The figurative painter and sculptor lived in Waltham Forest for two decades, and posessed an underappreciated ability to see beauty in the everyday, writes Claire Weiss
More than 50 local history and art enthusiasts at Leyton & Leytonstone Historical Society’s meeting at St Johns Church Hall last month heard author Renske Mann’s spellbinding presentation illustrating the life and works of renowned artist Cyril Mann (1911– 1980), her late husband.
Recalling that Cyril, Renske and their daughter Amanda had spent two decades in Waltham Forest, first in Lynmouth Road, Walthamstow, and later in Goldsmith Road, Leyton, Renske enthralled the audience with slides showing examples of Mann’s immense repertoire of figurative oil paintings and glimpses of his life history.
Renske referred to Cyril’s keen sense of historical relevance, remarking particularly on his paintings of the post-war bomb sites in Shoreditch. She went on to state Cyril Mann’s constant quest was to portray the striking effect of sunlight and the dynamic shadows created even where the subject matter may not have been considered at the time to be a thing of beauty.
While these pictures may not have suited the taste of the post-war capital, Renske remarked, they comprise a unique body of work that witnesses the spirit and topography of those years.
In 1933, a young Cyril secured a place at the Royal Academy but he was not in line with their teaching; his art was figurative while most painters had turned towards abstract styles at that time. Renske threw her hands up as she exclaimed how he had abandoned that opportunity.
Moving to Walthamstow in the 1960s offered Cyril’s artistic imagination a view of industrial and cottage suburban life that contrasted sharply with his and Renske’s earlier residence in dense inner London.
He produced landscapes of the local environment, portraits of his immediate family and still-life renderings of vegetables, plants and homely objects to hand, always exploiting to the full the dynamic effects of sunlight in his striking paintings.
Renske spoke of how Cyril’s artistic eye was mesmerised by structural surroundings in Walthamstow such as in his paintings Railway Bridge Over the Culvert (1963) and Walthamstow Gas Cooling Towers (1963), the latter being a view of the massive coal-fired power station’s five giant wooden cooling towers dominating the skyline of his and Renske’s modest terraced cottage.
Artistically and historically too, this work has great significance as Renske described, since Walthamstow’s power station was demolished very soon afterwards to prepare for the coming of the Victoria Line.
Moving to Leyton in the late 1960s where daughter Amanda spent her childhood, attending the then Church Mead primary schools, Cyril and Renske had the benefit of a larger house with a long garden filled with large standard rose trees.
Renske reminisced that this gave Cyril all the studio space he could dream of. There, Cyril found inspiration in Leyton’s marsh and forest land, producing masterpieces including Epping Forest Gravel Pits (1965), known locally now as Hollow Ponds, and Metropolitan Water Board (1967) a stunning landscape with jewel-like colours featuring the River Lea.
This painting provides a record of the historical Engine House before its demolition in 1970. Just three of Cyril Mann paintings are held within the borough at William Morris Gallery, which shows that we desperately need greater recognition of Cyril Mann’s artistic genius in Waltham Forest, the place where his talents flourished.
The Girl in the Green Jumper: my life with the Artist Cyril Mann, by Renske Mann and published by Pimpernel Press, is available at all good bookstores
Keep up to date with Leyton & Leytonstone Historical Society’s events here
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