Masterpiece: London 2022

The Artist

Private Collection, New York, by 1959

Private Collection, 2003

Grosvenor Gallery, London, 2004
Private Collection, UK
Osborne Samuel London

Colin Ralph, The Colin Collection: Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings and Sculpture collected by Mr. & Mrs. Ralph F. Colin, New York, 1960
Margaret Garlake, New Art, New World: British Art in Postwar Society, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1998
Margaret Garlake, The sculpture of Reg Butler, Henry Moore Foundation in Association with Lund Humphries, 2006, cat no.176, illustrated Fig 35, p.43

Hanover Gallery, May-June 1957 (Cat 34.)
Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, February 1959 (cat, 14)
J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, Oct.-Dec. 1963, Reg Butler, A Retrospective Exhibition, cat 67

Butler was a man with two distinct, yet highly accomplished, careers. As Cottrell, Butler he was an architect with a burgeoning practice, while as Reg he was an essentially untrained avant-garde sculptor, having only worked briefly as an assistant in Henry Moore’s studio in 1947 and tried his hand as a blacksmith during the war, whose idiosyncratic style and experimental approach drew the attention of contemporary artists and critics alike. While exhibiting at both the 1952 and 1954 Venice Biennales he made a significant contribution to Herbert Read’s defining concept of post-war art, the so-called ‘Geometry of Fear’, and was also talent spotted by international gallerists such as Curt Valentin in New York and later Pierre Matisse.
Figure in Space is one of Butler’s finest explorations into the human figure. His architectural background provided him with a sensitive understanding of the relationship between form and space, an understanding which he applied to strong effect through the creation of cage-like structures, such as that visible here, which are very similar to those used by Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon in their work. In this instance the structures surrounding the atrophied human figure provide the sculpture with an extraordinary sense of movement while also referencing the spruing which surround bronzes in the initial stages of the casting process. By drawing our attention to the making process itself Butler draws our attention to the artificiality of the human figure and encourages a detached, Existentialist, standpoint. Butler explained this to Pierre Matisse: ‘to me the so-called base…is a very important part of the total sculpture – it isn’t merely a base but I’m sure does things to the meaning of the whole thing’ (letter to Pierre Matisse, November 1966, quoted in Pierre Matisse and His Artists (exh. cat)., The Pierpoint Morgan Library, New York, 2002, p.128).
Pierre Matisse was quick to sign Reg Butler into his stable of artists after the Curt Valentin Gallery closed in 1955, although Matisse struggled to develop a close working relationship with Erica Brausen who represented Butler in London. In March 1956 he included Butler in an exhibition alongside prestigious and established names such as Le Corbusier, Giacometti, Marino Marini and Joan Miro (among others), but it was not until February 1959 that he was able to stage a solo exhibition. It was not only Butler’s idiosyncratic approach to form which fascinated Matisse and ensured him a place in his prestigious gallery but also the sensuality of his figures which sat very well alongside those of Balthus and Maillol, who were regular features at the gallery.

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York 

Private Collection (acquired from the above)

Private Collection (acquired from the above)

Osborne Samuel, London

Reg Butler: Sculpture and Drawings 1954-1958 (exh. cat), New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, 1959, illustrated no. 17 
Reg Butler: A Retrospective Exhibition (exh. cat), Louisville, J. B. Speed Art Museum, 1963, illustrated no.71
Walter Strachan, Open Air Sculpture in Britain: A Comprehensive Guide, Zwemmer Ltd., Tate Publications, London, 1984, no. 444 (as Girl with Arm Raised, another cast)
Penelope Curtis, Sculpture in 20th Century Britain, Vol. II, A Guide To Sculptors In The Leeds Collection, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2003, illustrated p. 31 (another cast)
Margaret Garlake, The Sculpture of Reg Butler, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2006, no. 178, illustrated p. 150 (another cast)

