exhibition catalogue

Transcription

The
Fine Art
Society
Spring
2014
[A]
THE FINE ART SOCIETY
Dealers since 1876
8 to 3o April 2014
148 New Bond Street · London W1S 2JT
+44 (0)20 7629 5116 · [email protected]
www.faslondon.com
Bourne Fine Art
Part of The Fine Art Society
9 to 31 May 2014
6 Dundas Street · Edinburgh EH3 6HZ
+44 (0) 131 557 4050 · [email protected]
www.bournefineart.com
[B]
[2]
Alexander Archipenko
Edward Bawden
Gerald Leslie Brockhurst
David Young Cameron
Rob & Nick Carter
Frank Dicksee
Frank Dobson
Alfred East
William Gale
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
William Hamilton
Kate Hayllar
David Hockney
William Hogarth
Gerald Laing
Chris Levine
George Morland
Paul Nash
C.R.W. Nevinson
Ben Nicholson
William Nicholson
Walter Osborne
Samuel Palmer
Edouardo Paolozzi
Waller Hugh Paton
John Piper
Lucien Pissarro
Henry Raeburn
Allan Ramsay
Eric Ravilious
David Roberts
William Scott
The
Fine Art
Society
Spring
2014
Walter Sickert
Alfred Sisley
Gilbert Spencer
Philip Wilson Steer
Graham Sutherland
James McNeill Whistler
Ethelbert White
David Wilkie
Emily Young
1 · ALEXANDER ARCHIPENKO 1887–1964
Flat Torso
Conceived in 1914 and cast in the early 1920s
Plaster patinated with silver leaf
191/2 x 41/2 inches · 49.5 x 11.5 cm
Provenance: Given by the artist to Sir
Osbert Sitwell, c.1920, from whom acquired
by the present owner
Nationalmuseum, Moderne Zeiten, die Sammlung
zum 20.Jahrhundert, vol. III, Nuremberg,
2000 (another cast illustrated p.84); Donald
Karshan, Archipenko, Sculpture, Drawings and
Prints, 1908–1963, Kentucky, 1985, no. 26a,
illustration of another cast p.74
Literature: I. Goll, Archipenko, New York,
1920, p.2 (marble version illustrated); I. Goll,
T. Daubler & B. Cendrars, Archipenko Album,
Potsdam, 1921, no. 1 (bronze cast illustrated
on the frontispiece); H. Hildebrandt,
Alexander Archipenko, Berlin, 1923, p.13 (marble
version illustrated pl. 20); M. Raynal, A.
Archipenko avec 32 reproductions en phototypie,
Rome, 1923, pl. 20 (bronze cast illustrated);
A. Archipenko, Archipenko: Fifty Creative Years,
1908–1958, New York, 1960, pp.47–48 (bronze
cast illustrated pls. 205 & 206); A. Elsen,
Origins of Modern Sculpture: Pioneers and Premises,
New York, 1974, pp.111–112 (bronze cast
illustrated pl. 132); D. Karshan, Archipenko:
The Sculpture and Graphic Art including a Print
Catalogue Raisonné, Tübingen, 1974, p.33
(bronze cast illustrated); K.J. Michaelsen,
Archipenko: A Study of the Early Works, 1908–1921,
New York, 1977, p.34 (bronze cast illustrated
pl. S49); D. Karshan, Archipenko Sculpture,
Drawings and Prints 1908–1963, Danville,
Kentucky, 1985, p.58, nos. 26a-c (bronze cast
illustrated pp.74–75); U. Peters & A. Legde,
Kulturgeschichtliche Spaziergänge im Germanischen
This is Archipenko’s most famous
classic Cubist-inspired subject,
conceived in Paris around 1914. Cast
in plaster and partly carved by hand,
Archipenko has patinated the figure
with silver leaf. This cast has an
extremely compelling history. After his
studio in Paris was damaged by fire,
Archipenko went to stay with Osbert
Sitwell who he knew from Parisien
avant garde circles. Sitwell lived in the
Italian castle of Montegufoni, where
he commissioned Severini to decorate
one of the rooms with frescos (Picasso
having declined the invitation).
Archipenko presented this cast of Flat
Torso to Sitwell, in whose possession
it remained until purchased with the
castle by the present owner.
[4]
[5]
2 · EDWARD BAWDEN CBE RA 1903–1989
Brighton Pier, 1958
Linocut · 201/2 x 55 inches · 52.5 x 139.5 cm
Signed and dated in pencil Edward Bawden
1958, lower right, inscribed Brighton Pier Artist’s
proof 15/40, lower left, printed in colours on
wove paper: from the first edition of 40.
Literature: Jeremy Geenwood and
Elspeth Moncrieff, Edward Bawden: Editioned
Prints, Woodbridge 2005 pp.62–63 no.050.
In a series of very large frieze-like
linocuts, Edward Bawden created
perhaps the most original and memorable images of his career as an artist.
Although also a watercolourist, it is as
a printmaker that he made his most
individual statements, like Picasso and
the artists of the Grosvenor School
[6]
working in the 1930s, making distinctive works in a medium which might
appear to be simple, but provides the
artist with many challenges.
Brighton Pier and Liverpool Street
Station, both made around 1960, are
the best of his large linocuts. They
take a familiar subject and transform
it through a series of daring simplifications into a picture which is instantly
recognisable, decorative and strong in
the underlying design.
In the years between 1923 and 1960,
Edward Bawden had grown from a rising star to be an important but somewhat peripheral figure in the tradition
of British figurative art. When he left
the Royal College of Art it had seemed
that a successful career lay ahead of
him. Despite the financial difficulties
shared by many artists in the 1930s,
Edward Bawden turned his talents to
design work to supplement the income
from sales of his pictures. But in the
[7]
post-War years the recognition accorded
to a number of his contemporaries
eluded him, not that he sought it. He
remained an artist rather detached from
the mainstream. This did not cause him
to change course but there is now probably a wider appreciation of his work
than at any time in the past fifty years.
3 · GERALD LESLIE BROCKHURST RA RE 1890–1978
Jenny, 1925
Red chalk drawing on paper
151/8 x 113/8 inches · 38.4 x 28.9 cm
Signed G.L. Brockhurst, lower right
Provenance: Mrs Gerald L Brockhurst;
Hatay Stratton Gallery; Private collection of
Daniel and Rosalyn Jacobs.
Exhibited: The Georgia Museum of Art,
USA, Prints and Drawings by Gerald L. Brockhurst
from the Daniel & Rosalyn Jacobs Collection, 2012
At the height of his career, in the
1930s, Gerald Brockhurst was the most
sought-after and expensive portrait
painter in Britain, charging 1,000
guineas for a painted portrait. The
number of commissions he would
accept was limited to twenty per
year: his famous subjects included
the Duchess of Windsor, Marlene
Dietrich, Merle Oberon, J. Paul Getty
and Mrs Paul Mellon.
His success as a portrait
painter came after he was already
well-established as an etcher, a
career which reflected his skill as a
draughtsman. His drawings, whether
in watercolour, chalk, charcoal, pencil,
ink or ink and wash, captured his
subjects with a technique which was
both instinctive and controlled, excelling in the representation of texture,
such as skin, flesh, hair, lace, silk and
embroidery. This study depicts a model
also used for one of his first etchings,
Clytie, of 1920.
In 1939 Brockhurst emigrated to
America, living first in New York City
and then New Jersey. There was no
shortage of admirers and commissions
for his meticulous technique and ability
to convey a likeness. There have been
exhibitions of his work at the National
Portrait Gallery, London, the City Art
Gallery Birmingham and Graves Art
Gallery, Sheffield (1978), and more
recently at the Georgia Museum of Art.
[8]
4 · GERALD LESLIE BROCKHURST RA RE 1890–1978
Adolescence, 1932
Etching · 141/2 x 101/2 inches · 36.8 x 26.5 cm
Signed in pencil G.L. Brockhurst, lower right,
printed in black ink on wove paper: from the
edition of 91
Literature:Harold J.L. Wright,
‘Catalogue of the Etchings of G.L.
Brockhurst’, Print Collector’s Quarterly 1935 vol.
XXII pp.62–77 no.75.
A study of Kathleen Woodward,
‘Dorette’, a model at the Royal
Academy Schools, who became
Brockhurst’s muse and second wife.
Her youthful sexuality inspired in
Adolescence a masterpiece of 20th
century British Art.
The artist had made his reputation
during the 1920s as a highly skilled
printmaker, who specialised in
studies of women, principally his first
wife, Anaïs. Brockhurst set himself
a number of challenges in this work,
whose subject, a naked sixteen year
old girl looking at herself in a mirror,
was certain to cause controversy.
It is the largest of all his etchings,
and the scene is rendered in minute
detail, with the entire surface of
the copper plate from which it was
printed, covered with work. Every
surface in the complex composition
is carefully and convincingly represented: the china coffee pot and cup
and saucer, the powder jar, the soft
bristles of the up-turned hairbrush,
the silver hand-mirror and the petticoat hanging over the edge of the
wooden dressing table. These objects
support the true tour de force, his
rendering of her skin, partially cast in
shadow and reflected in the mirror. As
an exercise in depicting tone, texture,
light and shade, it is a masterly
display of technical skill and control.
As an image it is both physically and
emotionally complex.
Brockhurst’s paintings of Kathleen
Woodward were exhibited each year at
the Royal Academy of Arts from 1933
to 1939, when they both left England
for America. They lived first in New
York City and then New Jersey. There
have been exhibitions of Brockhurst’s
work at the National Portrait Gallery,
London, the City Art Gallery
Birmingham and Graves Art Gallery,
Sheffield (1978), and more recently at
the Georgia Museum of Art.
[ 10 ]
5 · SIR DAVID YOUNG CAMERON RA RSA RE 1865 – 1945
Schiehallion, c.1935
Oil on canvas
30 x 46 inches · 76.2 x 116.8 cm
Signed D.Y. Cameron lower left
Cameron first came to prominence as
an etcher and his style demonstrated
a preoccupation with the careful
balancing of line and tone. This skill
was transferred to his richly coloured
and austere landscapes, which have
a profound sense of structure that is
[ 12 ]
reflected in his choice of topography
and architecture. His palette went
through several phases throughout
his life: from the early moody greys,
browns and blacks to deep midnight
blues, autumnal reds and glowing
yellows. Using strong lines to build
up structure and emphasising tonal
relationships, he eliminated anything
inconsequential, lending many of his
landscapes a sombre beauty.
