Blog Posts

An Introduction to Ford Madox Ford

15/1/2016

An Introduction to Ford Madox Ford, edited by Ashley Chantler and Rob Hawkes, was published in December 2015 by Ashgate.

For students and readers new to the work of Ford Madox Ford, this volume provides a comprehensive introduction to one of the most complex, important and fascinating authors. Bringing together leading Ford scholars, the volume places Ford's work in the context of significant literary, artistic and historical events and movements. Individual essays consider Ford's theory of literary Impressionism and the impact of the First World War; illuminate The Good Soldier and Parade's End; engage with topics such as the city, gender, national identity and politics; discuss Ford as an autobiographer, poet, propagandist, sociologist, Edwardian and modernist; and show his importance as founding editor of the groundbreaking English Review and transatlantic review. The volume encourages detailed close reading of Ford's writing and illustrates the importance of engaging with secondary sources.

'With its broad view of Ford Madox Ford's many interests and accomplishments and in its illumination of his fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, this excellent collection offers readers a man of tremendous curiosity and intellectual vitality.' Joseph Wiesenfarth, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Contents:

Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Brilliant Ford Madox Ford
Ashley Chantler and Rob Hawkes

1. Ford’s Lives
Max Saunders

2. Conrad and Ford; Ford and Conrad
John Attridge

3. Towards The Good Soldier: Ford’s Edwardian Fiction
Rob Hawkes

4. Ford and Modernism
Seamus O’Malley

5. Ford’s Literary Impressionism
Laura Colombino

6. The Good Soldier
Martin Stannard

7. Ford Among the ‘Movements, Magazines and Manifestos’
Stephen Rogers

8. In the ‘Twentieth-Century Fashion’: Ford and Modern Poetry
Paul Skinner

9. Ford and the First World War
Andrew Frayn

10. Parade’s End
Isabelle Brasme

11. Ford and the City
Angus Wrenn

12. Ford and Gender
Sara Haslam

13. Ford and National Identity
Christine Berberich

14. Ford and Politics
Andrzej Gasiorek

Guide to Further Reading
Bibliography
Index

Ashley Chantler is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Chester, UK.

Rob Hawkes is Senior Lecturer in English at Teesside University, UK.

For more information and to order copies, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/An-Introduction-to-Ford-Madox-Ford/Chantler-Hawkes/p/book/9781472469083

0 Comments

Ford's The Good Soldier Wins The Cheltenham Booker 1915 at 2015 Festival

13/10/2015

2 Comments

Andrew Lownie, Selina Hastings and Alan Judd - Cheltenham Booker 1915 Panelists

A Report from Alan Judd:
The finalists allocated to this year’s Cheltenham Booker (1915) were P.G. Wodehouse’s Psmith, Journalist, presented by Robert McCrum, Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out, presented by Victoria Glendinning, Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, presented by Selina Hastings, John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, presented by Andrew Lownie and The Good Soldier, presented by me.

I had the easy sell. Wodehouse’s Psmith is disappointingly unfunny and boring, a confection of earlier newspaper pieces lacking the brilliant style and metaphor of his later work. The Voyage Out, Woolf’s first novel, is uneven, with passages of promise and insight but overall a sense that she wasn’t sure how to end her voyage or what to do with the characters she had created – despite the early introduction and disappointing disappearance of Mr. and Mrs. Dalloway. Of Human Bondage seemed to me the only serious contender for the prize that ought to be Ford’s, a great fat book with big themes, an evolving consciousness and a gallery of convincing minor characters. But, as Robert McCrum put it during the event, there is a dullness, a deadness, about Maugham’s prose that denies his novels the greatness you feel they could achieve (with the arguable exception of Liza of Lambeth). Perhaps he says too much; he sees all but says it all, often in cliché, leaving his characters no room to grow in our heads.

The Buchan I knew of old, an archetypal thriller and a rollicking Edwardian read provided you’re prepared to leave behind questions of coincidence, plausibility, character and the female half of the population. Probably good for national moral in 1915 but not a prize-winner.

