eastlondonhistory.com

The reopening of the Whitechapel Gallery earlier this month, impressively expanded into the space vacated by the Whitechapel Library, is a bold leap into the future for a gallery that has always been proud of its ‘firsts’ and always punched above its weight.

There was much controversy about the library collection’s move out into the new Idea Store, but few would argue about the way the liberated space has been used.The former library is now given over to reading rooms, studios and more gallery space. How appropriate then that one of the opening shows for the reopening should be ‘The Whitechapel Boys’.

Why? Because for that extraordinary group of working class, East End and mostly Jewish artists, the library was both evening school and study, an escape from the cramped Whitechapel houses and tenements in which most lived. ‘The Whitechapel Boys’, which runs until 20 September at the gallery, looks at the origins of a group of radical thinkers who, improbably, escaped the poverty of the East End to form a powerful avant garde in the years around the First World War.

It did no harm at all that gallery and library were next door neighbours. This was a Whitechapel of sweatshops and vermin-plagued tenements and could have been a million miles from the salons and galleries of the West End. To the aspiring young artists the two institutions must have seemed a haven.

The library was endowed by one of the most productive philanthropists of the Victorian age. John Passmore Edwards was the son of a Cornish carpenter, and became first a journalist, then a wealthy newspaper proprietor. Fiercely independent, he stood unsuccessfully for Parliament, twice refused a knighthood and spoke out against the Boer War. You don’t have to walk far in London to stumble across a Passmore Edwards library (there were 24 of them, three in the East End alone) and he also endowed drinking fountains, hospitals, galleries and nursing homes. Edwards was a generous giver to the Workers’ Educational Association and he must have been delighted at the success of his Whitechapel Library, which opened in 1891 - it proved immediately popular.

The gallery meanwhile, was the work of the inexhaustible husband-and-wife team of Samuel and Henrietta Barnett. Canon Barnett had taken the Whitechapel parish of St Jude’s in 1873, and from the start the pair saw their work as a mission. Barnett was instrumental in founding the University Settlements Association, and he would become the first warden of Toynbee Hall (which became the template for others in Britain and the United States). Canon Barnett was another fierce believer in culture and education as a stepladder out of the slums. He held free art exhibitions in St Jude’s schoolroom every Easter but it wasn’t enough. He wanted a dedicated gallery space, where the working men and women of Whitechapel could walk in off the street and see “the finest art of the world”.

Enter Passmore Edwards and his chequebook once more. There was a vacant plot next to the library, and Barnett tapped the philanthropist for £6000 - enough to buy the land and get the building started. It was a masterpiece of the Art Nouveau style. Barnett wanted a statement, but he was canny too. The building was eyecatching, and you walked straight in from the street (no steps) which he and architect Charles Harrison Townsend reasoned would be less intimidating for new visitors. And while the collections drew people in, it didn’t hurt that the gallery had electric light which meant you could stay till 10pm. Most West End galleries closed at dusk.

Over its 108 years the gallery has had ups and downs, but it started on an incredible high, with 206,000 coming to the opening show (including Constable, Rubens and Hogarth) in spring 1901. The first director, Charles Aitken, soon steered the shows away from such traditional fare by showing more challenging modern work by the Fauves, Cubists and Vorticists. A minnow compared to the huge West End galleries, Whitechapel would find its niche as a showplace for new and avant garde work. Meanwhile, the young Whitechapel artists and writers found shelter and inspiration there. And down the years, under the various guises of the East End Academy, the East London Open and the Whitechapel Open, local people were able to display their own work - an East End version of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition.

The gallery has really become famous for its ‘firsts’ though. In 1939, the Whitchapel hung ‘Guernica’, Picasso’s depiction of the horrors of the Spanish civil war is displayed at the Whitechapel on its first and so far only visit to Britain. 1956 saw the groundbreaking ‘This is Tomorrow’ exhibition, while 1958 saw the first major show in Britain of American abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. In 1961 came the British premiere of Mark Rothko. 1970 and 1971 saw the first shows of David Hockney, Gilbert & George and Richard Long. And in 1982
the gallery introduced Frida Kahlo to London audiences.

But with the reopening of the expanded Whitechapel it’s appropriate to go back to those early days, when the gallery and the library worked together to produce an extraordinary flowering of East End talent. ‘The Whitechapel Boys’ is an umissable opportunity to see what it was all about.
Artworks on show include ‘Racehorses’ by David Bomberg, ‘Study for Rock Drill’ by Jacob Epstein, ‘Rabbi & Rabbintzin’ by Mark Gertler. Writings include a first edition of Stephen Winsten’s ‘Chains’ and John Rodker’s ‘Collected Poems’ from 1921-25. Context is provided by catalogues, correspondence and press cuttings, building a picture of the world in which they worked.

Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX | T +44 (0)20 7522 7888. For a full list of current exhibitions at the gallery, go to www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions

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