James O'Connor on
Gerald Wilde
'Galleries Magazine' 1988
Gerald Wilde, Pompeii
, Pastel and Gouache on Paper, c. 1976, (October Gallery)
Gerald Wilde at the October Gallery
The October Gallery have mounted a giant retrospective for Gerald Wilde, 1905-86. This gallery encouraged Wilde, and helped support him at the end of his life. He in turn, though dead, will put the gallery on the map, for they have found and championed a genius. He is, I imagine, easier to help now, for he was the prototype for Joyce Carey's Gully Jimson of The Horse's Mouth, notoriously alcoholic and difficult.
Henry Moore and Kenneth Clark knew the originality and power of his work, and the Tate have now acquired some examples. Wilde invented his own dynamically charged language. What at first glance registers as a manic turmoil rewards patient attention, taking on a delightful one-onlyness, without reference to anything outside itself. When the work clicks into place for you, you are confronted with an example of pure painting, and when you have experienced this recognition, you can only enjoy it as you might a relation with any living thing. The painting speaks for itself with Wilde's totally individual visual music.
The early works, 1926-40, often contain many figures, like stage characters in a dramatic dream. Although these are mostly gouaches with a limited range of colour, Wilde is incapable of making marks without a strong emotional charge. On closer scrutiny, the two colours become twenty tones. Most of the works in this period were destroyed in the blitz, but around 1946, he gets into his stride. His Piccadilly Circus (no.3) is totally beautiful, and by 1950, he is painting at full power. Then there's a mysterious gap from 1950-70. From 1970, his paintings are bigger, brighter, wittier, executed with a bantering tic-tac virtuosity, full of ideas, movement, and gesture. He has solved his problems.
© James O'Connor