On stage Robert McCrum had the courage to vote against his own, to much laughter. Victoria Glendinning made a spirited case for all that was good in the Woolf, while Selina Hastings made a predictably strong case for the Maugham. Andrew Lownie showed a real flair for salesmanship in his advocacy of the Buchan, winning over a worryingly significant minority of the audience.

The fact that the 500-plus audience had votes was the most nerve-wracking part of the event. Although the case for The Good Soldier was not hard to make – there was no question but that it was the most original, compelling and artistically achieved – how many of the audience would know it and might they be put off by my three-minute description? Fortunately, they had the good taste to give Ford an emphatic majority and my heart went out to the lady who put up her hand and said she was about to read it for the fourth time.

Books apart, panel and audience appreciated James Walton’s adept chairmanship and John Coldstream’s illuminating canter through other events in 1915 – the war, of course, other publications such as The Rainbow, the first meeting of the Womens’ Institute, changes in the Suffragette movement and, most memorably, the Times account of the barrister sent by his wife to buy dining chairs at an auction, and who returned having bought Stonehenge. I could see Ford doing that with his prize money, if he’d had any.

An interested audience member adds:
Paul Skinner and I were rooting quietly for Ford’s novel – and not so quietly when it was described by the Chair as an intellectual exercise rather than something that came from the heart. Alan calls his task an ‘easy sell’ above, but there was some robust opposition from the audience in support of Maugham. One intervention came from his grandson. Alan had used his 3 minutes to great effect, however. And McCrum gave him generous support from the podium, calling The Good Soldier an ‘outright masterpiece’ once Wodehouse had been voted out. Three cheers for Ford, The Good Soldier, and Alan for ensuring the best novel won!

Sara Haslam

2 Comments

Nora Tomlinson 1938-2015

18/9/2015

0 Comments

Nora Tomlinson, who has recently died after a short illness, was one of the contributors to the Ford Madox Ford special number of the distinguished poetry magazine Agenda. That volume, guest edited by Max Saunders, attempted to stimulate interest in Ford’s activities as a major modernist writer, and included essays on many different aspects of his life and work. Nora’s contribution was a piece entitled ‘Ford’s Wartime Journalism’ and was devoted to the work that Ford had published in The Outlook in 1914-15. It was co-authored with Robert Green; but Nora later told me that it was largely her work.

At that time she had started work on her PhD at the Open University under the supervision of Dr. Robert Green and Professor Graham Martin – the subject of which was Ford’s achievement as an editor of two of the most influential of modernist magazines, The English Review and the transatlantic review. As part of her research she and her husband (Barry) went to Paris in 1991, looking for places associated with Ford whilst he was editing the transatlantic review. She was particularly interested in the small studio flat that Ford and Stella lived in at 65, boulevard Arago during 1923. Her doctoral research led her to conclude (in a way that she had not anticipated) that Ford may not have been quite the great editor that he was often credited as having been. She later returned to the subject of Ford’s editing in the introduction that she wrote on The English Review for the Modernist Journals Project’s website. She also gave a paper at the Ford conference at St. John’s College, Durham, in 2008 – where her subject was Ford’s impractical handling of the running of the finances of The English Review. She was awarded her PhD in 1996. Her interest in Ford had begun whilst a student of modernist literature at what was then known as Hatfield Polytechnic (now the University of Hertfordshire), where she obtained a M.A. in 1986.

However, Nora had already had a long experience in education, having been a Tutor in Arts at the Open University when that institution first opened for students in 1971. She had previously been an undergraduate at Westfield College, University of London; and whilst there met her future husband, who was at Imperial College, during a youth hostelling holiday. They married in Farnborough in 1961 and began a family. In 1965 they moved to Bedford, and finding that there was no child care available, Nora established - with others - Bedford’s first playgroup. Soon Nora found her real vocation as a teacher of adults and worked for the National Extension College; which led her on to working at the OU.

