Ben (Gerald) Levene
It was only in September 2010, at the exhibition of Ruth Borchard's Collection at the 20/21 British Art Fair at London's Commonwealth Institute, that the identity of this self-portraitist – who had signed the work Gerald Levene – became clear to the author. I was wandering around the show with the painter Anthony Green (q.v.) – who was going to open the exhibition later that day – when he stopped in front of this 1958 self-portrait and exclaimed: 'My good friend, Ben Levene! We were at the Slade together.' I had been puzzling as to the whereabouts or at least the development of this clearly gifted young artist, who seemed, at least on the face of it, to have disappeared without trace. When I eventually met Ben in October 2003, he explained that, born Gerald Philip Levene in 1938 to a London Jewish family, his school nickname of Ben had followed him to the Slade School of Art (where he studied between 1956-61), and had dictated his professional name too.
There is one letter from Gerald to Ruth, dated '24th March' (probably 1959 or 1960), sent from an address in London NW3. He writes: 'I would only be too glad to let you have one of my early paintings, but when you saw it you might reconsider your opinions for my work is ever-changing.' Ruth records that she had seen his work in the 1959 annual 'Young Contemporaries' show of (nationwide) students' art in London. She kept a copy of that exhibition catalogue, which lists Levene's oil painting, Bottles. The other 1959 'Young Contemporaries' whose self-portraits Ruth sooner or later bought for the collection were Kenneth Brazier, Dennis Creffield, Mario Dubsky, Peter Freeth, Dorothy Mead, Peter Morrell and Alan Stuttle. She also kept a copy of the 1960 catalogue, which lists Levene's paintings Interior with Mirror and Self-Portrait with Sling.
The self-portrait is a most skilful and painterly work. The poignant expression is beautifully wrought. The slightly downturned dark eyes denote languorous introspection, a visionary look. The mature evocation of such a subtle state of mind – painted without a trace of bombast or theatrics – is indeed rare in such a young man (he was just twenty years old). The artist's long, high-cheekboned face inclines almost imperceptibly downwards – the prominent, pink, rather cherubic lips are apparently pursed – adding to the feeling of pensive melancholy. The face's sandy pallor stands out against the black hair (lightly contoured with red) and deep background black (itself subtly infused with an earlier layer of red). It appears that he may be wearing a brown jacket, brown shirt and drab olive-coloured tie.
In his Obituary of Ben Levene in the Guardian (10th November 2010), Anthony Green – who had initially met the artist on their first day together at the Slade in 1956 – wrote that Ben 'was stocky, broad-shouldered, black-haired and frequently blue-chinned, with a handsome, semitic head. His brown eyes, remarked upon widely, were beautiful, large and kind.'
It is a picture redolent partly of the modern British tradition of masters such as Sickert, Spencer Gore and Matthew Smith. Green's comment on Levene is apposite here too: 'He found his voice early and walked in the right company of artists: Titian, Rembrandt, Goya and Degas were his constant reference points.' The self-portrait also clearly shows the contemporary influence of David Bomberg and his pupils. Dorothy Mead (q.v.), who wrote the catalogue foreword for the tenth 'Young Contemporaries' exhibition in 1959 and was its President from 1958-59, herself attended the Slade (from 1956-59) as (in the words of Mario Dubsky) 'a mature student and practised disciple of Bomberg's – then an entirely unknown, uncelebrated and isolated figure'. Andrew Forge (q.v.), partner of Mead's and himself a painter of richly impastoed portraits in the early 1960s, was senior lecturer at the Slade from 1950 to 1964. Dennis Creffield (q.v.), Mario Dubksy (q.v.) and Patrick Procktor (q.v.) attended the Slade at the same time as Levene, and also were radically influenced by Bomberg's vision (especially as mediated by his enthusiastic 'disciple', Dorothy Mead) of drawing and articulating 'the spirit in the mass'.
For many years influenced by Old Master techniques, the painting process was for Ben Levene a painstakingly scrutinising one of multi-layered refinement. As the art writer and critic Mervyn Levy wrote in RA Magazine (Winter 1988): 'Ben Levene paints slowly with concentration and independence, completing no more than 12 or 15 paintings a year.' The artist says, 'I work now with glazes, very thinly applied – you can then tune it up. I was inspired by the Japanese art exhibition at the RA in 1987 and many of my paintings now incorporate silver or gold leaf.' Curiously, he later discovered that some of his Russian Jewish ancestors had apparently worked as court gilders.'
However, as a student at the Slade and soon afterwards, Levene tended to paint thickly, prolifically and quite expressionistically in oils. He said that he found the Slade a curious place and Euston Road School art 'very pasty pictures, not my scene'. As Mervyn Levy has written, 'his tutors were Claude Rogers and William Coldstream, and his independence of spirit is well illustrated by his remark that "Euston Road teaching was crucially linked to the idea that you should put down what was there, whereas from my point of view, painting is a matter of selectivity."'
Levene said that, during his first year at the Slade, he tried out the approach fostered by American Abstract Expressionists – newly introduced to this country by Bryan Robertson (1925-2002), who from 1958 to 1964, as Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, curated major one-man exhibitions of works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Robert Rauschenberg – but soon discovered that he was a figurative painter. He stated latterly that the 'balance is almost equal' between abstract and figurative qualities in his paintings.
In his Guardian Obituary, Anthony Green wrote: 'Ben Levene, who has died aged 71, exhibited in every Royal Academy summer exhibition at Burlington House in London from 1974 until his death. At the private views, he would be greeted affectionately by scores of his former students. During a lifetime of inspired teaching, Ben was an embodiment of quality, skill, vision and craftsmanship. Most importantly, his pupils were profoundly aware that here stood an artist who saw through so much that yelled "cutting edge".