[ 13 ]
6 · ROB & NICK CARTER
Transforming Vanitas Painting, 2013
Looped film, frame, computer
24 x 19 x 31/2 inches · 61 x 48.2 x 8.9 cm
Edition of 12 + 5 AP
For the past 15 years the British artistic
duo Rob and Nick Carter have resisted
simple categorisation by consistently
creating new departures in their
practice. In exploring various media
they continually push the boundaries
between painting, sculpture, installation, neon, digital imagery and
photography – often creating works
which cannot be defined in one sense
alone. In 2012 their pioneering digital
work Transforming Still Life Painting was
instantly cherished by both old master
connoisseurs and contemporary collectors alike. The Carters were partly
motivated to create these ‘moving
paintings’ upon learning that the
average time we spend looking at an
artwork in a museum or gallery is six
seconds. Their time based media work
encourage us to look again and reward
sustained engagement, bringing a
remote historical period back into
focus.
Transforming Vanitas Painting is based
on the 1630 oil on copper painting,
Dead Frog with Flies by Ambrosius
Bosschaert the Younger. In the threehour sequence the Carters underscore
the sensitive presentation of vanitas
by taking the scene from the last few
minutes of the creature’s life through
various stages of decay and ultimate
decomposition. The genius of the
Carters’ vision is that it captures the
decaying frog, but the viewer is always
conscious that visually this is very
much a painted frog. Every brushstroke
and texture is captured and the entire
scene treated not as a biological survey
into decomposition, but as a moving,
‘living’ painting. This is Vanitas painting for the twenty first century.
[ 14 ]
Transforming Diptych, 2013
Sunflowers, 2013
Patinated bronze
Height 23¼ inches · 59 cm
Two films, framed iPads
12 x 15 x 1 inches · 30.5 x 38 x 2.5 cm
Transforming Diptych brings to life a
pair of still life paintings by Justus
Juncker dating from 1765. The Carters
have drawn inspiration from the
monumental and mysterious presentation of the fruits by Juncker. Their
work ostensibly appears to be two
independently framed, quiet paintings. Sustained looking reveals that
Sunflowers bestows an
entirely new sculptural
form to Vincent Van Gogh’s
celebrated post impressionist masterpiece from
1888 in the collection of
London’s National Gallery.
The artists worked with MPC
to turn the painting into
completely three dimensional digital files. These
files are then given form
using 3D printing which
forms the basis for a lost
wax bronze – allowing for a
level of detail and delicacy
not possible even two years
ago. The quality of the 3D
rendering and printing is the
most advanced in the world
and combined they offer a
minutely detailed replica of
the original artwork from all
angles. Cast using the lost
wax process, the finished
sculpture is one of the
most complex and detailed
bronzes ever produced.
not only have the Carters brought the
scenes alive, they have created a deep
interconnection. Rendered in real
time, a butterfly will leave one frame,
disappear into the space of gallery wall
and reappear moments later on the
other fruit. In line with their previous
interest in chance and unpredictability, the Carters have directed MPC to
develop sophisticated programming
that results in an infinite cycle of
activity that cannot be predicted or
repeated in exactly the same order.
[ 16 ]
[ 17 ]
Transforming Nude Painting, 2013
Looped film, frame, computer
53 x 33 x 3 inches · 134.6 x 83.8 x 7.6 cm
The artists have taken on the challenge of Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus
in Transforming Nude Painting. The
Carters have breathed life into the
masterpiece, transporting the viewer
to the Venetian landscape where
Venus peacefully sleeps as the day
passes. In a similar vein to the gentle
passage of time in Transforming Still Life
Painting (2012), the scene passes from
dawn to dusk imperceptibly. This is a
deeply evocative, highly naturalistic
presentation of a goddess sleeping.
Venus’ chest rises and falls, occasionally her foot twitches or her hand stirs.
Giorgione’s original painting was a
careful balancing act between a scene
of idyllic rural contemplation and a
sensual presentation of a beautiful
nude. The Carters have heightened
this paradox by creating a serene
depiction of passing time that displays
tantalising moments of eroticism
as Venus unconsciously moves her
fingers across her body. Presented on
a 4K screen, the piece marks a huge
development in the employment of
digital rendering and sculpting, blending actual footage of a sleeping model
with digitally generated imagery.
[ 19 ]
10 · SIR FRANK DICKSEE PRA 1853–1928
Ruth Julia Cripps, 1907
Oil on canvas · 38 x 30 inches · 96.5 x 76 cm
Signed and dated Frank Dicksee 1907, lower left
Provenance: Ruth Julia Cripps,,
commissioned by her father, Charles Alfred
Cripps,1st Baron Parmoor; and by descent.
Frank Dicksee studied in the studio
of his father, Thomas Francis Dicksee
(1819–95), who painted portraits
and historical genre scenes; he then
entered the Royal Academy Schools,
London, where he was granted a
studentship in 1871. He also began to
work as an illustrator during the 1870s.
During the 1880s he was commissioned by Cassell & Co. to illustrate
their editions of Longfellow’s
Evangeline (1882), Shakespeare’s Othello
(1890) and Romeo and Juliet (1884).
Dicksee’s paintings are executed
with textural fluidity and rich orchestrations of colour. They reveal a curious blend of influences, in particular
the classicism of Frederic Leighton
and the abstracted idealism of G. F.
Watts. His predilection for the decorative aspects of painting grew out of his
studies with Henry Holiday, a designer
of stained glass. He passionately
championed the Victorian ideals of
High Art and publicly condemned
the artistic trends that emerged
towards the end of his life. His work
covers a wide range of subject matter
and genres, including biblical and
allegorical paintings. He also painted
society portraits and social dramas,
such as The Confession (1896; private
collection, see Great Victorian Pictures,
exhibition catalogue by R. Treble,
ACGB, 1978, p.30).
Dicksee was elected ARA in 1881,
RA in 1891 and PRA in 1924. He was
knighted in 1925 and made KCVO in
1927. His sister Margaret Isabel (1858–
1903) and brother Herbert Thomas
(1862–1942) were also painters, as
was his uncle John Robert Dicksee
(1817–1905). There are diary entries of
Dicksee staying in the sitter’s family
home of Parmoor in Buckinghamshire
in 1907, where the present portrait was
executed.
Ruth Julia Cripps was the daughter
of the first Lord Parmoor and daughter of Theresa, sister of Beatrice Webb
(Beatrice Webb with her husband
Sydney started the London School of
Economics). Ruth’s younger brother
Sir Stafford Cripps was Chancellor
of the Exchequer in the post-war
government under Clement Attlee in
1947. She was married to Sir Francis
Egerton FRS, and was the great aunt
and godmother to the current Lord
Parmoor.
[ 20 ]
11 · FRANK DOBSON RA 1886–1963
Rhoda, 1930
Unique bronze · height 20 inches · 51 cm
Provenance: Dobson Estate
Exhibited: Leister Galleries, London,
May-June, 1930 (11); Bristol Art Gallery, 1940,
(12); Arts Council of Great Britain Memorial
1966 (42); Gillian Jason Gallery, Frank Dobson,
Sculpture and Drawings, May-June 1984, (40),
(Plaster).
Literature: Arts Council of Great
Britain Memorial 1966, (42); Francis Watson,
The Sculpture of Frank Dobson, Henry Moore
Foundation / Lund Humphries, 1994, (96).
[ 22 ]
[ 23 ]
12 · FRANK DOBSON RA 1886–1963
Reclining Figure, 1940
Unique cast
Terracotta height (excluding base) 61/4 inches
15.5 cm
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist;
Mr & Mrs Stanley B. Resor, Greenwich,
Connecticut, thence by descent; Private
Collection.
Literature: Neville Jason and Lisa
Thompson-Pharoah, The Sculpture of Frank
Dobson, The Henry Moore Foundation in
association with Lund Humphries, London,
1994, cat. no.147, illustrated p.148 (another
version illustrated).
The female nude was the principal
subject within Dobson’s sculpture. His
conception of strong-limbed, fleshily
powerful figures were in part influenced by the Classical nudes painted
by Picasso in the late 1920s and 1930s,
the first exhibition of which Dobson had
seen in Paris in 1927. Dobson’s approach
to the figure combined an awareness of
Classical traditions, such as the reclining
figures of the Parthenon, with an acutely
modern sensibility to the emotive
potential of depicting the body. There
are certain resonances with the sculpture
and subject matter of Henry Moore, who
held Dobson in high regard when he was
an art student in the 1920s, and included
him in his selection of sculptors for the
Festival of Britain in 1951.
This is one of Dobson’s most sensitive
and finely modelled terracottas and is
in perfect condition. It is the only listed
cast.
[ 24 ]
13 · SIR ALFRED EAST RA RI PRBA RE 1849–1913
Sayanara – dans le Japon, 1889
Oil on canvas
51 x 71 inches · 129.5 x 180.5 cm
Provenance: Barry Humphries
Exhibited: The Bermondsey Settlement
(according to a label on reverse);
Paris, Salon (Société Nationale des Beaux
Arts), 1897, no.460
Literature: Art at the Salon, Champ de
Mars, Paris 1897, 1897 (The Studio, Special
Number), p.31 (illus); M.H. Spielmann,
The Paris Salons, The Magazine of Art, 1897,
p.237; GM, Studio-Talk, Paris, The Studio,
vol.XI, 1897, p.63; Paul Johnson and
Kenneth McConkey, Alfred East, Lyrical
Landscape Painter, 2009 (Sansom and Co),
pp.47–8 (illus.)
East’s Sayanara (usually, ‘sayonara’,
meaning ‘goodbye’) is the first of
a small group of canvases in which
the painter revisited his experiences
of Japan. Known previously from
a small watercolour, Etude d’apres
‘Sayanara’ (sold Bonhams 12 June
2003, lot 849A), its rediscovery here
is an important event.
