THE PAINTER REX WHISTLER (1905-1944) was commissioned by the Tate Gallery (now the Tate Britain) to create a mural for what was its refreshment room in 1926. Assisted by Katharine Ann West (1904–1930), it was completed by 1927. Completely surrounding the room, it illustrates a narrative, which has been summarised on the Tate’s website as follows:
“Whistler’s mural depicts an expedition in search of rare food and drink, led by the fictional Duke of Epicurania. A hunting party sets off from the steps of the gallery. It travels across rivers and seas, through pastoral landscapes and wild forests. The group shoots at leopards and deer and meets unicorns and mermaids. They pass islands topped with Italian cities, encounter shipwrecks and ruins, and visit the Great Wall of China. They return home laden with spoils, greeted by a cheering crowd.”
Usually, the former refreshment room and its mural are not open to the public. Recently, it has been opened and within it a large screen has been set-up. A short film is projected on the screen. The film has two actors, one playing the part of Rex Whistler, and the other of a fictional academic, Professor Shepherd, who discusses the mural with him. Unfortunately, because the film is being screened, the former dining room has subdued lighting, which makes it difficult to fully appreciate Whistler’s superbly painted mural.
Most of the mural is gloriously picturesque, and cannot give rise to any objections. However, if you look closely, there are two insensitive depictions of Black people that might easily cause offence to viewers today. Whether they would have upset the Tate’s visitors in the late 1920s, I do not know. The bulk of the dialogue in the film being screened in the room relates to the presence of these two frankly racist images on the mural. During the film, the fictional prof gives the artist a hard time about the way he represented the two Black people. I got the impression that the person who wrote the script wished to convey that Whistler could not see why the prof was upset by the way he had painted these figures.
The mural was painted eight years after WW1, during which Black and Asian soldiers fought and sacrificed their lives for the British who had colonised the countries from which they came. Whistler must have known about them. Only seven years before the mural was created, countless numbers of Indians were slaughtered at Jallianwala Bagh in the Punjab. Their massacre was ordered by Reginald Edward Harry Dyer. After he was reprimanded for this, and had returned to England, the public, regarding him as a hero rather than a murderer, raised over £26000 (approximately £1,485,000 today) for him. And that was after 1920. It might be a big leap, but it struck me that if the British public felt justified raising so much for such a man in the 1920s, maybe many of them would have seen nothing to complain about when seeing how Whistler portrayed people of colour in 1927.
yamey 