Nora worked at the OU for over 30 years, teaching English Literature, but also initially helping out with teaching the foundation course (known as A100). She wrote teaching material for Arts preparatory and foundation courses and for second and third level literature courses, including a unit on the Nineteenth Century Novel – George Eliot remained one of Nora’s favourite novelists. It is clear from speaking to a number of people at her funeral that Nora was particularly good at communicating with her students and engaging them in lively debates – stubbornly and provocatively declaring, for instance, that Wordsworth was ‘boring’; and many found her an inspiring and subversive teacher.

Nora had many interests; of which music, walking in Northumberland and gardening gave her a lot of happiness. She sang with the Bedford Choral Society and the Midland Festival Chorus; as well as playing a range of recorders from bass to descant with a recorder ensemble at the Bedford Retirement Education Centre. She will be much missed by all her friends.

            And I have asked to be
                  Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
            And out of the swing of the sea.
                                         (G. M. Hopkins).

Stephen Rogers

Bibliography

1) Tomlinson, Nora and Robert Green (1990). ‘Ford’s Wartime Journalism’, Agenda, vol. 27 no. 4/vol. 28, no. 1 (1989/1990), 139-147.

2) Tomlinson, Nora (1996). The Achievement of Ford Madox Ford as Editor, unpublished PhD thesis. See Open Research Online: http://oro.open.ac.uk/19038/1/pdf26.pdf

3) Tomlinson, Nora (2008). ‘Introduction’ (to the English Review online), Modernist Journals Project, Brown University: http://modjourn.org/render.php?id=mjp.2005.00.104&view=mjp_object

4) Tomlinson, Nora (2010). ‘‘An old man mad about writing’ but hopeless with money: Ford Madox Ford and the Finances of the English Review’, in Jason Harding, ed., Ford Madox Ford, Modernist Magazines and Editing, IFMFS 9 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi), 143-151.

0 Comments

The Nora Tomlinson Ford Madox Ford Collection, University of Durham

18/9/2015

0 Comments

In 2012 Nora and Barry Tomlinson donated their collection of Ford materials to Durham University. These items are now available to students and researchers as part of the university’s special collections. The full list of items which may be viewed is as follows:

First Editions

1896  Ford Madox Brown
1900  The Cinque Ports
1905  Hans Holbein
1907  The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
1911  Ancient Lights and Certain New Reflections
1911  The Critical Attitude
1913 Collected Poems
1923  Mister Bosphorus and the Muses
1924  Some Do Not . . .
1924  Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance
1924  The Nature of a Crime (written in collaboration with Joseph Conrad)
1927 New Poems
1934  Henry For Hugh
1935  Provence
1937  Great Trade Route
1938  The March of Literature

the transatlantic review – Jan-Dec 1924

Reprints

The Soul of London Everyman, 1995
The Fifth Queen – Trilogy, first American edition.
The Bodley Head Ford Madox Ford, Vols 2 & 4
A Call Carcanet Press, 1988
The Good Soldier Penguin, 1982
The Good Soldier Everyman, 1991
The English Novel Carcanet Press, 1997
No Enemy Ecco Press, 1984
No Enemy Carcanet Press, 2002
Parade’s End Penguin, 1982
Return to Yesterday Liveright, 1972
The Rash Act Carcanet Press, 1982
It was the Nightingale Ecco Press, 1984
A History of our own Times Carcanet Press, 1989

Bibliography

Harvey, Ford Madox Ford 1873-1939, Princeton, 1962

Anthologies

Memories and Impressions, ed Killigrew, Penguin, 1979
The Ford Madox Ford Reader, ed, Stang, Carcanet Press, 1986
War Prose, ed. Saunders, Carcanet, 1999
Selected Poems, Carcanet Press, 1997

