Exhibition bids to boost British post-Impressionists

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - A new exhibition opens in London on Wednesday aiming to shine new light on an influential but short-lived British art group that outraged the stuffy Edwardian art establishment at the start of the 20th century.

From the bold use of color and form to scenes of everyday street life in London and the less than reverential treatment of the female nude the Camden Town Group set out to challenge the accepted norm.

"They were Britain's post-Impressionists. They broke the mould of the British art establishment, showing their own works on their own terms," said curator Robert Upstone.

"We are hoping to reposition this group. They brought color and rigorous design to British art and had a very important role in the creation of modern art in Britain," he added during a preview tour on Monday of the exhibition at Tate Britain.

The Camden Town Group coalesced in 1911 around Walter Sickert who lived in the rather run down north London suburb which gave the group its name.

The exhibition, which runs to May 5, focuses on the five core members of the group, Sickert, Spencer Gore, Charles Ginner, Harold Gilman and Robert Bevan.

It is the first major exhibition of the group's key works in half a century.

Entitled Modern Painters, it studies the distinctive styles, subjects and treatment of urban life during the social upheaval in the years immediately before World War One.