'He was born Gerald Philip Levene in London. His parents were poor. During the second world war his father, Mark, was incapacitated when an ammunition lorry exploded. Consequently, his mother, Charlotte, became the main strength and breadwinner. During the 1940s she managed a tobacco kiosk in Queensway, central London, and later worked in accounts at the Dickins and Jones department store until well beyond retirement age. Aged 11, Ben was knocked off his bicycle and fractured his ankle. During his stay in hospital, his Aunt Ethel brought him paints and a drawing book. At St Clement Danes school, in Shepherd's Bush, he acquired his nickname, shone in the art department under the tutelage of Alex Flett and admired the paintings of Turner.
'Carel Weight, who met Ben while teaching an evening class at the Hammersmith School of Art, wrote in an exhibition catalogue: "I shall never forget being very surprised when a small schoolboy, carrying a portfolio as large as he was, came into class and gave me a note from his art master. It said that this boy was the most promising young artist he had ever come across and could he come to my class because he was so confident of his gifts. Seeing the contents of the portfolio, I could see what prodigious talent this little boy had."
'To do fine art seemed a choice too far for a young man without access to a private income, so Ben explained to his parents that he would be studying furniture design. They were mollified. In 1956 he won a scholarship to the Slade. A new four-year fine art course had just been started which allowed direct entry from secondary education. On the first day, William Coldstream, professor of fine art, addressed the new students in the Reading Room. Ben was seated between Peter Freeth [q.v.] and me, and for the next 54 years he was my best friend.
'He very soon established himself as one of the rising stars. [...] He exhibited regularly with the Young Contemporaries, the London Group and Helen Lessore, who first showed him at her Beaux Arts Gallery. He was awarded the University of London postgraduateship in 1960-61 and then a Boise scholarship in 1961-62, which enabled him to live and work in Spain, accompanied by his first wife, Jane Fogarty, and their daughter Rachel. The harsh Spanish landscape influenced him greatly. The southern olive groves, red hills and Easter processions inspired some of his finest early works.
'Back in London, he was taken seriously by the Euston Roaders and acolytes of the painter David Bomberg. At this time, in need of an income, he had acquired enough knowledge of the secondhand jewellery trade from a friend to run a stall on the Portobello Road. He augmented this with part-time teaching and was a visiting lecturer at Camberwell School of Art from 1963 to 1989 [...]
'By 1981, the Great Japan Exhibition had arrived at Burlington House. Inspired, Ben started using gold and silver leaf on gessoed grounds in his picture making. Still lifes, winter landscapes, triptychs, "portraits" of mulberry trees, pansy orchids and fish tanks glowed and shimmered with this newfound opulence. For the next three decades he raised the stakes in his painting: figuration veered to abstraction, a natural control of tone dealt with mood, and colour – always colour – became stronger, richer, braver. Ben took on the visible world, edited it and won [...]
'When the doctors confirmed that Ben had Alzheimer's disease in 2006, he turned to his second wife, Susan, whom he had married in 1978, and said: "Don't worry. We'll make the best of it." He is survived by Susan and their son, Jacob, and by two daughters, Rachel and Sophie, from his first marriage, which ended in divorce.'
Having graduated from the Slade, Levene lived in Spain for ten months in 1961-62 as a Boise Scholar, painting fishing boats, hill villages and olive groves in Andalusia. He returned from Spain with dozens of oils paintings with colours reminiscent in their richness of Soutine's – including a study of olive trees on a pink-and-ochre hillside, robustly delineated, abstracted yet naturalistic-seeming figures with a dancing, quasi-human presence. Helen Lessore showed some of his early paintings at the Beaux Arts Gallery in London.
Levene's paintings of people, and his self-portraits, have been few and far between. His large, boldly contoured, c.1960 painting of Ken Brazier (q.v.), a fellow student at the Slade (also painted by Lucian Freud in his 1958 portrait of A Young Painter), shows what Levene recalled as a quite strong, wiry man, standing at the easel and painting with resolute composure, combative concentration; the resounding yellow tones for his face and hands contrast well with the low-key grey, black and white tones describing the rest of his figure and the background.
Levene's 1975 self-portrait shows the artist seated in a red armchair, in semi-profile, a rather quizzical, diminutive figure within a coolly luminous room setting apparently composed of distinctly yet melodiously integrated still-life components: a large mirror, a vase of flowers, a landscape painting on the white wall.
In 1975 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and in 1986 a Royal Academician. From 1963-89, he was a visiting lecturer at Camberwell School of Art, and from 1980-95 taught part-time at the Royal Academy Schools (he was Curator there from 1995-98). From 1973-81, he had four one-man exhibitions at the Thackeray Gallery, London, and in 1988, 1994 and 2001 exhibited at Browse and Darby, London. He and his second wife, Susan Williams, also a painter, divided their time between south-east London and a cottage on the Welsh border.
As a painter, he said, 'I like one foot in reality': the reality, say, of a sonorously verdant Welsh landscape, its fields, hills, trees, cottages, barns, hedgerows and stone walls delineated with austere clarity; or of a gigantic oak tree whose monumental 'personality' he painted over a long period in all weathers; or of dead clematis wilting in an exquisite turquoise vase alongside an antique ironstone plate set on a predominantly black-and-white surface – pictorial ingredients 'edited' with aesthetic rigour. The latter picture from 1980 shows how (rather like the painter William Nicholson) his 'one foot in reality' is counterbalanced by a rare gift for decorative abstraction, sometimes spare and pristine, sometimes highly elaborate, an almost Oriental sense of how eloquently charged the spaces between objects can be, and a restrained sumptuousness of colour that is his hallmark.
- Text by Philip Vann, updated and revised from the first edition of Face to Face: British Self-Portraits in the Twentieth Century, 2004