Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Chantrey Bequest
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/margaret-barker-694" aria-label="More by Margaret Barker" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Margaret Barker</a>
Any Morning
Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1929
actions: postures and motions
adults
architecture
arm / arms raised
Barker
bed
bedroom
blanket
Catford, Castlands Road
children
daughter
descending
domestic
door
England
family
features
fine arts and music
furnishings
garden
garden structures
girl
individuals: female
interiors
mother
named individuals
objects
people
picture
pillow
places
portraits
sheet
society
stair / step
tree
UK countries and regions
UK London
window
woman
<p>Margaret Barker was interested in charging everyday incidents with extraordinary meaning. The quiet atmosphere of this bedroom interior is established through the ritualised movements of the woman and girl as they make the bed. This stillness is echoed in a painting over the bed, The Courtyard of a House in Delft by Pieter de Hooch (1629-84), which Barker must have seen in the National Gallery, London. The archway in this painting is transformed by Barker into a doorway onto a landing and window. An inscription over the archway translates: 'This is in Saint Jerome's vale, if you wish to repair to patience and meekness. For we must first descend if we wish to be raised.'</p><p><em>Gallery label, August 2004</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
14 April 2003 – 4 May 2004
2004-05-04
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2003-04-14
Private Lives
Collection based display
1 July 2017 – 29 October 2017
2017-10-29
1 July 2017 – 29 October 2017
2017-10-29
2017-07-01
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh, UK)
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/
2017-07-01
True to Life: British Realist Painting in the 1920s and 1930s
Loan-out
14 September 2019 – 5 January 2020
2020-01-05
14 September 2019 – 5 January 2020
2020-01-05
2019-09-14
Museum MORE (Gorssel, Netherlands)
2019-09-14
British Realist Painting in the 1920s and 1930s
Loan-out
Any Morning
support: 622 × 914 mm
frame: 900 × 1200 × 90 mm
Presented by the Trustees of the <a href="/search?gid=999999977" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Chantrey Bequest</a> 1929
<p>Margaret Barker was interested in charging  everyday incidents with extraordinary meaning. The quiet atmosphere of this bedroom interior is established through the ritualised movements of the woman and girl as they make the bed. This stillness is echoed in a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> over the bed, The Courtyard of a House in Delft by Pieter de Hooch (1629-84), which Barker must have seen in the National Gallery, London. The archway in this  painting is transformed by Barker into a doorway onto a landing and window. An inscription over the archway translates: 'This is in Saint Jerome's vale, if you wish to repair to patience and meekness. For we must first descend if we wish to be raised.'</p>
Display caption
2004-08-27T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<strong>"Any Morning"</strong>  1929
<p>
<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/barker-any-morning-n04474" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N04474</span></a>
</p><p>
<!-- begin FC description -->
<!-- begin item -->
Oil on canvas<br/>
622 x 915 (24 1/2 x 36)
<!-- end item -->
<!-- end FC description -->
</p><p>
<!-- begin inscription -->
<!-- begin section heading -->
<!-- end section heading -->
<!-- begin item -->
Inscribed on back in pencil, 'M. D. BARKER', along top canvas return; in blue oil beneath white primer 'ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART, EXHIBITION ROAD SW7 | ROME SCHOLARSHIP [?EXHIBITION] [...]' t.l.; and in <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/ink" title="Glossary definition for 'Ink'"><span>ink</span></a> on fragment of NEAC label 'MARGARET D. [...] | 22 CASTLAN [...] | CATFORD - S[...] | "ANY MO[...]'
<!-- end item -->
<!-- end inscription -->
</p><p>

Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1929
</p><p>
<!-- begin exhibition history -->
<!-- begin section heading -->
Exhibited:<br/>
<!-- end section heading -->
<!-- begin item -->
New English Art Club, April 1929 (144)<br/>
<!-- end item -->
<!-- begin item -->
<em>The Chantrey Collection</em>, Royal Academy Winter Exhibition, London, Jan.-March 1949 (236)<br/>
<!-- end item -->
<!-- begin item -->
<em>Within These Shores</em>, Sheffield 1989 (12, repr. in col.)
<!-- end item -->
<!-- end exhibition history -->
</p><p>
<!-- begin literature -->
<!-- begin section heading -->
Literature:<br/>
<!-- end section heading -->
<!-- begin item -->
Randolph Schwabe, 'Quarterly Notes', <em>Artwork</em>, vol. 7, no. 27, Autumn 1931, p.171<br/>
<!-- end item -->
<!-- begin item -->
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, <em>Tate Gallery: The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture</em>, I, London 1964, pp.24-5<br/>
<!-- end item -->
<!-- end literature -->
</p><p>
<!-- begin main text -->
In conversation with the compiler on 12 March 1996, Margaret Barker stated that <em>"Any Morning"</em> is a largely accurate representation of the interior of her family home at 22 Castlands Road in Catford, South London. It was there that the work was painted. She identified the larger figure in the red dress as a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/portrait" title="Glossary definition for 'Portrait'"><span>portrait</span></a> of her mother, while the young girl on the right and the figure on the landing with her back to the viewer seemed to represent her elder sister at different ages. She believed that the fourth figure, half way down the stairs, was invented, though the frontality of its pose might lead one to suspect that it was based upon a self-portrait. The <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscape</span></a> seen through the window was also imaginary, representing, the artist suggested, an ideal setting for which she might have wished. Over the bed hangs a reproduction of Pieter de Hooch's <em>The Courtyard of a House in Delft</em> (1658) in the National Gallery, which the artist said she included because she liked the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a>. She recalled that while at the RCA she used to visit the National Gallery, where she particularly admired the quieter paintings of the Dutch rather than more dramatic works. Barker appears deliberately to invoke <em>The Courtyard of a House in Delft</em> in the way that the open door in <em> "Any Morning"</em> echoes the archway in the de Hooch.
</p><p>
The paint of <em>"Any Morning"</em> was thinly applied over a ground which is white in the upper part of the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> and buff-coloured lower down. In certain parts there are a number of layers of pigment, most obviously in a slightly confused area to the left of the door where a darker patch has resulted from the artist's reworking of dry paint. Nevertheless, this may also be read as a damp patch on the wall. Though no underdrawing is visible, pencil marks on the tacking edges of the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvas</span></a> would suggest that the composition was sketched out prior to painting. An examination of the reverse of the picture reveals that the paint layer continues approximately two inches over the top edge of the canvas. Earlier tack holes confirm that the work was painted on a larger stretcher and interrupted inscriptions on the wooden stretcher members indicate that the original stretcher was cut down. The restretching of the painting might explain a slight downward slope towards the left of the lines of the composition. An inscription under the thin coat of white primer on the reverse of the canvas suggests that <em>"Any Morning"</em> was entered for the Prix de Rome at the RCA. Margaret Barker confirmed that she had entered for the Rome Scholarship but could not be certain that this was the work submitted.<font size="-1"><sup>1</sup></font> The alterations to the support are explained by a letter from the artist to the Tate Gallery dated 4 November 1952 in which she recalled that she had not considered the painting a success and 'had turned the canvas ready for work on the back'. She went on, 'It was only under pressure from Professor Schwabe that it was sent in to the exhibition at the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/n/new-english-art-club" title="Glossary definition for 'New English Art Club'"><span>New English Art Club</span></a> in 1929'.<font size="-1"><sup>2</sup></font>
</p><p>
<em>"Any Morning"</em> was Barker's response to a title given by one of her tutors as an exercise, hence her inclusion of double inverted commas around the picture's title. In 1996 she remembered that such voluntary exercises were set every fortnight, the results being hung in the basement of the Victoria and Albert Museum for criticism by the teaching staff. It was presumably from such an occasion that Professor Schwabe knew the painting. That he admired Barker's work is also apparent from the short notice he gave her in his editorial column in the magazine <em>Artwork</em> in 1931.<font size="-1"><sup>3</sup></font> A reproduction of a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/lithography" title="Glossary definition for 'Lithography'"><span>lithograph</span></a> in the same issue is the only other known surviving image by the artist who gave all of her later paintings away.<font size="-1"><sup>4</sup></font> Schwabe's description of her style suggests that <em>"Any Morning"</em> is not untypical of her work at that time. Discussing her 'unhackneyed attitude of mind', he wrote: 'She has a taste for subject-matter of an unusual kind, or rather she finds subjects in ordinary incidents of life which other artists would pass by'. This celebration of the every day was also characteristic of the work of Stanley Spencer, who enjoyed popularity during the 1920s and whose figure style, derived from early Italian painting, would also seem to have influenced Barker. Barker's retention of the double inverted commas in the picture's title suggests that the simple domestic scene has a particular symbolic significance. Such a suggestion is endorsed by the inscription over the arch in the de Hooch painting, which translates as: 'This is in Saint Jerome's vale, if you wish to repair to patience and meekness. For we must first descend if we wish to be raised.' Thus the mundane routine of domestic chores becomes symbolic of the humility necessary for redemption.
<!-- end main text -->
</p><p>
<!-- begin author/date -->
Chris Stephens<br/>
November 1997
<!-- end author/date -->
</p><p>
<!-- begin footnotes -->
<!-- begin section heading -->
<!-- end section heading -->
<!-- begin item -->
<font size="-1"><sup>1</sup></font> Margaret Barker, interview with the compiler, 12 March 1996<br/>
<!-- end item -->
<!-- begin item -->
<font size="-1"><sup>2</sup></font> Margaret Barker, letter to Tate Gallery, 4 Nov. 1952, Tate Gallery catalogue files<br/>
<!-- end item -->
<!-- begin item -->
<font size="-1"><sup>3</sup></font> [Randolph Schwabe], 'Quarterly Notes', <em>Artwork</em>, vol.7, no.27, 1931 p.171<br/>
<!-- end item -->
<!-- begin item -->
<font size="-1"><sup>4</sup></font> Margaret Barker, untitled lithograph, whereabouts unknown, repr. <em>Artwork</em>, vol.7, no.27, 1931 p.209
<!-- end item -->
<!-- end footnotes -->
<!-- end text -->
</p>
Catalogue entry
2004-09-21T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: postures and motions adults architecture arm / arms raised Barker bed bedroom blanket Catford, Castlands Road children daughter descending domestic door England family features fine arts and music furnishings garden garden structures girl individuals: female interiors mother named individuals objects people picture pillow places portraits sheet society stair / step tree UK countries and regions UK London window woman