In 1889, the forty-five year old
painter had sailed to the Far East
for The Fine Art Society in the
company of Arthur Lazenby Liberty,
owner of the famous department
store in Regent Street, and Charles
Holme, later editor of The Studio
(see Johnson and McConkey 2009,
pp.15–18, 44–48). Unlike many other
artist-travellers East was determined
to visit rural Japan and paint the
Japanese landscape, particularly
around Lake Biwa and Mount Fuji.
On his return, his small oil sketches,
watercolours and cabinet pictures
were shown to great acclaim at The
Fine Art Society in March 1890.
[ 27 ]
Although he was keen to reestablish his reputation as a painter
of the English landscape, East
brought back a substantial horde
of over 400 Japanese prints and
artefacts, including a complete
set of Hokusai’s Thirty Six Views of
Mount Fuji (1823–1830). He was,
with Liberty, to become a founding
member of the Japan Society in 1891
and on several occasions addressed
its members on the comparison
between Oriental landscape traditions and those of the west. After
a lapse of six years, contemplating
his print collection and ruminating on his experiences, he
painted Sayanara, the first of three
exhibition-scale ‘Japanese’ canvases.
This evocation of a procession of
geishas recalls not only the lantern
festival prints of the Ukiyo-e school,
but their equivalents in western art
in the nocturnes of Whistler and his
followers. Spielmann, sensing the
charm of a scene of lighted lanterns
‘held by characteristic little Japanese
girls’, described it as a ‘striking
study’ in one of a group of British
works that showed an affinity with
the French school in the Champ de
Mars Salon, but avoided its excesses.
‘GM’ in The Studio, comparing
this with East’s work at the Royal
Academy and the New Gallery
concluded that it was ‘a feast for the
eye’. For the painter of still ponds,
noble trees and English countryside
calm, this reverie of animated
figures under the majestic contour
of Mount Fuji was a significant
departure. East was never to return
to the land of the rising sun.
14 · WILLIAM GALE 1823–1909
The Captured Runaway, 1856
Oil on canvas · 49 x 37 inches · 126 x 96 cm
Signed with monogram and dated WG 1856,
lower right
Exhibited: London, Royal Academy of
Arts, 1856 (560)
Literature: James Dafforne, British
Artists: Their Style and Character, Art Journal
1869 p.373; Jan Marsh, ‘From slave Cabin to
Windsor Castle: Josiah Henson and “Uncle
Tom” in Britain’, in 19th Century Studies, 2002,
vol.16 p.38
Slavery was a burning issue in 1856,
when this painting was exhibited at
the Royal Academy. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
had been published four years earlier,
and, as there is no evidence that
William Gale went to America, it must
be supposed that he was inspired to
paint The Captured Runaway by a literary
source in the wake of the Fugitive Slave
Act of 1850.
William Gale exhibited over 100
paintings at the Royal Academy of Arts
between 1844 and 1893: he had been
a prize-winning student at the RA
schools. He travelled to Italy in 1851,
on honeymoon, and to the Middle
East in 1862 and 1867. The subject
of The Captured Runaway seems to be
unique among his exhibited paintings,
many of which were inspired by the
Bible or literature, such as Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Spenser, Longfellow and
Tennyson. He also painted portraits,
Orientalist, mythological and genre
works.
The subject is an indented maid who
had escaped and has been captured by
a bounty hunter, now asleep. The artist
has painted her skin with sufficient
colour for contemporaries to recognise
her as a mulatto. The objects in the
cabin have been closely observed and
painstakingly rendered.
There is a photograph of Gale by
David Wilkie Wynfield, created during
the 1860s, in the National Portrait
Gallery, London. It was published
in the series The Studio: A Collection of
Photographic Portraits of Living Artists,
taken in the style of the Old Masters, by an
Amateur, in 1864
[ 28 ]
15 · HENRI GAUDIER-BRZESKA 1891–1915
Crouching Faun, 1913
Bronze
12 x 10 x 5 inches · 30.5 x 25.4 x 12.7 cm
Provenance: bt 1925 at The Leicester
Galleries by Mina Kirstein Curtiss
(1896–1985), Bethel, Connecticut; Private
Collection, UK.
Literature: Ezra Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska,
a Memoir, 1916, p.161 (stone version repr.
pl. ix); H.S. Ede, A Life of Gaudier-Brzeska,
1930, pp.170, 198 (stone version repr. pl.xxvi
as ‘Seated Fawn’); Roger Cole, Burning to
Speak. The Life and Art of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska,
Oxford, 1978, p.91; Judith Collins, The Omega
Workshops, 1983, p.70; Evelyn Silber, GaudierBrzeska Life and Art with a Catalogue Raisonne,
London 1996 no.62.
This is the only recorded cast of
Gaudier’s bath stone carving Crouching
Faun of 1913. It was cast by The
Leicester Galleries and bought in 1925
by the American Mina Kirstein Curtiss
on her honeymoon for 40 guineas.
The patinated plaster cast that is
now in the Tate collection (T03729),
presented to the national collection
by The Leicester Galleries in 1939,
is believed to have been the ‘shop
sample’ from which clients would
commission casts. The Leicester
Gallery account books indicate that
this was the only bronze to be cast,
making it exceptionally rare.
This cast has been inspected and
approved by Dr Evelyn Silber.
[ 30 ]
[ 31 ]
16 · WILLIAM HAMILTON RA 1751 – 1801
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots
Oil on canvas · 41 x 31 inches · 104 x 78.7 cm
Provenance: Private Collection, Portugal
William Hamilton was the son of a
Scottish-born clerk of works in the
offices of the greatest of Georgian
architects, Robert Adam. Through the
support of Adam, Hamilton was in
Italy c.1766–68 and studied in Rome
under the painter Antonio Zucchi.
Early in his career, Hamilton was
employed by Adam as a decorative
painter and worked on schemes at
Kedleston, Derbyshire and Highcliffe,
Hampshire. He went on, though, to
establish himself as a portrait and history painter. Stylistically, Hamilton’s
work is comparable to that of Angelica
Kauffman, who it is thought he
courted whilst in Rome, and Henry
Fuseli, with whom he collaborated
later in his career. The subject of
Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587), was
popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This picture, as with
the other images of the tragic Queen,
depicts her as forlorn and separate.
The romanticism of the subject
is underpinned by the swathes of
diaphanous silks that almost cocoon
her. The elaborately jewelled ruff and
pearls adorning her hair only serve
to isolate her further in the cell she
appears to be detained in. Of course, it
may not be prison – though the small
high window in the background suggests it may be – and it could depict
several events in her life: her abdication, the aftermath of Rizzio’s murder,
or her imprisonment at Lochleven
Castle, Kinross-shire.
[ 32 ]
17 · KATE HAYLLAR 1864–1959
18 · DAVID HOCKNEY
Souvenirs of Japan, 1883
Italian Athlete, 1962
Watercolour · 43/4 x 63/4 inches · 12.1 x 17.1 cm
Signed and dated Kate Hayllar 1883,
lower right
(Beatrice) Kate Hayllar was born on
1 September 1864 at 15 Mecklenburgh
Square, London, into a family of artists. Her father was the painter James
Hayllar, and four of his daughters also
became professional painters. The
sisters derived their main inspiration
from the happy domestic life enjoyed
at Castle Priory, on the banks of the
Thames, near Wallingford, where
the family lived from 1875 to 1899.
Kate mostly exhibited still lifes, often
featuring flowers, at the Society of
British Artists (1883–1888/9) – where
her first exhibited painting was
bought by the Princess of Wales –
and the Royal Academy (1885–98).
About 1898 she became a nurse and
in 1899 she moved to Bournemouth
with her father and sister Jessica.
Later she lived with her sister Mary at
Wallingford, Berkshire.
[ 34 ]
Crayon · 131/8 x 191/8 inches · 33.5 x 48.5 cm
Signed David Hockney lower right, titled and
dated Italy ’62. Titled on a Kasmin Limited
label dated 1962, ref.no.281, and backboard
inscribed The Hon Mrs Cunliffe
Provenance: Purchased at Kasmin
Gallery December 1963 by Hon. Mrs Cunliffe;
Private Collection, London.
Exhibitions: London, Kasmin Gallery,
David Hockney: Pictures with People In, December
1963.
After Hockney graduated from the
Royal College of Art in 1962 he went
on holiday to Sorrento. Here he made
a small number of drawings; this one
depicting the large mass of a cigarsmoking man sitting by the hotel
pool is humorously inscribed ‘Italian
Athlete’.
Before he had graduated Hockney
had already been signed by the gallery
[ 35 ]
owner John Kasmin. This drawing
was included in Hockney’s first solo
exhibition held at the Kasmin Gallery
in 1963. It was a sell out success,
attracting enormous critical attention,
and Hockney’s reputation as a star was
made overnight.
19 · WILLIAM HOGARTH 1697–1764
The Beggar’s Opera, Act III, Scene XI, 1728
Oil on canvas
181/2 x 211/2 inches · 47 x 54.6 cm
Provenance: The family of Lord
Calthorpe since 1780;Sir William Saunderson
(1692–1754); Sir Henry Gough, later Lord
Calthorpe, (1749–1798), who was the nephew
of Charlotte Gough the wife of Sir William
Saunderson; thence by descent to Sir Euan
Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, Bt.
The second in a series of five oil
versions Hogarth painted of The
Beggar’s Opera, a play written by John
Gay (1685–1732) and first produced by
John Rich at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields
Theatre in January 1728. This picture
is probably the earliest of the finished
versions of Scene XI in Act III, set
in Newgate prison and where all the
main actors appear on stage together.
A preparatory sketch for this painting
is in the Royal Library at Windsor
Castle, and other versions in oil
belong to Yale University, Birmingham
City Art Gallery, The Yale Center for
British Art, New Haven (Paul Mellon
Collection) and Tate Britain.
The scene represented in the
picture is one of the most dramatic
in The Beggar’s Opera, which gained
immediate and unprecedented
popularity when it was first staged.