Books About Ford

Bowen, S, Drawn from Life, Virago, 1984
Green, R, Ford Madox Ford: Prose and Politics, CUP, 1981
Goldring, D, South Lodge, Constable, 1943
Hunt, V, The Flurried Years, Hurst and Blackett, 1926
Judd, A, Ford Madox Ford, Collins, 1990
Lindberg-Seyersted, B, ed., A Literary Friendship: Correspondence between Caroline Graham and Ford Madox Ford, University of Tennessee, 1999
MacShane, F, The Life and Work of Ford Madox Ford, RKP, 1965
MacShane, F, ed., Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage, RKP, 1972
Mizener, A, The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford, Bodley Head, 1972
Poli, B, Ford Madox Ford and The Transatlantic Review, Syracuse UP, 1967
Saunders, M, Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life, OUP, 1996
Stang, S, Ford Madox Ford, Ungar, 1977
Stang, S, ed., The Presence of Ford Madox Ford, University of Pennsylvania, 1981
Stang, S and Cochran, K, eds., The Correspondence of Ford Madox Ford and Stella Bowen, Indiana University, 1993

0 Comments

Parade's End at the Barbican

29/7/2015

0 Comments

Tom Stoppard's acclaimed five-part adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Rebecca Hall, Adelaide Clemens, Roger Allam, Rupert Everett and Miranda Richardson, is to be screened in full at the Barbican, London, on 16 August 2015. To find out more and to book tickets, please visit: https://www.barbican.org.uk/film/event-detail.asp?ID=18329

Originally screened in the UK on BBC2 in August/September 2012, the mini-series subsequently aired in the USA on HBO in February 2013 and has now been shown, or is due to be shown, in more that 35 countries around the world. To read more about Parade's End and the adaptation, see the Parade's End page on this site.

0 Comments

War and the Mind: Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, Modernism and Psychology — Edited by Ashley Chantler and Rob Hawkes

3/7/2015

0 Comments

War and the Mind: Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, Modernism and Psychology
Editors: Ashley Chantler, Rob Hawkes
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press; 1 edition (July 1, 2015)
http://www.amazon.com/War-Mind-Parades-Modernism-Psychology/dp/0748694269

This is the first full-length critical study of Parade's End to focus on the psychological effects of the war. Originally published in 4 volumes between 1924 and 1928, Parade's End has been described as 'the finest novel about the First World War' (Anthony Burgess), 'the greatest war novel ever written by an Englishman' (Samuel Hynes), 'a central Modernist novel of the 1920s, in which it is exemplary' (Malcolm Bradbury), and 'possibly the greatest 20th-century novel in English' (John N. Gray).

These 10 newly commissioned essays focus on the psychological effects of the war, both upon Ford himself and upon his novel: its characters, its themes and its form. The chapters explore: Ford's pioneering analysis of war trauma, trauma theory, shell shock, memory and repression, insomnia, empathy, therapy, literary Impressionism and literary style. Writers discussed alongside Ford include Joseph Conrad, Siegfried Sassoon, May Sinclair, and Rebecca West, as well as theorists Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, William James, and W. H. R. Rivers.

Dr Ashley Chantler is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Chester. He is the series editor of Character Studies (Continuum); author of 'Heart of Darkness': Character Studies (Continuum, 2008); co-editor of Translation Practices: Through Language to Culture (Rodopi, 2009), Studying English Literature (Continuum 2010), and Literature and Authenticity, 1780-1900 (Ashgate, 2011); and editor of the Ford Madox Ford Society Newsletter. He is currently editing, with Rob Hawkes, Ford Madox Ford: An Introduction (Ashgate).

Dr Rob Hawkes is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at Teesside University . He is the author of Ford Madox Ford and the Misfit Moderns: Edwardian Fiction and the First World War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); and the Ford Madox Ford Society's Publicity Officer. He is currently editing, with Ashley Chantler, Ford Madox Ford: An Introduction (Ashgate).

0 Comments

Q&A between Society Chair, Sara Haslam, and Sam Jordison, the Guardian journalist who led the book group on The Good Soldier

12/5/2015

2 Comments

Sam Jordison is a Guardian journalist, the co-director of Galley Beggar Press and author of the Crap Towns series of books. He is also working on a book about H. G. Wells. We are very grateful to Sam for agreeing to be interviewed about the book group, and for his fascinating account of the process. Several of his answers seem to invite further discussion, so please use the comment box below to log any responses!

