of Man, which marks a life “measured out in Wimbledons” through his greying hair applied to seven shaved tennis balls.
The smaller gallery opposite houses a short history of the local development of the game and an array of tennis equipment showing that without good lawn mowers and rubber balls, the game would never have developed.
A Gem of a Game has a small section on tennis fashion and accessories, which has some lovely things but rather peters out and misses the contribution to male style in the form of Fred Perry sportswear, Dunlop Green Flashes plimsolls and Lacoste and Björn Borg-clad casuals.
The final section features that Athena, poster, whose appeal remains undiminished, the shop having already sold out of the postcard.
This fascinating exhibition is supported by an excellent illustrated book. It has much in common with the A Day in the Sun: Outdoor Pursuits in the Art of the 1930s at Nottingham University’s Djanogly Gallery in 2006.
It is understated, with well-written labels that place the works in a historical and social context. It has no audiovisuals and interactives and, frankly, you don’t always need them. Well-arranged and interpreted work can be enough.
Mark Suggitt is the director of the Derwent Valley World Heritage Site
Project data
- Cost £145,000
- Funders Henry Barber Trust £109,600; Friends of the Barber Institute £18,000; DJW Turner Trust £10,000; Patrons of the Barber Institute £5,000; Department of History of Art, University of Birmingham £1,000; LTA Warwickshire £1,000; Harry Gem Project £400
- Design and installation Showcase Services (A Gem of a Game)
- Catalogue publisher Philip Wilson Publishing (now IB Tauris)
- Catalogue/print materials design Webb & Webb
- Fine art transport Martinspeed
- Exhibition ends 18 September
