Following my previous posting I have been reflecting on the question of the reasons why some very able artists receive what would appear to be far less credit than they deserve. It struck me that there are at least two systematic reasons why this might be the case.
By coincidence the calendar on the wall of my studio (a gift from my wife at Christmas) features the work of Eric Ravillious. Like Knighton-Hammond, Ravillious worked largely in watercolour.* This medium has always been under the cloud of association with “amateurism”. The real killer, of course, has been a tendency to regard it as a “feminine” medium. Perhaps an even greater stigma attaches to the use of pastels, and for the same reasons.
For reasons which are interesting if obscure, painting which is to be taken seriously has to be executed in oils. Even today work in acrylic appears to carry with it the taint of cheapness …. cost-cutting and laziness. “Proper” artists work in oil paint, don’t they?
I heard recently that it has been extremely difficult for professional photographers to have work accepted which has been shot on a mobile ‘phone, and perhaps for similar reasons.
How do these rather artificial hierarchies come to be established, and how do they persist?
*What is worse, in his case frequently watercolour and pencil!