SH: Why did you pick the novel for the discussion?

SJ: The short answer is that I like it. I knew there was an awful lot in it to discuss, and I hoped the readers would enjoy it. There was also the fact that it was 100 years since publication. We'd also come across Ford Madox Ford before on the Reading Group while talking about A Moveable Feast...

SH: What did you already know about Ford?

SJ: Not enough! I only first read him a few years ago. I actually first wrote about him in 2011, in relation to The Inheritors, the book he wrote with Joseph Conrad. While writing that piece I realised how lamentable my ignorance was - and decided to have a look at The Good Soldier... a decision I didn't regret.

SH: How important was previous coverage of Ford, and/or this novel, in the Guardian or the Observer?

SJ: It turned out to be very helpful. There are some really very good articles in the archive (most notably a piece by Julian Barnes) which informed plenty of what I wrote and turned out to be very entertaining.

SH: How did you decide on the subjects for your intros?

SJ: Well, I just went for things that seemed to emerge naturally from the book and from the discussions around it. I don't think I went out on any particular limbs. The final piece on Modernism came about because of a conversation I had at a gallery opening, which isn't where I normally source my ideas! But otherwise I went for big obvious subjects, focussing in on two of the big characters in the book.

SH: What else would you have gone into with more than 4 weeks?

SJ: Ah! Interesting. I would have looked in more detail at the way women are portrayed in the book, grappled with suggestions that Dowell may be misogynist... It would also have been interesting to talk about Catholicism. And I'd have liked to dig into Ford Madox Ford's own biography more - and hopefully been a little kinder to him than history tends to have been...

SH: Which discussion threads do you wish you could have followed up?

SJ: It would have been fascinating to try to set the record straight on accusations of anti-semitism that have been levelled against Ford. Commenters were also interested in Dowell's sexuality - which is definitely an interesting subject - although, I suppose, ultimately impossible to answer....There were also some really interesting questions about social conventions and expectations around the time of writing that I didn't feel properly qualified to answer. Although I'd have loved to have been able to.

SH: How did the volume of responses compare with other groups you’ve led?

SJ: About average, I'd say. There was definitely a healthy amount of interest.

SH: Any other obvious differences?

SJ: A few more academics landed on the threads than usual. But that's always a good thing - definitely enriches the discussion. For the first time ever, there was a complaint of 'elitism' - but that was a rather strange comment.

SH: What surprised you most about the discussion?

SJ: Well, it's hard to pinpoint any one thing. And by this stage in the Reading group, this isn't really a surprise, because it happens all the time. But there were a great many ideas that emerged about the book that just hadn't occurred to me. For instance, a few readers built a fantastic theory about Dowell being a murderer. I hadn't seen that coming! And while they were half-joking, it was also wonderfully plausible. It seemed to me that you could just about make the case fit...

SH: What pleased you most?

SJ: The fact that so many people enjoyed the book and engaged with it in such detail. It really did provoke a lot of thought. I think it converted quite a few people to Ford Madox Ford - which I'd count as a success!

SH: Did you notice a change in attitudes towards any of the subjects across the span of discussions – towards Dowell, eg?

SJ: There was a definite change towards Dowell - and one which pretty much followed the experience of most readers as you go through the book. i.e. you start of sympathetic and end up deeply suspicious. Meanwhile, I think a lot of people grew in admiration and respect for Ford Madox Ford...

SH: I’d be interested in your views on any differences between men and women contributors, but am aware that it’s not easy to tell the sex of those contributing due to the names people post under.

SJ: I don't know the sex of most contributors. And I really can't say. In fact, while I'm not generally a fan of internet anonymity, it's one of the really nice things about the Reading Group. It doesn't matter who someone is, where they come from, what their educational background may be, what they work as, how old they are: all that matters is what they say, as that's pretty much all you know about them.

SH: How many contributors were new to Ford, in your view?

