Words by Martin Holman
Every art form has its talented independent practitioners. They claim no affiliation with a school or set of prevailing theories. What they do is quite radical: they enjoy making and follow their own instincts about what they make and how. Romi Behrens was an example. She was a painter who learned by looking, and the world around her was her favourite subject matter.
'Terracotta Pot and Pineapple', 76 x 92 cm, c.1978, Oil on board
That curiosity brought her objects and places, flowers and faces to feature in her work. Everyday details like the view through a window, a shopfront, a vase of flowers or a ceramic decoration were not ordinary for her; they possessed pictorial possibilities. Fascinated by how these forms and facts about her surroundings also constituted line, colour, volume, she represented in oil paint on canvas or board her part of Cornwall (and places abroad she visited) as her distinct personality perceived it.
‘One of the First, Penzance’, 51 x 86 cm, c.1961, oil on board
‘Pot and Fiddle (Greys)’, 71 x 61 cm, c.1991, oil on board
Imbued with a sense of fun and natural good humour, she could be impulsive, bold and forthright. The daughter of a clergyman, she was expelled from school for talking back, no doubt on a matter that tested her sense of natural justice. Her mother was an organist and music was important to Behrens, a preference reinforced later by the family she married into. These characteristics are felt in the way she made her paintings and drawings. Her brushstrokes have a direct, unaffected quality and every part of the surfaces she painted feels animated. No wonder Van Gogh’s restless, emotive and frequently joyous images interested her. None of that, however, was at the expense of subtlety, which possibly comes across best in her many still-life paintings of flowers.
Because of these features and their different resonances, representation was never a matter of topographical precision. During a career of almost 60 years, she evolved a distinct style. Her concept of a picture allowed for idiosyncrasies in drawing. They came about partly through shortcomings in her own technique. But the arrangement of space and the slantedness of streetscapes also came about because she did not see the world in terms of exactness, straight lines and faithful copying.
‘Ferenc Ferenc Rados III’, 50.5 x 61cm, mid-1980s, oil on board
The exceptions appear in her earliest images. In about 1961, she tackled the arrangement of West Penwith rooftops and buildings in a painting titled ‘One of the First’. The name was probably acquired later, perhaps once she was being asked to exhibit more. The title is the most whimsical and imprecise feature of the piece. By contrast, the composition has the seriousness of a classroom exercise. She creates an almost abstract grouping of geometric shapes, horizontals and verticals. The strength and buoyancy of the picture lie in the modulated tones of brown, grey and white.
By 1971, her handling had relaxed and colour had blossomed. By then, the spirited diversion from traditional pictorial logic had established itself. That is when she painted ‘Market Jew Street, Penzance’. The verticals, horizontals and gradients of architecture still offered a graphic framework. But they have acquired a more sinuous, vital quality.
Street scenes allowed her to insert text. Shopfronts capture a name and communicate a presence that resonate with traces of human activity. Her pleasure in reproducing the design of words in packaging is apparent in ‘Panettone with Doves’ from about 2001. The surface is exuberant with colour and drawing. This portrait of a product is set at a slight angle to the edge of the board, a detail that contributes to the verve of the entire piece, importing a sensation of the Mediterranean south.
‘Chapel near Redruth (Four Lanes)’, 42 x 61 cm, c.1974, oil on board
‘Half Jar and Stattice’, 61 x 61 cm, c.1991, oil on board
The description “self-taught” attaches itself to this artist. That designation may not be entirely accurate. Although born in London in 1939, part of her secondary education had taken place in Penzance. She began art classes at the town’s art school in 1960, the year after the young Behrens had married a local gentleman farmer, Michael Tunstall-Behrens, and the couple had settled at his family property at Prussia Cove. However, she was by no means a conventionally trained painter. Instead, she was an artist by conviction and worked hard to discover for herself the art form’s technical potential. “I am a painter,” she affirmed in a handwritten note, “and I paint every day.”
