Barnet Painting Diary - page 2

Graham Turner continues with his guide following the creation of his big oil painting of the Battle of Barnet.

CLICK HERE to return to the previous progress page.

In my preliminary sketch I indicated bodies of the dead and wounded without being that specific, so it takes quite a lot of thought and work to decide exactly how they should be placed within the composition. Their struggle and fate is as much a part of the story I'm trying to convey as those still standing - it's the end they are desperately trying to avoid with all the effort they can muster. As with every element in the painting, these will evolve - as you can see with the figure clutching his face, who I have altered from the initial drawing out.

After several weeks of painting I am now able to start putting in a few details that make it feel like I'm finally getting somewhere. Indicating the heraldry on Edward IV's tabard and putting the beginning of a crown on his helmet starts to give him some interest (below). They are only a few brushstrokes and need refining, but it is definite progress. Still a huge amount to do, but what has at times seemed a daunting, I'll never get it finished sort of a project, now feels manageable. I now feel more confident that I will get it finished in time for unveiling in June. Onwards...

Another busy week has seen me concentrating on the right hand side of the painting. I have done some more work to the billman grappling with Edward IV, but I've primarily focused on two rather important figures in the background: John Nevill, Marquis Montagu, conferring with his brother Richard, Earl of Warwick.

I hadn't initially thought I'd be able to include the commanders of both sides in the same painting, with the composition centred on King Edward, but what I had just indicated with a few pencil marks in the preliminary sketch shouted out to me to be Warwick and Montagu when I looked at the space on the full sized painting.

They will remain relatively indistinct in the fog, but I will do some more work to them both, and the figures and banners around them. Montagu wears a tabard bearing his coat of arms, while Warwick is dressed in the famous armour depicted in the tomb effigy of his father-in-law Richard Beachamp, Earl of Warwick, made a couple of decades after his death so actually very appropriate for Richard Nevill. It is a harness I have depicted him in before, both in my painting of the Battle of St Albans and most recently this year for the Barnet Medieval Festival poster.

This is a stage in the evolution of a painting where everything appears to slow down, as the relatively quick early progress with broad brushstrokes changes to adding some of the finer detailed work. However, I am still working fairly loosely on some areas, still grappling with the placement and posing of some of the figures so that they all inhabit the same space and interact convincingly. Sometimes this can be very frustrating and it is easy to get bogged down with something that just won't look right. After wiping the paint off the canvas for the umpteenth time, sometimes I need to tell myself to walk away and come back to that area!

And another week rolls by, another week where this painting has been pretty much my entire existence!

I tend to work from the right to the left, as being a left-hander, this means my mahl stick (the stick with a padded end used to rest the brush hand on) rests on dry paint. This also allows the previous few days' painting to hopefully dry before I move back to it. So while last week I concentrated on the right side of the painting, this week I've moved my attention across the centre to the left, and this weekend I should be able to focus on to the banners of Edward and his Yorkist supporters which now look like they've been left behind by progress on the rest of the painting. I feel that it's important to keep the painting evolving evenly.

The central foreground figure is wearing the Earl of Warwick's livery over a Milanese harness (much like the main figure in my painting 'Concealed Attack'). He is facing a Yorkist billman, brandishing his bill directly at him. Will his armour protect him or is there perhaps a vulnerable gap for the bill to find and exploit? Either way, it will be over for one of them in moments...

Just as it's probably all over for the figure on the ground between them, who is now starting to take shape. I intentionally posed him so the angle of his head looks slightly awkward; if he's fallen dead or grievously wounded he wouldn't have the opportunity to make himself comfortable!

Moving onto the figures right next to the King, I've chosen to represent some of his Knights of the Body, his personal bodyguard. Sir Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy, was made a Knight of the Body by King Edward in 1463, having fled with him to Calais after the Yorkist disaster at Ludford Bridge, and fought alongside him at Mortimer's Cross and Towton in 1461. In 1464 he was appointed Treasurer of England, before being raised to the Peerage in 1465 as Lord Mountjoy of Thurveston. After Barnet (when he was in his fifties), he also fought with King Edward at the Battle of Tewkesbury, and was made a Knight of the Garter in 1472.

Right; Sir Walter Blount's Garter stall plate at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, created c.1472

More to follow on the other figures round the King, and the banners flying above them, as they take shape next week...

I've now worked some more on the other figures supporting King Edward and the banners above. The banners are obviously still minus their heraldic charges, but I've established the shapes and basic colour and tonal values - it's a tricky balance between wanting them to be recognisable without losing the foggy atmosphere.

