Edward Bawden, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, review: Good wallpaper for the adult nursery

A pleasingly humorous show – but the painter, print-maker and illustrator's work lacks any real punch

‘Gnat and Lion’, taken from ‘Aesop’s Fables’ (Estate of Edward Bawden)

Does Edward Bawden, the English painter, print-maker, book illustrator and much else merit an exhibition on this scale? No.

The difficulty is that the Dulwich Picture Gallery, its host, seems to want to repeat the success it had three years ago with an exhibition of work by Eric Ravilious, Bawden’s much more talented friend and exact contemporary – Ravilious died young (how we wish for more); Bawden went on and on (how we wish for less). It doesn’t work because Bawden has neither nor the depth nor the breadth.

Little here packs any real punch. It is, for the most part, pleasingly humorous, skippingly so. Bawden could not resist smiling wryly at things. He was a very prolific man. He never stopped working.

Had he worked less, could it all have been much, much better? The question is unanswerable. My hunch: I doubt it.

There is much here that no one aside from the works’ private owners have even seen before. This is billed as a reason to feel excited. Calm yourself. Various book illustrations, for example. He illustrated many, many books. As soon as he saw a classic book, he felt the urge to illustrate it. No one thought to keep him away, to change the subject, to suggest a foreign excursion or, most radically perhaps, to tie his hands together.

There are examples here of illustrations from his Bunyan and his Gulliver’s Travels. I have seldom seen illustrations fail to rise to the challenge quite so comprehensively. Swift would have eviscerated him in a phrase had he lived long enough.

You feel that from time to time Bawden goes in hot pursuit – he delighted in painting on the spot – of some depth of mystery, and never quite finds it.

The exhibition is divided into old-time themes fit for the yielding armchair: gardening (he loved his garden), spirit of place, etc. His better work was made during the years that he spent as a war artist, wandering through Egypt, the Sudan, Eritrea, pretty well pleasing himself. These portraits of nurses, policemen, tribal leaders, the son of the local coffee-man, are not great by any means, but they do have a certain penetration of each character’s distinctive isolation.

It would be foolish to over-praise. His patterns make for good wallpaper for the adult nursery – you can see examples on the walls. Running parallel with this Bawden corridor is the Dulwich Gallery’s permanent collection – Rembrandt, Pietro di Cosimo, Guido Reni and others – gaze slightly averted, sensibly.

An enfeebled talent of sorts then.

Until 9 September (dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk)