The Perspectivists : (Exhibition catalogue)

Brook, Richard and Dodge, Martin (2025) The Perspectivists : (Exhibition catalogue). The Modernist, Manchester. ISBN 9781739492786

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Abstract

This small exhibition of architectural paintings of Manchester buildings of the 1960s was conceived as a celebration of the artists themselves. Commercial perspective artists of the twentieth century were frequently the forgotten and unnamed contributors to a project’s success. Paintings such as these on display were used to sell ideas to the public, to clients, to planning authorities in advance of construction, as well as to provide publicity images of buildings after they were completed. A couple of the paintings in the exhibition have been hung before at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in the Architecture Room. When exhibited there, it was routine for the name of the scheme and the architect to be published, but Academy policy that the artists were not recorded in the official catalogue. A certain degree of snobbery was at play here. The artists were not Academicians –where the architects often were. The artists were not seen by their contemporaries as fine artists – often dismissively viewed as merely draughtspersons-for-hire. We like to think that historical distance (and the advent of CGI) affords a new set of lenses through which to view these works and invite the viewer to consider the paintings as works of art in their own right. Three artists are presented here – Lawrence Wright (1906-1983), John A. Greene (1914-1988) and Peter Sainsbury (1929-1976) – have no official biographies to date. With the kind contribution of their relatives and newly digitised records, we have pieced together something of a narrative of each of their working lives. They were all remarkable people, highly creative, multi-skilled and in demand. It is fair to say that many architects could not make the works that these artists could and, in many instances, the images created (sometimes in close collaboration) undoubtedly contributed to the successful realisation of built schemes. This is the first time that these paintings have been gathered and presented in this way. We have deliberately curated a salon hang in reference to the Royal Academy. Clearly, this is not the juxtaposed collation of manifold media and styles as now seen in the Summer Exhibition, but this grouping of similar subjects from a similar period highlights the different hands executing their distinctive skills in the choice of perspective view, the rendering of trees, vehicles, people and skies and the contribution these elements made to the overall message in the painting. The paintings, before we found them, frequently languished, forgotten, in dismal meeting rooms, cupboards and plan chests. We are convinced that they are treasures and hope that in their presentation here you can share our view of their values.