Tramps’ Heritage
Morgan Rendle (1889–1952)
Worthing Museum and Art Gallery

Transcript

Tramp’s heritage was painted by Morgan Rendle, who is one of the Sussex Society painters. It’s an oil painting on panel, and it was exhibited in 1935, shortly after it was created. It could be an imaginary landscape, but it’s kind of typical of that area between Brighton and Eastbourne. And it’s of an old man, a tramp who’s peacefully resting in the sun against a beech tree. It’s a very beautiful, lyrical painting with a group of beaches that are kind of on the golden mean. They’re on the two thirds middle sides of the painting, and you can see cliffs in the background and the rolling Downs and a group of goats are around one of the trees and there’s an old holm oak behind the beech tree that the old man’s resting against. And in the foreground there is a cluster of green leaves that are some kind of perennial. And you can see the cliffs of Sussex.
It’s lovely that it’s really related to the place where it is. I wonder if you can still find the trees if you look still, maybe tree stumps, or whether it’s just fields now. I like the fact that the trees, that bark of the trunks are almost like hyperreal. And you can see faces within the lines within the bark. And it feels a bit like the old man’s sleeping and the trees are reflecting his dreams and imagination. I would say it’s definitely painted in the summer, probably going into the autumn. It looks as though it’s in the summer going into the autumn. And his heritage is definitely nature. And this is painted on the South Downs. It’s where I myself love going walking. I love walking on the Downs there and I like being with nature and I love being part of nature. And that’s exactly what the tramp is doing. He is part of nature. Honestly that’s the richness, the richness of the planet. He’s living on the planet, the beauty of the planet and living on the planet.
I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but the way his clothes fold, they really remind me of the bark and the trees around him. And his shirt is slightly blue like sky. So I really agree with you that he is part of nature.
From my own perspective, I think there is a bit of tension in the romantic ideal that this painting represents because it is very much saying that the tramp’s legacy, it’s a lifestyle that he’s chosen. I think Rendle would have seen lots of tramps around Brighton in that time in the 1930s. But there’s no indication that this was a man that he actually knew. It worries me slightly, that kind of romantic notion. Well, my experience as someone who was homeless in the 1980s was that I went to Shelter, the homeless charity, for support and I had an interview with them and they told me that I’d made myself voluntarily homeless, as if it’s a lifestyle choice. You know, you choose to be on the streets and there’s something a little bit dangerous about that kind of romanticising of homelessness. A lot of homeless people, it’s not a choice. It is something that you get forced into by circumstances and life situations that you’ve got no control over.
Because I don’t know whether he’s chosen that way of life or whether he’s landed like that because he’s lost his job or whatever. And now also my questions are, does he know how to survive in the wild? Does he know what berries to eat? He might be knowledgeable on what to eat.
Well, it’s funny because in the foreground there’s a plant called Mallow, which this one is just like a green shrub because it dies back over the winter and then it regrows and it’s an edible plant.
It’s very much a sort of romantic, idealized picture of being at one with nature, but it doesn’t represent the realities of being in that situation and knowing how to survive. It is absolutely beautifully painted though, and it’s really lush and rich with texture. Yeah. It kind of reminds me of on a really sunny day when the sun’s low in the sky and all the colours look slightly washed out because you spent so long in the sun. And you can feel the kind of warmth from the painting. It’s very yellow and green. It strikes me as though it’s probably still warm. Not heat wave, probably slightly heat wave warm. But it’s warm and it looks as though he’s got the sun there and he’s lying there and it’s just a pleasant feeling. It’s a pleasant temperature.