SJ: More than half, I'd say.

SH: How many who contributed were hooked by that first sentence, do you think, and how many will be spurred onto reading more Ford?

SJ: I'm afraid I can't really say. I certainly got the impression that plenty of people wanted to read more. And that quite a few were intrigued by the opening. It also hopefully helped that we gave a few books away...

SH: Did many contributors try and categorise the kind of novel it is? Did any see it as essentially funny?

SJ: They certainly talked about it as an example of Modernism, and as a book about manners and customs... Some, as noted, had fun suggesting it may be a murder mystery. And plenty definitely saw the humour and absurdity - although I'm not sure anyone went for the idea that it was outright comedy. In contrast, there was also quite a bit of talk of the novel as a 'tragedy'. One said: "It has the elements of Tragedy but it is just sad, and that is all the tragedy we get nowadays. TGS seems to me to be a twisted up little tragedy in a tea cup." FMF himself could almost have written that...

2 Comments

Two New Publications by Fordians Seamus O'Malley and Meghan Hammond

23/2/2015

0 Comments

Ford Society North American President, Seamus O'Malley is pleased to announce the publication of his first book, Making History New: Modernism and Historical Narrative.Taking three of literary modernism's major figures—Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, and Rebecca West—Making History New demonstrates how the movement's literature not only engaged with history but also transformed traditional approaches to its telling in unique ways. To purchase visit here.

Meghan Marie Hammond has just released, Empathy and the Psychology of Literary Modernism, published with the Edinburgh University Press. The book takes five exemplary writers (Henry James, Dorothy Richardson, Katherine Mansfield, Ford Madox Ford, and Virginia Woolf) who tackle the so-called ‘problem of other minds’ in ways that reflect and enrich early twentieth-century discourses of fellow feeling. For more information and to purchase her book visit here.

0 Comments

Event: Ford Included in King's Conference on WWl

21/2/2015

1 Comment

AFTERMATH: the Cultural Legacies of WW1
The Arts & Humanities Research Institute at King’s, in conjunction with the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at the University of North Carolina, is staging an international conference on the Cultural Legacies of World War I, to be held at King’s from 21-23 May 2015.

The conference will cover a wide range of aspects of how the First World War changed the world, such as its geopolitical aftermath (and its current repercussions in the Middle East); how people thought about future wars; the war’s impact on social history, the arts and popular cultures, and on science, technology, nursing and medicine.

Confirmed Keynote speakers include:

Dr Santanu Das, Department of English, King’s College London

Prof. David Edgerton, Director, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, King’s College London

Dr Kate McLoughlin, University of Oxford

Prof. Anne Marie Rafferty, Professor of Nursing Policy at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, King’s College London

Dr Eugene Rogan, Director, The Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, Oxford

Prof. Sir Simon Wessely, Vice Dean for Academic Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London

Please send proposals (not more than 300 words) for papers of 20-25 minutes to: max.saunders@kcl.ac.uk and ahri@kcl.ac.uk by 1 February 2015

The Arts & Humanities Research Institute at King’s, in conjunction with the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at the University of North Carolina, is staging an international conference on the Cultural Legacies of World War I, to be held at King’s from 21-23 May 2015.

The conference will cover a wide range of aspects of how the First World War changed the world, such as its geopolitical aftermath (and its current repercussions in the Middle East); how people thought about future wars; the war’s impact on social history, the arts and popular cultures, and on science, technology, nursing and medicine.

1 Comment

Review: 'Biala: Vision and Memory'

8/4/2014

1 Comment

'Biala: Vision and Memory', 12 September – 26 October 2013, Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, CUNY, New York.

Martin Stannard, University of Leicester

'Portrait of a Writer (Ford Madox Ford),' 1938. Oil on board.