Behind Sir Walter Blount, who I introduced to you last week, is Sir Thomas de Burgh, who was 40 at the time of Barnet. Having been made a Knight of the Body he fought for Edward IV at the battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham in 1464, and then at Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471. He was made a Knight of the Garter in 1483.

Both Sir Walter and Sir Thomas wear English armours, providing me with an opportunity to include a couple of the more unusual harnesses portrayed on tomb effigies of the period (a particular fascination of mine). Sir Walter's is based on that of Sir William Gascoigne at Harewood Hall in Yorkshire, with it's very distinctive one piece knee and shoulder plates (see my drawing below), while Sir Thomas's heavily cusped reinforcing plates on the pauldrons (shoulders) are from the tomb effigy of Sir William Martyn in Dorset.

I have also included a hint of Sir James Harrington, another of Edward's Knights of the Body, by indicating his heraldry in the murk behind de Burgh.

At first glance you'd think the painting was finished at this point, but there's still a lot of work to do. The early days with a big brush see fast progress, but now that I'm working on the details, a whole day can be spent on one figure. My daughter sums it up by saying it looks more high definition!

I make the finishing touches to the dead and wounded on the right, the knight wearing his heraldic tabard to the right of centre now identified as Sir Humphrey Bourchier, Lord Cromwell - one of the notable casualties on the Yorkist side.

The foreground figure on the right threw a last minute headache into the mix. Originally I intended to make him Sir John Conyers, a member of a prominent Yorkshire family with a long history as retainers of the Earl of Warwick, and before him his father, the Earl of Salisbury. Sir John played a major part in Warwick's uprising of 1469, culminating in the Battle of Edgcote, where Conyers fought (see right; for details of Graham's painting of the Battle of Edgcote, CLICK HERE). However, he made his peace with King Edward IV soon after, and went on to become a faithful Yorkist, so without any evidence of his presence at Barnet, despite his long association with Warwick, I became nervous of including him in the painting. Mind you, that was after I'd painted the tabard blue and added his heraldry!

I then considered other potential candidates, but for various reasons had to discount them, either because I could find no evidence of their being at Barnet, or because their allegiances would have put them with the Earl of Oxford on the right wing, far in the background of my painting. Finally, following many hours of frustration, and after bouncing ideas off others, I narrowed it down to just one possibility - Sir Richard Tunstall.

Sir Richard was a staunch Lancastrian, who had fought at the battles of Wakefield, St. Albans, Towton, Hedgerley Moor, and Hexham, defended the Northumberland castles after Towton, then the long defence of Harlech, where he was finally captured and imprisoned in the Tower of London. When Warwick returned Henry VI to the throne in 1470/71, he was appointed to the prestigious role of Chamberlain, before the wheel of fortune turned once more and he was attainted in the aftermath of Barnet. Once Lancastrian hopes were extinguished after the death of King Henry, he did eventually make his peace with Edward IV and was pardoned by 1473, going on to serve both Edward IV and Richard III, becoming a Knight of the Garter, before probably going over to Henry Tudor at Bosworth. A busy career!

Contemporary evidence identifying those who fought at the Battle of Barnet, apart from the major commanders, is scarce, to say the least, but the little snippet that backs my inclusion of Sir Richard Tunstall in my painting was written in a letter from the Duke of Burgundy's secretary, passing on the latest news from England - '... today mylord has had certain news that the Earl of Warwick has been killed in the battle that was fought on Easter day and that one of his brothers is also dead, and that King Edward is king again in England, in peace, and that he was in the said battle in person, and King Henry has been returned to his cell in the Tower of London' - and including Sir Richard's name amongst a list of those who fought at Barnet. *

* http://www.richardiii.net/downloads/Ricardian/essay_ricardian_riddle.pdf/

More finishing touches are applied over the whole painting: Edward IV gains a crown, banners their heraldic charges, and the Yorkist billman's sleeves its mail rings. Too many details to list, so I've created another section to show some larger detail images and discuss what I've included and the reasons behind it (see link below).

DETAIL IMAGES

A painting of this size and complexity cannot really be fully appreciated viewed as a small image on a computer monitor, so to give a better indication of the amount of detail in the painting, CLICK HERE to see a selection of larger close up images taken from it.

Each image is accompanied by details of what is shown, revealing some of the immense amount of research behind this painting.

ORIGINAL PAINTING - Graham Turner's original oil painting is available to purchase - CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

Battle of Barnet print

Graham Turner's painting of the Battle of Barnett is available as a high quality print - CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS