Frank Rutter

Francis Vane Phipson Rutter (17 February 1876 – 18 April 1937) was a British art critic, curator and activist.

In 1903, he became art critic for The Sunday Times, a position which he held for the rest of his life. he noted a new realism after the period of "abstract experiment", His grandfather, John, and his father were both prosperous solicitors with chambers in Clifford's Inn, Holborn, and both had acted for John Ruskin, John assisting on Ruskin's marriage nullification with Euphemia (Effie) Gray; Henry severed the connection with Ruskin, after the latter rejected his counsel on a property transaction.

From 1889, Frank Rutter was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, at that time in Aldersgate, where he specialised in Hebrew (under the influence of his father whose hobby was Biblical archaeology)

Whilst still at school, Rutter, along with a fellow sixth form student, Edgar D., explored London nightlife, visiting music halls, eating out in Gatti's Restaurant and joining nightclubs, which were then an adjunct to the more formal London's gentleman's club, providing a dining room, ballroom, writing room, and female membership, which was not taken up by respectable women in society, although the male membership was mostly respectable; Rutter's father happily financed these activities. He was a strong supporter of Impressionist and Expressionist Modernism. He considered "perfectly dreadful" the lack of such work in the national collections, pointing out in 1905 that the only example of the modern French school was Edgar Degas' The Ballet from Robert the Devil (1876) in the Victoria and Albert Museum. and wrote to MacColl on 11 October 1905 to inform him of the work he had selected, which Van der Veldt had accepted £120 for provided it would go to a national collection and which was waiting at the Goupil Gallery for MacColl to see.

It was shown privately at the Goupil Gallery for the subscribers, and presented in January 1906 to the National Gallery through the National Art Collections Fund, which Rutter said was keen to act as a channel for the prestigious presentation, but had not given "the slightest help or encouragement when I needed it most."

Rutter was a supporter of the Fitzroy Street Group, which had been founded in 1907, and succeeded in gaining the support of key members, Walter Sickert, Spencer Gore and Harold Gilman, for the AAA. Rutter was a natural organiser and, with the help of Lucien Pissarro attracted 80 members. Rutter was keen to mount a foreign section in the first show, and liaised over this with Jan de Holewinski (1871–1927), who was in London to arrange a Russian art and craft show. Rutter's friends in Leeds, Michael Sadler and his son, Michael Sadleir (who had modified the spelling of his surname) developed a relationship with Kandinsky, who assigned English translation rights for Concerning the Spiritual in Art to Sadleir. The AAA exhibited also for the first time in London Constantin Brâncuși, Jacob Epstein, Robert Bevan and Walter Bayes. It was promoted as the "First Art Newspaper in the United Kingdom". of which he was the honorary treasurer. Four months later he was the speaker representing the Press at the John Stuart Mill Celebrations, which were staged by the Women's Freedom League.

Rutter quickly supported Fry's venture with a small book Revolution in Art (enlarged in 1926 as Evolution in Modern Art), its title derived from Gauguin's statement that "in art there are only revolutionists or plagiarists."

Rutter's Art News reported on the AAA show of July 1911 and also printed the Futurist Painters Manifesto (first printed as the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting in February 1909 in Le Figaro). In April 1912, because of financial difficulties,

Rutter initially had plans to create a modern art collection at the Leeds gallery, but had been frustrated in this aim by "boorish" local councillors; his association with the escape of Lilian Lenton had further damaged his standing.

Rutter made a link between the British artists he supported and the French intimiste painters, as well as featuring artworks by Severini and Boccioni of the Italian Futurism movement—which had been shown in London first by the Sackville Gallery—and by Brâncuși, Epstein, Delaunay and Signac.

Fry told Rutter that Fredrick Etchells from his Omega Workshops had nothing ready to show, and failed to forward a letter from Rutter to Wyndham Lewis, who nevertheless showed the large Kermesse, which, together with Delaunay's similarly sized Cardiff Football Team, made a centerpiece for the show.

The Cabyard, Night, the only painting by Robert Bevan acquired for a public collection during the artist's lifetime, was bought by the Contemporary Art Society on Rutter's recommendation that they should obtain it for the nation before a more discerning collector bought it.

Art & Letters

Rutter, along with Harold Gilman and Charles Ginner had planned the launch of a journal, Art & Letters, for Spring 1914, but this was delayed by the outbreak of the war. It began publication in July 1917 as an illustrated quarterly, co-edited by Rutter and Herbert Read, whose aesthetic and critical ideas dominated. It was a modernist magazine of visual and literary art, which fused the artistic and the political.

The contents page of the first issue carried a policy of remuneration for contributors, based on "co-operative lines" that after the cost of production and 5% on capital, half of the profits would go to editorial and publishing staff and the other half would be split equally between contributors. It was also stated that some of the contributors were serving at the front and that educated men in the army were keen to see such a publication: "Engaged, as their duty bids, on harrowing work of destruction, they exhort their elders at home never to lose sight of the supreme importance of creative art." In 1917, he resigned his job at the Leeds City Art Gallery, A few thousand see the first, but the second are seen by millions. The art galleries of the People are not in Bond Street but are to be found in every railway station."

On 28 March 1920 in The Sunday Times, Rutter reviewed the short-lived Group X (a reforming of the Vorticists), "the real tendency of the exhibition is towards a new sort of realism, evolved by artists who have passed through a phase of abstract experiment.".

He divorced his wife around this time, and on 29 March 1920 married Ethel Dorothy (born 1894/5), the second daughter of William Robert Bunce, a coal merchant. and "She has achieved apparently with consummate ease that complete presentation of twentieth century vision in terms of plastic design after which Derain and other much praised French painters have been groping for years past."

1928–1931, Rutter was European Editor of International Studio, New York.

He suffered from a bronchial complaint for a number of years, as a result of which he periodically sojourned on the South Coast, visiting London exhibitions when he felt in good enough health to do so. He wrote his Sunday Times article up to a week before his death. He left his estate, which included around 80 paintings by the likes of Gilman, Ginner, Gore and Lucien Pissarro, to his wife. He had no children.

Appearance and character Rutter was tall with an incisive profile, an enthusiastic character and a strong manner of delivery. He was a supportive friend and good company who injected conversations with humour, for which he adopted an "uncular" manner. He was modest and generous, not motivated by personal ambition, but advancing the interests of art and artists over any profit for himself. His approach was not that of an intellectual applying logic impersonally, but through aesthetic intuition and an empathy for the creative process. His knowledge of art history sufficed for his needs, and he could be critical, but his main feature was the display of personal judgement and a preference to address the work he could enjoy.

Books

Varsity Types, 1902 The Path to Paris, 1908 Rossetti, Painter and Man of Letters, 1909 Whistler, a Biography and an Estimate, 1910 Revolution in Art, 1910 The Wallace Collection, 1913 Some Contemporary Artists, 1922 The Poetry of Architecture, 1923 Richard Wilson and Farington, 1923 The Old Masters, 1925 Evolution in Modern Art, 1926 Theodore Roussel, 1927 Since I was Twenty-Five, 1928 El Greco, 1930 Art in My Time, 1933 Modern Masterpieces, 1936