The artistic environment of west Cornwall when Behrens began painting still laid claim to national and international attention. After all, only recently had Mark Rothko, doyen of New York’s all-conquering abstract expressionist movement, accepted an invitation from Peter Lanyon to visit St Ives. There Rothko met like-minded artists, including Alan Davie, Paul Feiler and Terry Frost. The art that his British counterparts were producing was in its own way quite as important as that coming out of New York. The lack of commercialism in their lives as artists appealed to the prominent American whose own experiences were the opposite.
‘White Jug,’ 61 x 61 cm, 1995-99, oil on board
‘The Dream’, 28 x 30 cm, c.1985, oil on board
‘Fruit Bowl with Black Grapes’, 61 x 61 cm, 1971, oil on board
Behrens would have known about these artists as St Ives is not far from Prussia Cove. She was a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists from 1962 and sent work to the Royal Academy’s annual summer exhibition. Later, curators sought her out for solo shows, especially after her exhibition at Bristol’s prestigious Arnolfini in 1980. But generally she kept apart from that scene, forming her own friendships among artists. These were based on mutual respect. In the 1980s, she became a close friend of Patrick Heron, one of Britain’s most significant postwar painters who lived in Zennor. He respected her as a fellow artist. His experience of space, light and colour fuelled vibrant abstract images, in part inspired by his gardens and surroundings. And, after all, she was already busy enough. By the mid-1960s there were three children to raise, and the sheep farm, dairy and cottages for rent to manage alongside her husband.
Nonetheless, the couple enjoyed a cultural life, going to the cinema and, of course, being part of the festival that Michael’s brother Hilary established on the family property and which continues to host the world-class seminar for classical musicians.
A regular feature for its participants was to be portrayed by the artist. Hundreds exist of the leading string players and pianists who studied and performed at the venue and its satellite concerts. Her vibrant handling of her subjects seems to echo the intense yet joyous ambience of their music making. Behrens continued painting these fellow artists until shortly before her death in 2019. And, of course, she visited exhibitions, sometimes in London when the trip was possible. In 1968, she saw the Matisse show that opened the then new Hayward Gallery. “I was bowled over and never quite recovered,” she recalled. “Stayed all day.”
That impact filtered into her work. The delight in colour and line is evident in ‘Toucan with Pale Anemones’ (2007). The slight diagonal that divides the background creates a coloured tabletop area and an off-white space above. The serpentine curve of stems seems to dance between both. Meanwhile, the toucan ornament looks on, a solid form with body and beak.
‘Toucan with Pale Anemones’, 61 x 61 cm, 2007, oil on canvas
One of her favourite props, she often included it in paintings. Her son, Peter, recalled how she came by the object. “Going up the arcade steps in PZ,” she said, “I found a woman outside her junk shop in floods of tears. I asked her what was wrong? ‘Bank Manager.’ What can we do? ‘Buy something.’ From the very back of the shop the toucan winked at me and squawked, ‘Get me out of here.’ So for £30 I did, in a paper bag… When Patrick Heron saw it and asked how much, he said add at least a couple of noughts. Well, he has certainly paid for himself!” Her account seems to encapsulate the effusive personality that this treasure of recent Cornish painting effusively transferred to her paintings.
A handsome and beautifully designed book about the artist has recently been published. Romi Behrens: A Painting Life (Sansom & Company, ISBN 978-1-915670-16-8, £30) charts her life and career with a perceptive essay about her evolution as an artist by Rachel Rose Smith alongside reminiscences by friends, including Alice Mumford, Sue Norrington, Roz Quillan Chandler and Jeremy Le Grice. Above all, 136 colour images of works survey every aspect of her working life.
All images © The Estate of Romi Behrens.
‘Panettone with Doves (Turino)’, 61 x 76 cm, c.2001, oil on board
‘Market Jew Street, Penzance’, 30 x 45 cm, c. 1971, oil on board
‘Penzance Houses’ 30 x 53 cm, 1960, oil on board
Romi Behrens, c. 1984. Photograph by Roger Black