This ‘new English Opera’ satirised the
conventional Italian style by substituting popular ballads for formal arias
and contemporary low-life characters
for classical gods and goddesses. It
is important to note that it came at
a time where Hogarth, who was a
life-long enthusiast for theatre, was
changing his career from graphic artist
to painter. This subject was, therefore,
one of his earliest excursions in oil
painting, as well as being one of the
earliest known painted records of an
actual stage performance.
The painting represents both a
dramatic and a comic scene. The man
standing in the centre, dressed in
scarlet and chained, is the highwayman hero Macheath, and he is about
to be executed. The two women on
the side are pleading to their respective fathers (the Prison Warden and a
dishonest lawyer) to save Macheath
from hanging, because they are both
convinced they are married to him. In
the painting, the actors are flanked by
the audience. At the time, privileged
members sat in boxes, which occupied part of the stage. This practice,
however, was abolished in 1763.
In the second version of The Beggar’s
Opera, just like in the other versions
painted in 1728, the members of the
audience are caricatured, making
them seem part of the actual play with
their exaggerated features. Some of
the members depicted in the audience
area are, in fact, real people who came
[ 36 ]
to watch the production in 1728. The
earliest version was painted very
soon after the performance, possibly
for the producer John Rich. It was
bought in 1762 by Horace Walpole,
who identified the actors and two
members of the audience with a
note on the back of the canvas – Sir
Thomas Robinson of Rokeby on the
left, ‘a tall gentleman with a long
lean face’, and on the right, ‘Sir
Robert Fagg in profile, a fat man
with short gray hair much known in
Newmarket’. These two characters, in
their caricature style (Fagg is shown
with a riding crop, turning his back
on the performance), are present in
the four early versions (including II),
but are rendered as straight portraits
in the later versions, such as the one
in the Tate. The notes by Walpole on
that first version also describe it as a
‘Sketch’.
John Rich ordered a larger and
more elaborate version of the painting in 1729, which shows a deeper
[ 38 ]
stage and places the central group on
a carpet and introducing crouched
satyrs holding up the curtain on either
side. The Tate painting follows this
version very closely, and was commissioned by Hogarth’s early patron
Sir Archibald Grant in the same year.
This gentleman made a half-payment
for it in November 1729, but never
completed the payment as he became
bankrupt in May 1732. Another key
difference between the Tate’s version
and version II is the presence of a
prominently situated man wearing
the Garter star and ribbon, identified
as the Duke of Bolton. This character
fell in love with the actress facing him
in the picture, Lavinia Fenton (who
played Polly Peachum), after watching
the first production of the opera, and
she remained his mistress until they
got married following the death of the
Duchess of Bolton, his wife. The Duke
of Bolton was only added in the later
versions, presumably after the scandal
had gained in notoriety.
[ 39 ]
20 · GERALD LAING 1936–2011
An American Girl, 1978/2007
Bronze
26 x 26.5 x 24 inches · 66 x 66 x 79 cm
Edition 10/10
Exhibited: The Fine Art Society, 2008,
Gerald Laing – Sculpture 1965–1978 (13)
Gerald Laing was in the 1960s a Pop
Art painter, working in New York for
most of that decade, and part of the
circle around Andy Warhol and Robert
Indiana. He gradually moved away
from painting to produce abstract
sculpture, adopting the bright colours
and innovative modern materials
of Pop. With his return to Scotland
however, in the 1970s Laing began to
investigate the potential of reintroducing figuration into his sculpture.
These all probe the boundaries
between the realist depiction of the
figure and the abstract simplified form
that it occupies. Many of these works
were also ruminations on the theme of
feminine beauty, and in particular his
love for his wife Galina.
Laing wrote of the sculpture: ‘An
American Girl can be seen as the culmination of the Galina Series of sculpture
in which I worked through various
formal and abstract figurations,
absorbing all sorts of influences, in my
search for a viable method of depicting the human figure: a figurative
language. I carried out this work from
1973 to 1978. Of the whole group only
An American Girl, Dreaming, and Galina X
have recognisable facial features.
The model for all of these sculptures
was my then wife, Galina Golikova,
who, although she was brought up in
New York from the age of eight, was
born in Regensburg, Germany and has
Russian, Ukrainian and Mongolian
antecedents.
The pose of An American Girl is
Romantic, driven by the expression
of aggressive consumerism. She is
disruptive to the viewer: confident,
seductive and relaxed. The figure
seems conscious of this, but at the
same time it is self-contained, introspective, and completely independent.
The geometric articulation of the spine
and the almost landscape-like quality
of the parts of the sculpture reinforce
this enigmatic certitude, while other
parts are extremely realistic, human
and therefore vulnerable.’
[ 40 ]
[ 41 ]
21 · CHRIS LEVINE
Frankel The Great, 2013
Lenticular lightbox
40½ x 51 inches · 103 x 129.5 cm
Edition of 10 + 4AP
Chris Levine is a light artist who
works across many mediums in
pursuit of sensory experience
through image and form. Levine’s
work considers light not just as a core
aspect of art, but of human experience more widely and a spiritual and
philosophical edge underscores his
practice. Chris Levine is best known
for producing what is already being
described as one of the most iconic
images of the twenty-first century,
Lightness of Being (2007). With
light at its core, this portrait of Her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth II presents
a fresh depiction of the most famous
woman in the world.
In 2013 he turned his attention to
revitalizing the equestrian portrait
genre and has focused on the highest rated racehorse in the world,
Frankel. Levine’s unprecedented
approach to the fascinating subject
takes us beyond a standard portrayal
of a perfect physical specimen and
presents the viewer with a captivating
and daunting level of sporting achievement. Created in June 2013, the results
are a completely radical reworking
of the age-old tradition of equestrian
portraiture. Simultaneously capturing
multiple images in a mere 8 seconds
allowed him to fashion his work as
a lenticular lightbox. This lends his
work a realism that is almost magical.
The artist does not simply utlisise
existing materials and processes, he
is a pioneer in his field, creating and
adapting technology in the pursuit of
the widest possible visual sensation.
[ 42 ]
22 · GEORGE MORLAND 1763–1804
Woodcock & Pheasant Shooting
Oil on canvas
121/4 x 151/4 inches · 31 x 38.7 cm
Note: The present work relates to a stipple
engraving of the same title by T. Simpson
(British, ac. 1790–1814) after George
Morland, published along with Duck Shooting
(Plate 1 and 2) and Hare Shooting, in April 20,
1790.
Literature: J.T. Herbert Baily, George
Morland: A Biographical Essay with a Catalogue of
the Engraved Pictures, London 1906, p.133.
Engraved in 1790, Woodcock & Pheasant
Shooting can be dated to this year or,
perhaps, the previous. It was around
this time that Morland’s subject
matter changed from the domestic
and moralizing to the rustic: country
life became the hallmark of his
paintings. Morland’s style modified
in accordance with his new subjects:
from the highly finished and linear
to a more robust style that was
painterly in its handling. About 1790
Morland moved to the rural village
of Paddington and lived opposite a
drover’s inn where he found a wealth
of subject matter. It was this period,
from 1790 until about 1794, which,
though unsettled, was more stable
than that which followed, and was the
height of Morland’s career. During
this short time he produced his most
important and original pictures.
Amongst his preferred subjects of gypsies, farm hands, smugglers and rustic
types he also painted country pursuits
such as this charming scene of a gun,
his hounds, horse and the day’s bag.
[ 44 ]
Lithograph · 7 x 9 inches · 18 x 22.9 cm
Signed and dated in pencil Paul Nash 1919,
lower right, and inscribed Void, lower left,
printed in black ink on warm grey Ingres
paper. Alexander Postan records an edition
of 25, but this subject is rare
Literature: Alexander Postan, The
complete graphic work of Paul Nash, London
1973 pp.16–17 no.L2
This rare print relates to a painting, now in the National Gallery of
Canada. The word ‘void’ was also
used in the title of the exhibition of
Paul Nash’s work held at the Leicester
23 · PAUL NASH 1889–1946
24 · PAUL NASH 1889–1946
Void, 1918
A Shell Bursting, Passchendaele, 1918
Galleries in 1918, ‘The Void of War’.
Nash arrived at the Ypres Salient in
early March 1917 and was in either the
front or reserve line until he fell into
a trench and was injured on 5 May.
In October he returned to the Front
as an Official War Artist. He wrote
to his wife: ‘I found the only way
to work here was in rapid sketches
and I have used nothing but brown
paper and chalks.’ In a letter to C.F.G.
Masterman, Director of Propaganda at
the Ministry of Information, dated 22
November 1917 he wrote:
‘I have made a series of drawings in
the rough, with colour notes and have
now a good deal of valuable material
collected as near the real places of
action as it is possible to go, and such
as it is, I believe, unique of its kind.’
As an artist whose principle subject
was landscape, the destruction of
Nature in Flanders affected him as
keenly as the loss of life. The stark title
of this work and the composition which
shows nothing but a morass of twisted,
blasted, lost and broken matter, convey
a simple message of despair.
Lithograph
101/8 x 137/8 inches · 25.7 x 35.4 cm
Signed and dated in pencil Paul Nash 1918,
lower right, and inscribed ‘Albert from Paul’,
upper left, printed in black ink on wove
paper: edition of 25
Literature: Alexander Postan, The
complete graphic work of Paul Nash, London 1973
p.18 no.L6
[ 46 ]
Although he made many drawings on
the Western Front, only seven prints
resulted from his time in the Ypres
Salient and elsewhere, all lithographs.
Marching at Night shows a column of
soldiers on a road with poplars on
either side. The others are all essentially landscapes, a series of studies
of land laid waste, which reach their
crescendo in this image of earth and
debris thrown into the sky.
[ 47 ]
25 · C.r.w. NEVINSON 1889–1946
26 · C.r.w. NEVINSON 1889–1946
Bomber, 1918
Kultur Modern, 1930
Lithograph · 111/4 x 83/4 inches · 28.5 x 22.2 cm
Signed and dated in pencil C.R.W. Nevinson
1918, lower right, printed in black ink on laid
paper, watermark Antiq(ue): extremely rare
Oil on board
113/4 x 16 inches · 29.8 x 40.7 cm
Signed C.R.W. Nevinson, lower right
Exhibited: London, Leicester
Galleries,Paintings, etchings and lithographs by
C.R.W. Nevinson, 1930 (68)
Reference: Nash and Nevinson in War and
in Peace, The Leicester Galleries 1977, no.31;
Richard Ingleby, Jonathan Black, David
Cohen, Gordon Cooke, C.R.W. Nevinson: The
Twentieth Century, Imperial War Museum 1999
pp.108–9 no.49
Futurist, War Artist and Modernist,
Nevinson was an artist of many parts
who ultimately rejected Modernism
and painted in a more conventional
but still distinctive style. He was
As the Futurist in London and a friend
and contact of Marinetti, Nevinson
was more closely involved with the
Italian movement than any other
British artist. Although he renounced
its ideals, Futurism remained a
component of his vision and style even
after the War, when he went to New
York and first encountered its modern
architecture.
The drypoints of 1916, such as
Returning to the Trenches, were made in
the Futurist style which he adapted
with a strong descriptive quality. Once
appointed an Official War Artist,
Nevinson amplified the documentary
aspects of his prints, but in the lithograph Bomber of 1918 he returned to the
fragmentation of forms. This was also
present in the three mezzotints, not of
war subjects, from that year, From an
Office Window, Limehouse and Wind.
Bomber shows a soldier in the act
of hurling a grenade or a Mills bomb
from a trench, whose duckboards are
seen in the foreground. It is apparently
very rare, and only this one proof has
come on the market in the past 35
years. There is also an impression in
the British Museum, donated by the
artist in 1918, and another in the Fogg
Museum. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[ 48 ]
often in the news and, the son of a
war correspondent, he knew how to
manipulate the press. He grew up
among the Hampstead intelligentsia,
and counted H.G. Wells, Edith and
Osbert Sitwell, among his friends. His
social circle included the Cunards, the
Guinnesses, Lady Diana Cooper, and
his name appeared in an early draft of
T.S. Eliot’s epic poem The Wasteland.
The openings of his exhibitions
were always packed with fashionable
[ 49 ]
society, and he first made his name
with a show in 1916 of paintings, drawings and prints of the War, which he
experienced at first hand as an ambulance driver. He was one of the first
Official War Artists and, after the War
he had two exhibitions in New York.
He went to France regularly, and
this painting of a beach on the Côte
d’Azur was one several subjects found
there. In 1938 he was made a Chevalier
d’Honneur by the French government.
27 · BEN NICHOLSON OM 1894–1982
Small White Relief, 1935
Oil on carved board
63/4 x 7½ inches · 17 x 19.25 cm (framed size)
Provenance: The artist’s son and
by descent.
Exhibited: London, The Tate Gallery,
Ben Nicholson, June-July 1969 (55); Edinburgh,
Scotland; travelling exhibition to Stromness,
Orkney Islands; Kirkcaldy, Scotland;
Aberdeen, Scotland, Scottish Arts Council,
Ben Nicholson: Still Life and Abstraction, 1985 (24)
Nicholson said: ‘I judge paintings
by the quality of light given off … In
my own work, it is my only way of
judging its achievement or progress.’
For Nicholson, this light revealed
‘the reality underlying appearances’.
Here his use of light on monochrome
surfaces, together with the clean,
sharply-defined lines and the interplay
of depth and surface areas, declare his
engagement with the international
abstract movement. For Nicholson,
the compositional harmony of this
relief provided an aesthetic model for
a possible social harmony.
Ben Nicholson made his first
completed relief in Paris in December
1933. This and the other reliefs made
in the next month or two were usually
painted in greys and browns. The first
relief painted completely in white was
executed in March 1934, the month in
which he exhibited a white relief at the
7&5 Society exhibition at the Leicester
Galleries. Like the cubists, Nicholson
was interested in the ways in which
paintings could represent space. In the
1930s he made shallow reliefs in which
areas of different depths define actual
space. In the most radical of these,
colour was reduced to just white or
grey to achieve a sense of purity.
Depth and plain colour make the
play of light and shadow an intrinsic
part of the work. This emphasis was
related to new ideas about living and,
especially, to modern architecture,
in which natural light and formal
simplicity were major concerns.
Nicholson described his approach
to non-representational art in ‘Notes
on Abstract Art’ in Horizon, IV, 1941,
pp.272–6: ‘The problems dealt with
in “abstract” art are related to the
interplay of forces … the geometrical
forms often used by abstract artists do
not indicate, as has been thought, a
conscious and intellectual, mathematical approach – a square and a circle
in art are nothing in themselves and
are alive only in the instinctive and
inspirational use an artist can make
of them in expressing a poetic idea …
You can create a most exciting tension
between these forces … ’; in reliefs,
‘you can take a rectangular surface
and cut a section of it one plane lower
and then in the higher plane cut a
circle deeper than, but without touching, the lower plane. One is immediately
conscious that this circle has pierced the
lower plane without having touched it …
and this creates space. The awareness
of this is felt subconsciously and it is
useless to approach it intellectually as
this, so far from helping, only acts as
a barrier.’
Nicholson made this white relief
for his son Jake, and it has remained
in the Nicholson family.
[ 50 ]
[ 51 ]
28 · SIR WILLIAM NICHOLSON 1872–1949
Summer Flowers in a White Jug, 1930
Oil on panel · 233/4 x 201/2 inches · 60 x 53 cm
Provenance: Lord Sieff of Brimpton;
Private Collection, Israel
By 1930 Nicholson had refined his
still lifes to a degree of modern
sophistication which reinvigorated a
traditional subject for a new age. The
sleek reflection of his earlier compositions gave way instead to drier, more
impastoed paint, and the overall
palette if restricted mainly to white,
making the explosions of colour of
the flowers and the eau-de-nil and
pink accents in the dish all the more
spectaular and eye catching. The plain
white background is given vivacity
and texture by the lively application of
paint with a palette knife, something
which Nicholson repeated in a number
of canvases at this time.
There was always a sense that in the
early 1930s Nicholson had one eye on
the work of his son Ben, and this may
be another context for his extensive
use of the colour white which was to
occupy Ben’s creative imagination as
an expression of both modernity and
spiritual aesthetic values.
This picture was acquired from
Nicholson by Marcus Sieff (1913–
2001), later Baron Sieff of Brimpton,
who was behind the huge expansion of
Marks & Spencer in the second half of
the twentieth century.
[ 52 ]
29 · WALTER OSBORNE 1859–1903
Feeding the Chickens, 1885
Signed and dated Walter Osborne 85, lower left
Provenance: George McCulloch;
Mr Shaw, Rathgar, Co. Dublin; Private
Collection
Exhibited: London, Guildhall, Works
of Irish Painters, 1904 (39); London, Royal
Academy of Arts, Winter Exhibition, the
McCulloch collection of Modern Art, 1909;
Dublin, The National Gallery of Ireland,
Walter Osborne, 1983 (19)
Literature: Jeanne Sheehy, Walter
Osborne, Ballycotton 1974 no.83
‘Now I am pretty far advanced on a
kit-kat of a girl in a sort of farmyard,
a rough sketch on the opposite page
will indicate the composition. The
figure of the girl which is a little over
two feet high is coming towards
finish, but the immediate foreground
with poultry is merely sketched in as
yet. The fowl are very troublesome,
and I have made some sketches but
will have to do a lot more as they
form rather an important part of the
composition.’*
Walter Osborne was one of a group
of plein air naturalists working in
England in the 1880s. He was born in
Dublin and studied at the Académie
Royale des Beaux Arts, Antwerp and
worked in Pont-Aven in 1883 and
elsewhere in northern France before
settling in England.
This work, one of his finest, was
painted at North Littleton, near
Evesham in Worcestershire, where
he was with the artists Edward Stott
and Nathaniel Hill. Like George
Clausen, Osborne grew up in the
city, and made a conscious choice to
seek subjects in the countryside and
to paint directly from the motif. He
was attracted to Nature, rather than
to a particular locality where he had
become rooted. Like Clausen too, in
this study of a local girl, he chose a
particular model for this painting.
Her name was Bessie Osborne (no
relation of the artist), and she was
painted in the open air in weather so
cold that she nearly fainted and had to
be sent home. His letter to his father
suggests the close attention to detail
with which he planned this painting.
The finished work demonstrates the
intensity of its creation.
It appears that it was not exhibited
before 1909, six years after Osborne’s
death. There was a major exhibition of
Walter Osborne’s work at the National
Gallery Ireland in 1983, the first such
show since his Memorial Exhibition at
the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1903.
Although considered one of Ireland’s
greatest painters, it was among his
British contemporaries as a whole,
that he found his place in terms both
of the nature of his work and their
admiration. Alma-Tadema was one
of a long list of artists who bought
his painting An October Morning, also
painted in 1885, as a memorial to him
for the Corporation of London Art
Gallery, after his death. The artists
included those with whom he most
closely shared an artistic vision, such
as Stanhope Forbes, La Thangue,
Edward Stott and other members of
the Newlyn School.
* Walter Osborne, a letter to his father dated 12 October 1884
[ 54 ]
[ 55 ]
[ 56 ]
[ 57 ]
30 · SAMUEL PALMER 1805–1881
Going to Evening Church, 1874
Watercolour over pencil, bodycolour, scratching out and gum Arabic
12 x 27½ inches · 30 x 70 cm
Signed Samuel Palmer, lower left
Provenance: J.W. Overbury, bought from
the artist 1874; Mrs O.M. Pilcher; J.G. Pilcher;
A.A. Schumann
Exhibited: London, Society of Painters
in Water Colour, 1874 (91) titled Old England’s
Sunday Evening; London, Grosvenor Gallery,
Winter Exhibition; Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery,
Samuel Palmer … An Exhibition of Paintings,
Drawings and Etchings, 1961 (72)
Literature: Raymond Lister, Catalogue
Raisonné of the works of Samuel Palmer,
Cambridge 1988 p.208 no.669
Across a field of ripe corn, worshippers walk to church on a late summer
evening. As a staunch Christian,
Palmer would have been profoundly
inspired by this idea and, in his
mind’s eye, he saw a vision made up of
remembered landscapes: Shoreham,
Devon, Wales and Italy. In his imagination these places merged and this
scene took shape. The subject recalls
his earlier Shoreham painting, Coming
from Evening Church 1830, bought by the
Tate Gallery in 1922, shortly before
the revival of interest in Palmer’s work
led to an exhibition at the Victoria and
Albert Museum which so affected the
rising generation of artists, such as
Graham Sutherland and John Piper.
Palmer wrote of churches “which
are, to the Christian’s eye, the most
charming points of an English
landscape – gems of sentiment for
which our woods and green slopes,
and hedgerow elms, are the lovely
and appropriate setting.” He used
watercolour as others used oil paint,
and his technical virtuosity resulted in
paintings which are luminous, intense
and dense. They invite the viewer to
follow the artist into its centre.
This work belonged to Joseph
Overbury, a stockbroker, who bought
it from the Old Watercolour Society
exhibition in 1874. Overbury was also
the owner of the extraordinary group
of six sepia drawings painted in 1825,
bought by the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford in 1941 from his son Giles. He
also loaned two early paintings to the
memorial exhibition held at The Fine
Art Society in 1881, The Sleeping Shepherd
(Lister 179) and Scene at Underriver or
The Hop Garden (Lister 170), then titled
A Kentish Hop-Garden.
The last period of Palmer’s career
was marked by growing critical appreciation for the poetry of his idyllic
landscapes. This followed the commission from Leonard Rowe Valpy,
John Ruskin’s lawyer, to paint a series
of watercolours based on Milton’s early
poems, L’Allegro and Il Peneroso. Palmer
[ 58 ]
had been planning this landscape
cycle for some time, and needed only
the impetus of a patron to start. A succession of watercolours and etchings
resulted.
However it was not until the 20th
century that he came to be fully recognised as one of the great and most
original English landscape artists.
In the years following the deaths of
Constable and Turner, it was Palmer,
not his father-in-law John Linnell, who
changed British art. Although Linnell
was prolific and perhaps the most
commercially successful British artist
of the 19th century, then considered
with Turner to be the greatest of their
age, it is Palmer whose visions and
innovations have stood the test of
time. As a visionary artist, he made
landscapes created from the close
observation and experience of nature
distilled in his memory and imagination. The tradition of Pastoral art
follows his example.
Kenneth Clark saw Palmer as the
English Van Gogh. There are several
similarities between these two eccentric recluses, both profoundly religious, seeking to uncover a spiritual
presence in nature. Palmer wrote that
‘the painter’s and the poet’s struggles
are solitary and patient, silent and
sublime.’
31 · SIR EDOUARDO PAOLOZZI 1924–2005
Untitled (Relief ), c.1949–50
Terracotta
3 x 15½ x 12½ inches · 33 x 41 x 8 cm
Provenance: Acquired directly
from the artist
‘Making reliefs encapsulates all that is
wonderful in sculpture and operates
that part of the senses that painting,
no matter how grand, cannot possibly
touch’.
In this sentence Paolozzi in 1980
summarised not only the enduring
role played by relief in the history of
sculpture, but also why it has such a
hold on the imagination of the viewer.
As an artist who regularly worked in
two dimensions as well as three, relief
was arguably the sculptural medium
Paolozzi liked and understood best of
all.
This early relief, made at the outset
of Paolozzi’s career, contains the seeds
of much that would be subsequently
developed in his professional life.
Paolozzi has described how ‘the first
objects he made in a small room in
the rue Visconti (in Paris 1947–8)
were modelled from clay – small
reliefs modelled in the negative partly
through reasons of poverty but really
a continuation of a working method
evolved in the sculpture school at
the Slade – at the time a necessity for
directness’ (1978).
Twelve drawings and twelve reliefs,
were shown in the exhibition Eduardo
Paolozzi – Drawings and Bas-Reliefs at
the Mayor Gallery in May 1949. The
imagery of the reliefs, which consisted
of marine life and plant forms, were
influenced by the reliefs Picasso made
at Boisgeloup in the early 1930s, and
relate to the first independent free
standing table sculptures Paolozzi
developed in Paris, such as Growth
and Icarus.
[ 60 ]
[ 61 ]
32 · WALLER HUGH PATON RSA RSW 1828 – 1895
’Mang the Braes of Balquhidder, 1860
Oil on canvas · 24 x 42 inches · 61 x 106.7 cm
Exhibited: RSA 1860, no.547
Waller Hugh Paton was the leading exponent of the Pre-Raphaelite
landscape in Scotland. He was lauded
by Ruskin who, in his Edinburgh
lecture argued that ‘Pre-Raphaelitism
has but one principle, that of absolute
uncompromising truth in all it does,
obtained by working everything, down
to the last minute detail, from nature
and from nature only.’
[ 62 ]
Paton articulated the values of the
Pre-Raphaelites in the minute and
exquisitely worked detail of flora and
fauna in this impressive painting
of Perthshire. In the gloaming, and
barely visible to us the viewer, is a
stag and an owl. With absolute clarity
he describes the scene in not just its
physicality, which would be to miss
the point, but in an almost transcendental way – an example of the
nineteenth-century sublime, which
was a key tenet of romanticism.
[ 63 ]
33 · JOHN PIPER CH 1903–1992
Tall Forms on Dark Blue, 1937
Oil and ripolin on canvas laid on board
30 x 103/4 inches · 76 x 27.5 cm
Signed and dated 1937, inscribed ‘Abstract
Composition’ and further inscribed on the
reverse.
Provenance: The Leicester Galleries,
London; Dr J.E.O. Mayne in 1959; Christie’s
London, October 1997, (21), Private
Collection
Exhibited: London, The Leicester
Galleries, Artists of Fame and Promise, JulyAugust 1959, no.96 (as Abstract Composition
(1937)); Durham, Grey College, University of
Durham, John Piper: A Retrospective, April-May
1999, no.2, illustrated p.4; London, Dulwich
Picture Gallery, John Piper in the 1930s:
Abstraction on the Beach, April-June 2003,
no.44, illustrated p.132 and 133 (detail).
Literature: S. John Woods (intro.), John
Piper, Paintings, Drawings and Theatre Designs
1932–1954, Faber & Faber, London 1955,
illustrated pl.26.
For more than a year before he created
Tall Forms in Dark Blue Piper had been
making purely abstract paintings in
primary colours, much affected by his
friends Hélion and Calder in Paris.
But Piper then took a crucial step. He
went on to construct a free-standing
sculpture of painted shapes, known
now only from his photographs. He
then made paintings of this object,
so that the delight of Tall Forms in
Dark Blue is that it is both abstract
and a depiction of the secret space
of this painted construction. It is
beautiful and complex to look at,
with contrasted shiny and matt paint
and shapes cut away from the canvas,
which is glued over a board. He made
a colour lithograph of this subject, the
first abstract print in Britain after Paul
Nash and Ben Nicholson, and which
unlike these was aimed cheaply at a
popular market.
Tall Forms might have been included
in Piper’s first solo exhibition in May
1938 at the London Gallery in Cork
Street (an occasion shared with a
Picasso exhibition on the floor above).
This was an exemplary gathering of
Piper’s latest work, and he displayed
beside each other his abstracts and
collages of the coast, making apparent
their shared abstraction and depicted
space.
Looking back across Piper’s career,
it does not now seem to us surprising that he found himself unable to
remove the subject from his work
for very long, but when seen in the
context of the dogmatic and theoretical arguments between the proponents of abstraction and figuration,
Piper’s move away from non-objective
abstraction was clearly a very definite
statement to make to his friends and
contemporaries. Whilst the paintings
of 1935 and 1936 had been rigorous in
their abstraction, the paintings of 1937
begin to show references to the real
world creeping back in. Even the titles
of these paintings hint at such a move,
starting to become once more descriptive whereas they had previously
tended to adhere to the very nondescriptive standards of ‘Painting’ or
‘Abstract Composition’.
Further evidence of Piper’s frustration with the purer forms of abstraction (and, indeed, also the excesses of
[ 64 ]
surrealism) is clear in his essay ‘Lost,
A Valuable Object’ that was published
in 1937 in The Painter’s Object, edited by
his wife. In this, Piper clearly strives
to return to a form of subject, not at
this point a fully-figurative subject, but
one which has a meaning beyond pure
geometrical relationships. He outlines
two subjects he feels he would like to
be able to reintroduce to his painting,
one a room, the other a beach. For
both of these he is clear that he does
not want to just reproduce fact, but
to bring out some of the qualities of
such a subject and use these within his
compositions.
Thus, in Tall Forms on Dark Blue we
see not just the abstract forms, but
the generation of space and depth
within the painting in a way that
is reminiscent of actual space and
depth. Like his friend Paul Nash, Piper
made constructions at this time in
order to establish such ideas, and his
photographs of these, when seen in
conjunction with the paintings of the
period, do help to illuminate the way
he was approaching this melding of
object and subject.
Knowing as we do what was to
come later for Piper, we can see that
it was the achievement of exactly this
aim, the capturing of the qualities of
his subject, that makes his painting
so successful in evoking it, but it was
his experience of abstraction and the
distillation of exactly those elements
which make up any form that allowed
him to achieve this with such aplomb.
David Fraser Jenkins
34 · LUCIEN PISSARrO 1863–1944
Buttercups, Colchester, 1911
Oil on canvas
183/4 x 213/4 inches · 47.6 x 55.3 cm
Signed with monogram and dated lower right
Provenance: The Brook, 1949; Mrs
William Greve, New York,1966; her sale
Christie’s, London 11 June 1976 (33, repr.);
Caspar Gallery 1977; Mrs L. McColl.
Exhibition:London, Carfax & Co, The First
Exhibition of the Camden Town Group, June 1911
(13); London, Carfax Gallery, Lucien Pissarro,
May 1913 (35); Brighton, Public Art Galleries,
Exhibition of English Post-Impressionists, Cubists
and Others, December 1913-January 1914 (65);
London, Holland Park Hall, Allied Artists’
Association, July 1914 (35); London, Leicester
Galleries, Memorial Exhibition of Paintings and
Watercolours of Lucien Pissarro, January 1946
(23); London, Leicester Galleries, A Collection
of Paintings by Lucien Pissarro, June-July 1950
(3); London, O’Hana Gallery, Lucien Pissarro,
November 1955 (3); New York, David B.
Findlay Galleries, Lucien Pissarro, April-May
1966 (4); London, Anthony d’Offay Gallery,
Lucien Pissarro 1863–1944, July-August 1983
(20).
LITERATURE: Wendy Baron, The Camden
Town Group, London, 1979, p.268; Anne
Thorold, A Catalogue of the Oil Paintings of
Lucien Pissarro, London, 1983, pp.92–3, no.148,
illustrated.
This was one of four paintings that
Lucien Pissarro showed at the very
first exhibition of the Camden Town
Group, and it is likely he painted it
especially for this ground-breaking
show. Lucien was a significant figure
within this formal alliance of British
artists as he provided a direct link
with the modern French painting
that they sought to emulate. Lucien
perpetuated the pure impressionism
of broken touches of paint that he had
been taught by his father Camille, and
he was also able to offer the insights
provided by having painted alongside
Gauguin, Signac and Van Gogh.
In his painting Pissarro remained
extremely faithful to the principles
of his father’s impressionism, and he
was of the same generation as the first
impressionist painters in Britain, such
as Sickert and Philip Wilson Steer.
Almost all of his paintings depict the
landscape, and he worked directly in
front of his subject, whether out of
doors or looking through a window.
[ 66 ]
35 · SIR HENRY RAEBURN RA 1756 – 1823
Portrait of a Young Man, c.1790
Provenance: Private Collection,
Northern Ireland
In contrast to the London-based
Ramsay, Raeburn’s business was
firmly rooted in Edinburgh. He made
one foray into London society, but
after only a few months he returned,
unsuccessful, to Edinburgh. Those
who sat for Raeburn are emblematic
of a changed Scotland: the products of
a culturally, economically and socially
improved environment. His clientele
included the great thinkers of the
time, the confident and newly wealthy
middle classes and the aristocracy.
Some are depicted with an attribute to
indicate their field of learning, others
with land or house indicating their
place in society. His most swaggering
portraits of clan chieftains bedecked
in tartan and all things ‘highland’
contrast with his quiet and intimate
portraits such as ours. Here, in our
portrait of an unknown sitter, the
young man has assumed a casual pose.
The Byronic curls, and the shadows
cast from the direct overhead light,
soften the young man’s features and
add to his youthfulness. As ever,
Raeburn has paid particular attention
to the sitter’s clothes and looks to have
enjoyed painting the stylish striped
waistcoat and the dark green frockcoat
to which he gives form with dark
sweeps of paint in the folds.
[ 68 ]
36 · ALLAN RAMSAY 1713 – 1784
George Raymond Glanville, c.1753
Oil on canvas · 30 x 25 inches · 76.2 x 63.5 cm
Inscription on label verso
Provenance: The Earls of Rothes; Sir
Spencer Nairn 1st Bt; thence by descent
Literature: A. Smart, Allan Ramsay:
a Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, ed.
J. Ingamells, New Haven and London, 1999,
no.197, p.122, fig.411
This portrait was painted during a
brief but important period of change
for Ramsay: Joseph Vanhaecken, his
drapery painter, had died in 1749
and, shortly after this portrait was
undertaken, Ramsay travelled to Italy
for a second time. Vanhaecken’s death
appears to have liberated Ramsay from
the constraints of the Baroque and his
work became more lively and colourful. A new naturalism emerged. As
Alastair Smart notes of Ramsay’s style,
‘Such easy unpretentiousness found
an echo in the writings of the philosopher David Hume, Ramsay’s close
friend.’ By now, Ramsay’s prices were
comparable to those of his competitor, Sir Joshua Reynolds. His position
in society and his personal fortune
were secured – he had painted 80 per
cent of his entire output by 1750. The
fact that he spent three years in Rome
was, perhaps, a reflection of Ramsay’s
appetite to keep his art evolving and
his aspiration to achieve a place in not
just British, but in European art.
In this portrait of George Glanville,
the young officer appears lost in
thought. His detachment sits comfortably against the dream-like blue sky
and clouds that form the backdrop.
Glanville’s delicately and sensitively
drawn face beneath a tricorn hat,
trimmed with shimmering silver
braid, reveals Ramsay’s awareness
of contemporary French portraiture.
Little is known of the sitter. He came
from Kent and married Jane, Countess
of Rothes, in 1766. They had one son
born in 1768, just two years before
Glanville died.
[ 70 ]
37 · ERIC RAVILIOUS 1903-1942
Different Aspects of Submarines, 1941
Lithograph printed in colours on wove paper,
with narrow margins, from the Submarine
series, edition of about 50
11 x 121/2 inches · 28 x 32 cm
Reference: Brian Webb (ed.) Eric Ravilious:
Submarine Dream, Camberwell Press 1996 no.2;
Anne Ullmann (ed.) Ravilious at War (Upper
Denby 2002), p.107
Appointed as an Official War Artist,
Eric Ravilious was assigned to the
Admiralty and the submarine base at
Gosport was among the places where
he worked. He wanted to make a series
of lithographs, and at one stage tried
to gain support for the publication
of them as a book, however funding
was not forthcoming. The committee
did, however, decide to purchase the
original drawings.
The lithographs were printed by
W.S. Cowell of Ipswich. There were
ten subjects in the series, to be published in an edition of 50, however it
appears that some are more common
than others, and some show variations
within the edition. The majority of
the subjects are documents of life
in a submarine and in the training
of submariners. Two of them are
imaginary, the Introductory Lithograph,
and Different Aspects of Submarines which
incorporates a view of the vessel in
section submerged, on the surface,
and viewed from the stern and below.
[ 72 ]
38 · DAVID ROBERTS RA 1796–1864
View of Dunkeld Cathedral, Perthshire, 1850s
Oil on board · 20 x 24 inches · 51 x 61 cm
Inscribed with title.
Though Roberts travelled widely
through Europe, the Mediterranean
and the near East, he returned
frequently to his native Scotland.
Ecclesiastical interiors mark his
travels through Vienna, Rome, Toledo
and the like and all of them painted
with a dramatic sense of perspective
and grandeur but in Scotland he
looked to the Romantic with views of
dilapidated and ruinous buildings.
Indeed, upon visiting Elgin Cathedral
(Ruins of Elgin Cathedral 1853, Victoria
and Albert Museum, London) he
remarked that they were ‘too naked’;
as an historical monument, it was free
of undergrowth and the picturesque
foliage he sought. He must, then, have
delighted upon the unkempt charm of
Dunkeld Cathedral, Perthshire. Unlike
his pictures on a scale set to impress
and possessed with a drama that was
almost theatrical, Dunkeld Cathedral
shows a liveliness in its handling
and looseness of brushwork more
characteristic of an artist working en
plein air. Its softness and transparent shadows coupled with the visible
drawing almost take us closer to the
artist.
The frame maker’s label affixed to
the board verso dates the picture to
between 1844 and 1856.
[ 74 ]
39 · WILLIAM SCOTT 1913–1989
Orange and White, 1960
Oil on canvas
623/4 x 68 inches · 169.4 x 173 cm
Signed and dated W. Scott 60, verso, and
W. Scott, on the stretcher
Provenance: David W. Stamler; Private
Collection, Paris; Robert L. Markovits,
bought from Gimpel Fils in 1978
Exhibited: Los Angeles, Esther Robles
Gallery, William Scott 1961 (19); Bern,
Kunsthalle Victor Pasmore, William Scott 1963
(31); Belfast, Ulster Museum William Scott
1963 (34); Kassel, Alte Galerie Documenta III,
1964; London, Tate Gallery William Scott;
Paintings Drawings and Gouaches 1938–71, 1972
(65)
Literature: Alan Bowness (Ed), William
Scott: Paintings, London 1964 p.40 no.150,
illustrated front cover; Alan Bowness,
William Scott: Paintings Drawings and Gouaches
1938–71, London 1972 p.54 no.65; Norbert
Lynton, William Scott, London 2007 p.214
In 1972, when William Scott was 59
years old, The Tate Gallery staged a
retrospective of his work. It was the
largest and most important exhibition of his work ever staged, with
125 works and it included a section
given the title Evocative Abstraction
1958–62. This was made up of eleven
large paintings, of which Orange and
White was one.
This painting was made during a
period when success and recognition
came after a decade which had seen
Scott first established as a major figure in Post-War painting. Exhibitions
in New York at the Martha Jackson
Gallery and in London at the Hanover
Gallery led to a retrospective at the
Venice Biennale in 1958, the award
of first prize at the John Moores
Exhibition in 1959, and an invitation
from the Ford Foundation to be artist
in residence in Berlin.
Still life was William Scott’s
principal subject but these became
increasingly abstract in the late 1950s
until paintings called ‘still life’ can
be no less abstract than those, such
as Orange and White, which do not
suggest a motif at all. As Norbert
Lynton pointed out, it is the expressive
character of colour and of the rhythms,
energies and intervals that dominate
the reading of the painting. The
austerity and primitivism which are
characteristic of Scott’s work become
the underpinning for strong colour
and bold shapes in such abstract
paintings. There is texture and depth,
transparency and opaque passages.
The picture surface contrasts thick
and thin paint, in areas some of which
are delineated or scratched, and others
which are full of colour.
The major paintings of 1960
combine richness and simplicity.
At the time he was also working on
a commissioned mural scheme for
Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry,
Northern Ireland. This was entirely
abstract and caused great controversy
when it was unveiled in 1961. The first
full monograph on the work of the
artist was published in 1964, William
Scott: Paintings by Alan Bowness, who
later became Director of the Tate
Gallery. The book culminates with
the paintings from 1960–1962 and
illustrates over thirty of these. Orange
and White was selected for illustration
on the cover.
