The Arty Tie

Mervyn Levy (Ruskin Spear, London, 1985, pp. 37-8) comments that, 'Ruskin Spear's most typical expressions of his warmth of feeling, his powers of observation and his deep, if detached, understanding of humanity and the environment in which he has lived and worked all his life, are to be found in his studies of the ordinary people of West London going about their business, or captured in unguarded moments of relaxation. The streets and pubs and snooker halls of Hammersmith, Chiswick, Shepherd's Bush, Fulham and Putney are the areas he knows and loves. The Hampshire Hog in King Street ... and The Ravenscourt Arms, both in Hammersmith, have always been for the artist the epitome of all that the 'local' means to its regulars. Snug and happy, gregarious or sometimes lonely, they provide for a while a safe world of mahogany and brass, a stage lit by the glitter and sparkle of glasses and bottles repeated to infinity in the frosted engraved mirrors. This is the Olympus of the working-man. The decor is often dull: browns, dark reds and greens; some areas lit, some in shadow. Pools of light and dark hold the habituées like fish, clutching their pints and nibbling at cigarette butts. The low tones of many of Ruskin Spear's pub pictures recall some of Sickert's paintings of the Old and New Bedford music halls. But they are usually tuned an octave higher. Spear introduces more soaring notes of colour, both into his general palette and in his use of more brilliant overhead lighting'.