The stand-in as star - paintings of mannequins by Alan Beeton, circa 1927-31

Reposing II (?)

The painter Alan Beeton seemed to almost go out of his way to avoid attracting attention to his work or to himself. One of the few times notice found him anyway came when he showed a series of paintings of a mannequin, an artist's lay figure. Four in particular, painted in 1928 and 1929, caught the public's and critics' attention: Posing, Composing, Reposing, and Decomposing. Posing and Decomposing were exhibited at the Royal Academy in May 1929, and all four were exhibited in the Oldham Gallery in 1930. The reviewer for The Observer wrote:

"It is not so much to the magnificent of array of works by Rembrandt and Hals that the Dutch Exhibition [I assume this relates to a contemporary exhibition] owes its great popularity, but rather to the minute technical perfection and intimate charm of the ‘small masters’. Again and again I have heard the question raised ”Why can’t people paint like that nowadays?”. It was my pleasant experience last week to see in a friend’s studio a series of four little pictures by a living British artist for whom it may be boldly claimed that he has nothing to learn from Vermeer or Terborch or Metsu. The artist’s name is Alan Beeton."

Posing.

Composing.

Reposing.

Decomposing.

I found four more of the mannequin paintings, though I was unable to find images of them that were anything like a decent size; I did try...!

A group of his mannequin paintings was included in an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum that opened in 2014 - Silent Partners: Artist & Mannequin from Function to Fetish - as well as the original mannequin, restored with the help of three specialists. While researching the exhibition, curator Jane Munro tracked down Beeton’s subject:

"It took years of research, a modicum of detective work and a series of happy coincidences to track it down. Its nose was broken and crudely repaired by a well-meaning amateur sculptress, and its hands and fingers torn and tattered from age, use and abuse. My first sight of it was in the workshop of one of the artist’s descendants, seated on a battered wickerwork chair, dressed comfortably in baggy trousers and a moth-eaten polo neck jumper; on its head was an unbecoming ladies’ wig. For all that, it exuded a warm, benign expression and seemed as relaxed and nonchalant as it appears in many of Beeton's paintings."

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Alan Beeton (8 February 1880, London - 20 December 1942), British artist. The son of wealthy parents, he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, but left after the second year to work at being an artist full time. Circa 1900 he moved to Paris for three years where he met fellow artist Gerald Kelly who was to become his closest friend. When World War I began, he joined first as a private in the infantry, then as a captain in the Royal Engineers, before joining the Camouflage Unit, a group of artists working in a small factory just behind the front line. It was a dangerous job and he would be awarded the Military Cross - twice mentioned in dispatches - and the Croix de Guerre. It was in the unit that he met his future wife, Geneste. They married after the war, setting up a home for themselves and their family in London. His work was focused on portraits and still-lifes, but because of his family's money, he was never ambitious in furthering his career and only painted what interested him. He lived a very quiet life and approached his art-making in a very workman-like manner, fussing over the same paintings often for years. Illness would eventually slow him, but he worked until the very end. After his death at the age of sixty-two, his family found a large trove of his paintings stored in his studio, paintings never seen, work that hadn't risen to his level of perfectionism.