Last September I travelled to New York to meet Hermine Ford and Helen Tworkov, daughters of Jack Tworkov, Janice Biala's brother. Hermine and Helen are the executors of Biala's estate and were to be at the opening of probably the largest retrospective of their aunt's paintings in recent years. Curated by Diane Kelder in collaboration with Amy H. Winter, the Director and Curator of the Godwin-Ternbach, this show proved to be a revelation. 'I met Biala in 1980', Kelder writes in her excellent catalogue, 'and was struck by the force of her personality [...].' That force is immediately apparent in the paintings, although it is the force of multiple personalities, tracing her various styles over the years and complemented by other exhibits, notably the darkly penetrating 1924 portrait of her as a young woman by Edwin Dickinson. It is quite likely that she was in love with Dickinson, a married man, when they were both part of the Provincetown art colony and he her mentor. Biala stares out at us, beautifully melancholy and self-contained, on the brink of a series of unhappy relationships before she met Ford in 1930. In the catalogue, on the facing page of the portrait's reproduction, Kelder has cleverly placed Biala's 1925 black-and-white self-portrait which suggests that at that time she saw no conventional beauty in her own reflection, just unblinking intelligence and determination.

'Le Duo (Two Musicians),' 1945. Oil on canvas.

Most of the work in this exhibition of course dates from after Ford’s death because she lived for another seventy years. In the correspondence with her brother while she was co-habiting with Ford 1930-1939, one sees her struggle with pure abstraction. (Jack was an early member of the New York School alongside Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning et al.) And while her work never becomes entirely abstract, one can witness its steady gravitation from a representational impressionism towards symbolic and dreamlike canvases in which recognizable objects seem to float in blocked spaces of pale and dark pigment. One moves, as it were, from Cézanne and Utrillo to Chagall, although never with any sense of dependence on these masters. Acknowledgement, yes, but these are unique and arresting paintings in their own right, their sometimes child-like execution a deliberate engagement with the expression of a damaged innocence. There is always a certain bleakness about their celebration of landscape, cityscape, or even a vase of flowers. She bought de Kooning’s work when no-one else would but she didn’t want to paint like him. In the background of Biala’s Le Duo (1945, Two Musicians), his Abstract Still Life (c. 1938) hangs in pride of place but in a picture echoing a traditional European composition, and in a style which Kelder rightly describes as ‘semi-cubist’ – but only ‘semi’. The central figures – Biala’s later husband, Daniel Brustlein, and de Kooning’s wife Elaine – are quite recognizable at cello and piano respectively. It is a canvas about integrated interior space in which all objects are art objects, and all interlock harmoniously. It is about ‘home’, something particularly precious to Biala who had both known the terrors of poverty and exile, and embraced exile in Paris and Provence as protection from the stultifying gendered expectations of her parents’ home on New York’s Lower East Side.

This, then, is a life’s work, the great work of a great life, documenting years of struggle. Biala seems often to have returned to an architectural motif: the Parisian façade of windows and shutters, cock-eyed yet somehow regular in peeling walls. Kelder mentions that one of Biala’s early successes was the sale of Spring Rue de Seine (1936) to Duncan Phillips (the picture now hangs in the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.). It was the street on which she and Ford had lived. The shutters open onto vulnerable domestic space as in a stage set or after an explosion, yet there is nothing alienating about this exposure. It is hot. The windows are thrown back. Paris is welcomed in. Later work using the same subject seems cooler, suggesting one interior space regarding another with the glass in between. In Paris Façade (c. 1983) the shutters and windows appear like books on library shelves; in The Flower Pots (1985) we stand behind a female figure (Biala herself?) looking through a modern, sealed window, and out onto the old Paris of ramshackle shuttering. One can make too much of this kind of thing but the awkward negotiation between intimacy and privacy does seem to have been important to her, not least in her love for Ford and her unwillingness to speak about their life together. It was a grand passion, and she defended his reputation to the last. But it was private. No-one else’s business. Biala was neither sentimental nor confessional in her life or her art. But it seems that, despite a contented marriage with Brustlein, she missed Ford all her life because he had transformed her from the somewhat messed-up creature of Dickinson’s portrait into the mature woman and artist she became, laughing with Ford in the sunshine at Villa Paul in that famous 1934 photograph.