[ 76 ]
40 · WALTER RICHARD SICKERT 1860–1942
The Facade of St Jacques, c.1899–1900
Sickert was essentially a painter of
light, a follower of impressionist
principles who expressed them in
his own highly original form. Sickert
spent many years in Dieppe and kept
up a studio there over a considerable
period. The church of St Jacques was a
favourite subject. In his repeated serial
compositions depicting the view down
the street to the church he showed it
under different lighting conditions
and times of day, contrasting the
effects of sunlight with gathering,
richly coloured shadows.
This is an early treatment and one
in which Sickert has painted both
extremely fluidly and with a bright palette, giving a sense that it was in part
influenced by Monet. However, the
adventurous juxtapositions of blues
and yellows and ochres are entirely
Sickert’s own highly characteristic
invention which succeed in bringing
shimmering life to this study of light
falling on one of Dieppe’s landmarks.
[ 78 ]
41 · ALFRED SISLEY 1839–1899
Moret-sur-Loing, 1889
Renoir also painted in the town.
Sisley was born in Paris of English
Provenance: Madame Jacques Balsan;
parents. He entered Gleyre’s studio
Robert Bach, and by descent
in 1862, and became friends with his
Literature: François Daulte, Alfred Sisley.
fellow students there: Monet, Renoir
Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, Paris 1959
and Frédéric Bazille. He was almost
no.704
exclusively a painter of landscape, and
maintained an Impressionist approach
to the subject throughout his career.
In 1880 Sisley moved to Moret-sur
Loing, near the forest of Fontainebleau, He showed works in the first, second
and third Impressionist exhibitions.
and the area was the principal source
Durand-Ruel held a one-man show
of subjects in the latter part of his life.
The Loing river feeds into the Seine and of Sisley’s paintings in Paris in 1883,
its tranquil surroundings are seen here and another took place in New York
in 1889.
in soft grey morning light. Monet and
Oil on canvas · 123/4 x 161/4 inches · 32 x 41 cm
Signed Sisley 89, lower left
[ 80 ]
42 · GILBERT SPENCER RA 1892–1979
The Balcony (47 Downshire Hill, Hampstead), 1928
Oil on canvas
281/2 x 241/4 inches · 72.4 x 61.6 cm
Signed and dated Gilbert Spencer / 1928 lower
right
Provenance: Percy Julius Spencer, the
artist’s brother; by descent.
Exhibited: Glasgow, Royal Glasgow
Insitute of Fine Arts, 1949; Pittsburg,
Carnegie Institute, Great Britain, November
1955 (175); Reading, Reading Museum & Art
Gallery, The Retrospective Exhibition
of the Work of Gilbert Spencer, 1964.
The list of visitors who gathered at
No.47 Downshire Hill is full of wellknown 20th century artists, including
C.R.W. Nevinson, Paul Nash, Mark
Gertler, Gilbert Spencer and his
brother Sir Stanley Spencer. The
house, which belonged to the Carline
family – George and Annie Carline
and their five children, including most
prominently, Sydney, Richard and
Hilda – became an open house for
artists during the inter-war years, who
came for the friendship and hospitality, but also for the critical debate and
inspiration that was found when they
gathered together.
[ 82 ]
43 · PHILIP WILSON STEER OM NEAC 1860–1942
44 · GRAHAM VIViAN SUTHERLAND OM 1903–1980
At The Well, Walberswick, c.1884
Moonlit Landscape, 1942
LITERATURE: Bruce Laughton, Philip Wilson Steer,
Oxford University Press, 1971, p.8, pl.7
Pen and ink, watercolour and gouache
121/4 x 95/8 inches · 31 x 24.5 cm
Signed and dated Sutherland 42 lower left
[ 84 ]
[ 85 ]
45 · JAMES M c NEILL WHISTLER 1834–1903
The Two Doorways, 1879–80
Etching and drypoint
8 x 111/2 inches · 20.2 x 29.2 cm
Signed in pencil with a butterfly and inscribed
imp, printed on laid paper, trimmed to the
platemark by the artist, also signed and
inscribed verso, with another inscription
Whistler’s special mark denotes quality of impression
in Harold Wright’s hand: an impression in the
thirteenth (final) state, published in Venice:
Twelve Etchings, 1880 The First Venice Set
Literature: Edward G Kennedy, The
Etched Work of Whistler, New York 1910 no.193;
Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg
Hausberg, and Joanna Meacock, James McNeill
Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné,
University of Glasgow, 2011, on-line website
at http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk no.221
A view of the intersection of the
canals where the sestieri of San
Marco, Cannaregio and Castello meet,
between Miracoli and the Rialto. The
view is taken from a boat and the
artist has drawn the stonework in
great detail, set off by the dark recess
beyond the doorway. Whistler made
radical changes to the plate while he
was still in Venice and continued the
process back in London.
The Two Doorways was one of
the twelve subjects included in Mr
Whistler’s Etchings of Venice, the First
Venice Set, published by and shown
at The Fine Art Society in 1880. An
impression was also exhibited in the
Venice Pastels exhibition in 1881 and
in An Arrangement in White and Yellow,
1883, both at The Fine Art Society.
The Fine Art Society’s commission
to make a series of etchings in Venice
was the pivotal event in Whistler’s
career. Coming in 1879 shortly after
his bankruptcy, the hollow victory in
his libel action against Ruskin and the
loss of the White House, it provided
an escape from London. The Venice
prints marked Whistler’s re-entry into
the London art world. Their importance extends beyond the history of
printmaking, to the broader context
of nineteenth-century art and exhibition design.
Cut out around paper edge
include tap at bottom
[ 86 ]
46 · ETHELBERT WHITE 1891–1972
The Pattern of Winter, 1919
Oil on canvas
231/2 x 191/2 inches · 60 x 49.5 cm
Signed and dated Ethelbert White 19, lower left
Exhibited: London, The Leicester
Galleries, Ethelbert White 1971 (20)
Ethelbert White was a colourful
and eccentric artist who lived in
Hampstead. He exhibited with the
London Group from 1915 and with
the New English Art Club, becoming
a member in 1921. That same year
he had his first one-man show at the
Paterson and Carfax Gallery. Besides
painting he designed posters, made
wood engravings and illustrated
books. Among these were C.W.
Beaumont’s Impressions of the Russian
Ballet (1919) and The Story of My Heart by
Richard Jeffries (1923).
In 1913 he painted a huge canvas
with Nevinson, called Tum-TiddlyUm-Tum-Tum-Pom-Pom, for the Allied
Artist’s Exhibition. Despite this
Futurist work and his friendship with
Nevinson and Marinetti, White’s vision
was already fully formed. It was based
firmly on the English countryside.
There were exhibitions of Ethelbert
White’s work at The Fine Art Society in
1935, 1979 (A Memorial Exhibition)
and 1986.
[ 88 ]
47 · SIR DAVID WILKIE RA HRSA 1785–1841
Farmyard Scene, 1815
Oil on panel · 5 x 8½ inches · 12.7 x 21.5 cm
Signed and dated 1815 on verso
Provenance: Purchased from the artist
by General Sir James Gordon; his son Sir
Henry Gordon; his daughter Julia Gordon;
her grandson the Hon. John Leith; his wife
Mrs Jock Leith; sold by her executors in
Edinburgh, 1980; Private collection, Scotland
Exhibited: Anthony Reed, London;
Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh, 1993
Though his work is detailed, Wilkie’s
controlled use of colour and confident
handling prevents his pictures being
overworked. His strength in genre
scenes is not only in the depiction of
relationships between the people and
scenes but also in the rendering of
their individualities. This is reflected
in Farmyard Scene where even the
sheep seem to have distinct faces and
characters. With its deft draughtsmanship and the paint’s creamy texture
and mellow palette, this small picture
provides a charming insight into
Wilkie’s wider talent.
[ 90 ]
48 · SIR DAVID WILKIE RA HRSA 1785–1841
The Cotter’s Saturday Night, c.1837
Oil on panel · 19 x 24 inches · 48.2 x 61 cm
signed
This Rembrandtesque oil on panel
is the sketch for the larger painting
(exhibited in 1837) in the collection
of Glasgow Museums. The Cotter’s
Saturday Night is one of a pair of
paintings (the other being Grace Before
Meat), inspired by one of Robert
Burns’s most patriotic poems,
‘Address to a Haggis’. It remembers
the culture of the cotters – a peasant given the use of a cottage by the
property-owner in exchange for
labour, as opposed to paying rent – a
system which, due to agricultural
reform, had all but vanished by the
1820s. It evokes the tradition of
domestic worship, which was also
fast disappearing. In 1836, the Church
of Scotland distributed to all its
ministers a pastoral letter instructing
them to encourage this dying practice
among their parishioners. At the heart
of Presbyterianism lay the aspiration
to place church governance in the care
of heads of families rather than in that
of local landowners as was, crudely
speaking, understood to the Anglican
way. This image, as with other pictures
by Wilkie, conveys domestic virtue as a
particular and special characteristic of
the Scots.
[ 92 ]
49 · EMILY YOUNG
Purbeck Freestone Head: Face of Stillness I, 2014
Purbeck freestone
31½ x 37½ x 30 inches · 80 x 95.2 x 76 cm
The stone is limestone, quarried
in Dorset. It was formed in the Upper
Jurassic Period and is made up of
millions of tiny compacted shells,
140 million years old.
[ 94 ]
THE FINE ART SOCIETY
Dealers since 1876
148 New Bond Street · London W1S 2JT
+44 (0)20 7629 5116 · [email protected]
www.faslondon.com
Published by The Fine Art Society for the
exhibition Spring 2o14 held at 148 New Bond Street,
London W1, 8 to 30 April, and at Bourne Fine Art,
6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, 9 to 31 May 2014.
Catalogue © The Fine Art Society
ISBN 978 1 907052 38 5
Inside back cover
Photography by A.C. Cooper Ltd
Designed and typeset in Quadraat by Dalrymple
Printed in Belgium by Albe De Coker
Front cover: detail from Buttercups, Colchester, 1911
Lucien Pissarro [no.34]
Back cover: Sunflowers, 2013
Rob & Nick Carter [no.8]
[ 97 ]
The Fine Art Society
Dealers since 1876
[ 98 ]

exhibition catalogue

Transcription

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