London, Hanover Gallery, Reg Butler, May – June 1957, no. 37 (another cast)
Nottingham, Castle Museum, Contemporary British Sculpture, 25 May – 15 June 1957, no. 4 (another cast), with Arts Council Tour
New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Reg Butler: Sculpture and Drawings 1954-1958, February 1959, no. 17, illustrated in the catalogue (another cast)
London, Hanover Gallery, Reg Butler: Sculpture, 9 June – 8 July 1960, no. 25 (another cast)
Louisville, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Reg Butler: A Retrospective Exhibition,  22 October – 1 December 1963, no. 71 (another cast)
London, Tate, Reg Butler, 16 November 1983 – 15 January 1984, no. 56 (another cast)  

Female figures form by far the largest part of Butler’s subject matter in the 1950s, and the image of the figure wrestling with a piece of clothing, a chemise or a vest, is one that captivated his imagination.This figure, Girl, speaks of determination and thrusting energy. The sensual female body is lifted off the ground on a grid, a feature of Butler’s female figures during the decade. The curves rise through the torso to the shoulders and left arm, which are tensely constrained about the figure’s neck by a piece of material. Out of this struggle flies the vertical right arm punctuated by a clenched fist which thrusts towards the heavens. This passage from sensual freedom to constraint to release presents conflicting forces and astounding impact.

The figure’s head is thrown back so that her view follows the strong vertical of her arm. Her face is calm and resolute, and removed from the torment of Butler’s early 1950s sculptures such as The Oracle, 1952 and Circe Head, 1952-3. The image of the figure looking to the sky can be traced back to three figures, the ‘Watchers’, which populate Butler’s maquette of 1951-2, which won the international competition for a Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner. Butler recalled one source of inspiration for the upward-looking figures to be ‘heads looking up into the sky’ to watch de Havilland test flights at Hatfield (Tate, Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions 1978-80, p.74, quoted in Margaret Garlake, The Sculpture of Reg Butler, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2006, p.134).

Butler’s interest in the writings of Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein suggests that the dichotomy between the opposing forces of sensuality and brutality in Butler’s representation of female forms noted by John Berger in 1954 would seem to have some grounds. Artistically, comparisons can be drawn with the surrealist treatment of the female figure by artists greatly admired by Butler, such as Hans Bellmer. Perhaps more revealing are connections with two artists of Butler’s own generation, Francis Bacon and Germaine Richier, both of whose work seeks to explore the boundaries at which the human form loses its human qualities. Indeed all three exhibited with the Hanover Gallery in London, and Margaret Garlake suggests that Butler’s viewing of Richier’s 1955 Hanover Gallery exhibition may have led to his re-engagement with the theme the following year.

Waddington & Shiell Galleries, Ontario, 1986
Private Collection, Canada (purchased from the above)
Osborne Samuel Ltd, 2016
Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above)

Dennis Farr, Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, Lund Humphries, 2014, reference C 33, p.364-365

The Artist
Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Chicago, 2004
Private Collection, USA, May 2004

Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, Aldershot, 2006, no. C107, illustrated p. 409

Feico Hoekstra, Loes Visch, Teo van den Brink, eds., Exhibition Catalogue, Zwolle, Museum de Fundatie, Giacometti-Chadwick: Facing Fear, 2018, illustrated in colour p. 150

Another work from this edition has been included in: Zwolle, Museum de Fundatie, Giacometti-Chadwick: Facing Fear, September 2018 – January 2019

I noticed some stainless steel sculptures in Miami once, by the sea, and they looked very shiny and bright and wonderful. While if you had things with any iron in them at all [in those circumstances] they looked dilapidated and rusty. So I thought I’d try stainless steel. ¹

Having embarked on his adventure with a new material, it was natural that Chadwick should see what happened when he used it to create some of his established archetypes, like the Sitting Couple. They are superficially similar to the monumental bronze couples of the 1980’s but the forms in stainless steel are crisper and sharper throughout. The planes of polished stainless steel reflect every change in colour and light that surround them, imbuing the surface with a vitality that shifts with the line of sight.

¹Edward Lucie-Smith, Chadwick, puplished by Lypiatt Studio, 1997, p. 131

Christie’s, Amsterdam,  1997
Private Collection
Sotheby’s, London,  2015
Private Collection, Brussels
Osborne Samuel, London

Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor, published by Lund Humphries, no. 735, p.320

Galerie Farber, Brussels, Lynn Chadwick, Victor Pasmore, November – December 1976 (another cast)

Female figure 49.2 cm. (19 3/8 in.) high, Male figure 50.2 cm. (19 3/4 in.) high

Chadwick’s Winged Figures are not allegorical beings but are a result of his intuitive dialogue with materials and process. The leitmotif throughout Chadwick’s career was the paired figure. From 1953 onwards, Chadwick developed an array of typologies, whose features he inflected and interchanged. The first manifestation was Conjunction, followed by Two Dancing Figures (or simply Dance), then Encounter, Teddy Boy and Girl  and Winged Figures.  These were never passive meetings, or, for that matter, decorative pas-de-deux. In each instance, an electricity seems to arc between the figures. 

Private Collection, Europe

Osborne Samuel, London

Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, with a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2005, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2006, cat. no.349, illustrated p.180(another cast)

Michael Bird, Lynn Chadwick, London, 2014, no. 5-16, illustration of another cast p. 122

Marlborough Fine Art, London, Nov-Dec, 1961

In 1959 Chadwick began working on an iconic series of sculptures: ‘The Watchers’. These mysterious creatures stand in majestic isolation, even when they appear in triads. All marks of the individual have been removed from the figure, to create an image that is neither human nor animal, neither male nor female. Writing about The Watchers, Herbert Read dubbed Chadwick’s unique aesthetic as “the new image of man”.

Lynn Chadwick was interviewed by Cathy Courtney for the British Sound Archive and she asked specifically about ‘the Watchers.’ 

Chadwick answered, ‘it is my way of saying the same thing as the Easter Island figures are saying…. They’re not in any way, representative of anything. They are just shapes….. You see, the Easter Island things …. have this great intensity of … message, as it were and I wanted to do the same thing….. All I was aware of was that they ….satisfied me that I had done what I wanted to do, I wasn’t trying to do anything specific but it was just this way of having this intense feeling.’1

In 1959, Chadwick began a series of over forty sculptures titled Watcher. The earliest maquette angled its block-shaped head inquisitively, its torso curved in a gentle, questioning arch. More characteristically, the Watchers would appear erect and level headed, their gaze directed resolutely ahead.

Watcher VI (1961) was conceived in the same year that Chadwick began work on the group of three monumental Watchers, a cast of which was sited in Roehampton, overlooking the modernist architecture of the Alton Estate, by the London County Council in 1963. Like them, it inhabits a rectangular profile, upright and self-contained. Yet within this simplicity of profile there is abundant detail, subtly reinforcing the stance: no plane is left unconsidered. The head bears traces of horizontal seams, layered as a dry-stone wall. The torso is articulated with diamond facets. This particular Watcher twists its head, slightly: a receptor stilled in observation.

1.Michael Bird, Lynn Chadwick, London, 2014, p.112

Minimum footprint of legs at base 28.5 x 25 cm (11 1/4 x 10 in)

A study for the ‘Watcher’ series of 1961, executed in ink and watercolour on paper, is held in the collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 

Other ‘Watcher’ sculptures in public collections, include the Berman Museum, Pennsylvania, the Sprengel Museum, Hanover and the San Diego Museum of Art.

Christopher Hull Gallery
Private collection, UK 1992
Private Collection, UK

Ian Collins, John Craxton, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2011, p.49, illustrated pl.43

Dancer in a Landscape belongs to a series of images, painted or drawn by Craxton in the early 1940s, depicting solitary figures. He later described them as projections of himself, ‘derived from Blake and Palmer. They were my means of escape and a sort of self protection. A shepherd is a lone figure, and so is a poet.’ ₁

Poet in a Landscape and Dreamer in Landscape (now in the Tate collection) are dense pen and ink drawings, reproduced in Horizon in March 1942. In each, a seated figure appears oblivious of the encroaching vegetation, gnarled trunks and roots. Craxton’s lithographs for The Poet’s Eye (1944) likewise depict tin-helmeted figures, seated, lost in reverie amid moonlit landscapes, or half-concealed within trees.

By contrast, Dancer in a Landscape is lighter in mood. In the summer of 1943 Craxton travelled with Peter Watson and Graham Sutherland to St David’s Head in Pembrokeshire, where he sketched alongside Sutherland. As he recalled,

There were cloudless days and the land was reduced to basic elements of rocks, fig trees, gorse, the nearness of sea on all sides, a brilliant clear light. Everything was stripped away – all the verbiage, that is – to the essential sources of existence. ₂

This simplification is apparent in the clarity and lightness of Dancer in a Landscape. There is a joyous sense of movement in the depiction of the river, tussocks of grass, and soft shading of the figure, as well as the delicately feathered tree and spidery clouds. Throughout the composition, Craxton seems to delight in the possibilities of mark-making, lightening with chalk and adding touches of green and sepia

₁ John Craxton, in ‘John Craxton: Paintings and Drawings 1941–1966’, exhibition catalogue (Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1967), p. 6.
₂ Craxton, ibid.

The Estate of the Artist

Osborne Samuel Gallery

John Craxton: A Poetic Eye, Dorset County Museum, March-September 2015

Salisbury Museum, January-May 2016

The London Gallery

The Mayor Gallery, London

The Nicolas and Frances McDowall Collection

Osborne Samuel Gallery

Monnow Valley Arts. The Nicolas and Frances McDowall Collection of British Neo-Romantic Art. ABC Print Ltd: Hereford. p.17

Head of a Sleeping Fisherman, painted in 1949, continues the theme of young men at rest that so absorbed Craxton in the early 1940s, following his discovery of the 19th century British Romantic artist, Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), through his new friendship with Peter Watson (see catalogue note for Boy with Bird). It was through Watson that Craxton was introduced to Lady ‘Peter’ Norton (née Noel Evelyn Hughes), co-founder of the London Gallery in 1936 and wife of Sir Clifford Norton, Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Greece (1946-51). This association was pivotal to Craxton’s career progression, with his Greek odyssey beginning in Athens in May 1946, initially using a room above the British embassy’s garage for lodging, before moving to the idyllic island of Poros in the Aegean Sea. During the year Head of a Sleeping Fisherman was painted, Lady Norton had, via the British Council and her influential position, arranged two Craxton exhibitions in Athens, thus facilitating a new
audience appreciation to those already established in London, Paris and Brussels.

It was during Craxton’s first year on Poros that he painted his landlady’s son, Petros. A sublime recumbent figure, titled Sleeping Fisherman, provided the subject for some of the artist’s most dazzling imagery over the following three years. Shepherds near Kossos and Sleeping Fisherman
of 1947 and 1948 respectively are both major oils from this moment of Greek exploration, which included trips to Crete, the Cyclades and Dodecanese. The head of the McDowall Craxton, with its sun-kissed skin and gently closed eyes, proved a favoured motif of Craxton’s and one that clearly appealed to the McDowalls, evidenced by Nicolas’s comments alongside the painting in the
Monnow Valley Arts’ catalogue, accompanying their
2015 exhibition:

A very early and happy purchase. I remember thephysical shock of pleasure I experienced on first layingeyes on this picture… Here was a perfect distillation ofneo-romantic spirit.1It was this ‘Neo-Romantic’ terminology that Craxtonhimself refuted; not the whole phrase per se, but the‘Neo’ prefix. ‘You are either “Romantic” in spirit or youare not. You can’t be “Neo-Romantic”. There was never a“Neo-Romantic” group as such…’2

Despite Craxton’s personal feelings, it was a phrase whichpermeated post-war art historical conversation, owing toits significance within the British modernist movement.Dr. Peter Wakelin sums this up perfectly in his catalogueintroduction to the Monnow Valley Arts’ exhibition:During the war years and from then until the shock ofAmerican Abstract Expressionism’s arrival in Britain inthe 1950s, neo-romanticism was a pervasive style forthe age, a lingua franca which artists absorbed as partof their early development.3 

1. Monnow Valley Arts. The Nicolas and Frances McDowall Collection ofBritish Neo-Romantic Art. ABC Print Ltd: Hereford. p.17 

2. Pallant House Gallery magazine interview for the exhibition, Poets in theLandscape: The Romantic Spirit in British Art, Pallant House, Chichester,2007

3. op.cit. p.9

Private collection, since 1950s
Osborne Samuel Gallery

Craxton travelled to Spetses from Poros with friend, Lucian Freud, in the Autumn of 1946 to celebrate his 24th birthday. There Craxton plotted an abstracted landscape from which several gouaches were produced.

Sale, Christie’s London, 7 June 1991, lot 207
Christopher Hull Gallery, London
Private Collection (acquired from the above in 2018)
Osborne Samuel Gallery

Ian Collins (ed.), John Craxton, Lund Humphries, London, 2011, no. 165, illustrated, p. 136

Tokyo, Tokyo International Biennale, New Image in Painting, 1974, illustrated in the catalogue

From May 1946, when John Craxton first moved to Greece, through to 1967, much of his work drew on its people, nature and landscapes for inspiration. He depicted sailors, fishermen and shepherds, along with taverna life, coastal scenes, local animals (particularly goats) and the bountiful sealife. But a coup in April 1967 resulted in a military junta ruling Greece, after which a fractious and suspicious relationship developed between Craxton and the new regime, with accusations of espionage. The situation did not improve and eventually the artist decided to leave his beloved Greece.

Travelling was on the agenda once again, with an absence from Greece for much of the 1970s. At first Kenya (1970), then Tunisia (1971) and Morocco (1972). By 1973, the year Volcanic Landscape was painted, Craxton found himself on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. Ian Collins comments on this time, ‘Craxton warmed to stark Lanzarote, with camels and peasants labouring in a black moonscape where each man-made crater held a single fig tree or vine. He added lava dust to the pigment for a series of literally gritty pictures.’ 1

It is this description which we are presented with in Volcanic Landscape. The lava dust has been liberally and thickly applied to create interesting textures and depth to the picture surface. The single, sparse tree winds its way up through the centre of the composition, above which a prehistoric bird commands the upper third. The goat lower centre, outlined in pink and feeding on the lone tree, reminds us of Craxton’s love affair with Greece.

The whole painting is infused with a dream-like atmosphere as the psychedelic sky with its pink, yellow and green pigments and blazing sun, highlights the ancient volcanic scene below.

1  Ian Collins, John Craxton, Lund Humphries, 2011, p.132

Leicester Galleries, London
Julius Fleischmann Foundation, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (purchased from the above)
Mr & Mrs Nicholas Lott
Private Collection, UK

Ian Collins , John Craxton , Lund Humphries, London, 2011, Cat No 152 (illus p123)

In our May 2018 exhibition John Craxton in Greece – The Unseen Works we showed an earlier version of the same subject, the same young man minus the cigarette, the same pose with his left leg raised on a
grey block, right hand on his hip and his left elbow resting on his left knee. His tee-shirt is dark blue with white stripes and his trousers are grey. It is signed and dated 1959. Craxton spent Christmas of 1959 with his close friend the Greek artist Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas (1906-1994), known as Nikos
Ghika, in an 18th century ancestral mansion built by his great-greatgreat-grandfather above the fishing village of Kaminia on the island of Hydra.

Ghika invited numerous artists, writers and performers to stay for protracted periods, among them Patrick Leigh Fermor (Paddy) who wrote Mani, his acclaimed travel book there and arranged a studio for John Craxton to use on his visits (where he also designed the book cover). The three men remained the closest of friends and their work and lives were celebrated in the 2018 British Museum exhibition Charmed Lives in Greece.

During the 1959 Hydra visit the builders at Ghika’s house had some unused plaster that Craxton put to good use. He frequently used whatever was at hand and the plaster fitted his curiosity for texture and technique while embarking on a painterly voyage of discovery – in this case building a relief on board by applying the plaster with various tools and then painting the figure in tempera. His love of classical sculpture and ancient reliefs is manifested here in a monumental image of a modern young man.

In 1960 Craxton moved to a ruined Venetian-Ottoman house onthe Cretan harbour of Chania, a thriving port and former islandcapital well-known for its vibrant atmosphere. Below his new homewere the tavernas and bars frequented by off-duty sailors and locallabourers who became the artist’s companions and models in hiswork. This second relief emerged again from left-over plaster duringthe renovation of the Chania home just like the 1959 portrait. In thisversion, the young man has a white tee-shirt and off-white trousersand holds the same pose with the addition of a cigarette depictedwhere the white plaster remained unpainted and the previous greybox has been substituted by a low side-table or stool.Both pictures were exhibited at Craxton’s 1961 exhibition at theLeicester Galleries. This final version was bought by the Julius Fleischmann Foundation, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA where it remained fordecades before being repatriated. 

Gordon Samuel 

Terry Dintenfass, Inc., New York
Private Collection, USA

Osborne Samuel, London

James Fitzsimmons, Elisabeth Frink, Art International, vol. 232, no. 2, May 1979, p. 19 (another example illustrated)
Bryan Robertson, Elisabeth Frink Sculpture Catalogue Raisonné, Salisbury, 1984, no. 220, pp. 108, 185 (another example illustrated)
Edward Lucie-Smith, Frink A Portrait, London, 1994, p. 46 (another example illustrated)
Elisabeth Frink: Memorial Exhibition, exh. cat., Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 11 June – 29 August 1994, p. 31 (another example illustrated, p. 14)
Stephen Gardiner, Frink The Official Biography of Elisabeth Frink, London, 1998, p. 187 (another example illustrated, p. 203)
Annette Ratuszniak ed., Elisabeth Frink, Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture 1947-93, London, 2013, no. FCR 248, p. 130 (another example illustrated)

Winchester, Great Courtyard, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture in Winchester, 17 July – 13 September 1981 (another example exhibited)
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Elisabeth Frink Sculpture and Drawings, 1952 – 1984, 8 February – 24 March 1985, p. 52 (another example exhibited and illustrated, pp. 17, 25)
Washington D.C., The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings 1950 – 1990, 1990, pp. 8-9, 65 (another example exhibited and illustrated)

Conceived in 1975, Dame Elisabeth Frink’s series of Tribute Heads explore themes of suffering and endurance, inspired by the work of Amnesty International and the stoic resolve of the nameless figures around the world who have been persecuted as a result of their beliefs. The artist began this series shortly after her return to London following a number of years living in France, continuing her exploration into the same forms and subjects that had underpinned her Goggle Heads and Soldiers’ Heads sculptures. For Frink, the head was a conduit through which she could channel an array of emotions, one which allowed her to delve into the internal psychological landscape of her figures. As she explained: ‘Heads have always been very important to me as vehicles for sculpture. A head is infinitely variable. It’s complicated, and it’s extremely emotional. Everyone’s emotions are in their face. It’s not surprising that there are sculptures of massive heads going way back, or that lots of other artists besides myself have found the subject fascinating’ (E. Frink, quoted in E. Lucie-Smith, Frink: A Portrait, London, 1994, p. 125). Through subtle alterations from figure to figure in this series, Frink captures an insightful glimpse into the full emotional impact these experiences have on the individuals involved.
Pairing the features back to the minimal suggestion of its essential forms, the artist focuses our attention on the figure’s highly nuanced expression, eloquently conveying a careful balance of tension and serenity in their face. In this way, the figure at the heart of the present work retains a poise and dignity, as they defiantly face their torment. Frink, reflecting on this aspect of the Tribute heads, explained: ‘they are the victims, except that they are not crumpled in any sense … they’re not damaged. They’ve remained whole. No, I think they’re survivors really. I look at them as survivors who have gone through to the other side’ (E. Frink, National Life Stories: Artists’ Lives interview with Sarah Kent).

Waddington Galleries, London 
Peter Stuyvesant Foundation
Belgrave Gallery, London
Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above, 2001)
Osborne Samuel Gallery

Alan Bowness, Recent British Paining, 1988, page 60, Illustrated No 22

Galerie Charles Linehard, Zurich, Terry Frost 1963;
North Carolina Museum of Art, Young British Painters, 1964
Bolton Art Gallery 1966-67 (on loan)
Tate Gallery, London, Recent British Painting, 1967, No 22
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Recent British Paintings, 1970
Gillian Jason Gallery, London, Terry Frost, 1988, No11

In 1963 Frost moved with his young family from St Ives to Banbury. While looking at the area, a year earlier, he had discovered Compton Wynwates, a Tudor house belonging to the Marquis of Northampton. Inside he saw a Cromwellian chair upholstered in ‘unforgettable blue’ against the black of the wood which, with the space between its legs, looked like a piece of sculpture. The chapel outside contained flags that had been carried in the battle of Edge Hill. One of them, ‘fragile as a spider’s web’, had black chevrons with blue circles all round. As Frost left, he saw, in the peeling layers of the plaster, a blue full moon on the wall:

These experiences were so moving they have affected my paintings ever since. I came home and painted a grey, mixing my oils in such a way that I could get a black craze, and then I ran that blue through it; it had to be a single wet stroke and absolutely accurate; and there it was. What I had experienced gave a whole new meaning to chevrons for me, and new meanings for circles as well.[1]

These shapes would accrue new significance during Frost’s years in Banbury, when he became fascinated by the town’s preponderance of road signs. Yet while the mid-1960s’ paintings gained a colourful, emphatic energy from such experiences, earlier examples, such as Blue, Black Arrow (1962) have a focused intensity.

The canvas of Blue, Black Arrow is divided into three sectors. A circle and ellipse fill the blue segment, the lower right area is colourfully striped, while the upper grey sector is traversed by a black, blue-tipped, arrow. These elements impel the downward motion of the composition, which is further animated by the pendulous ellipse and thrust of the arrow. Throughout, energy radiates from the multiplication of outlines, in shades of blue, aquamarine, turquoise, red and yellow.

Blue, Black Arrow was one of two paintings by Frost (with Red and Black, 1961) acquired for the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, whose collection aimed to represent British artists at a formative point in their career. The parameters were that no painting should be earlier than 1951, and no artist younger than those included in the seminal ‘Young Generation’ exhibition, sponsored by the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1964. Just three years later, in 1967, the collection was shown in its entirety at the Tate as ‘Recent British Painting’, an exhibition that toured to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

[1] Terry Frost, interview with David Lewis (July 1993), quoted in David Lewis, Terry Frost (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994), p. 101.

From the Artist directly to:

Redfern Gallery, London

Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above, 2001)

Osborne Samuel Gallery

Adrian Heath, at the centre of a small group of British avant-garde artists in the 1950s, was responsible for compiling Nine Abstract Artists (1954): a book including statements by the artists concerned – himself, Robert Adams, Terry Frost, Roger Hilton, Kenneth and Mary Martin, Victor Pasmore and William Scott – while contextualising their work in the development of abstract art since the 1930s. The publication was preceded by three exhibitions mounted in Heath’s studio at Fitzroy Street, London, where paintings and sculpture were displayed in a stylish, quasi-domestic environment.

Photographs of the first exhibition, in March 1952, show two oval paintings by Kenneth Martin and Victor Pasmore, a format that Heath would adopt for a series made between 1956 and 1959. For Heath, the origin lay in D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s book, On Growth and Form (1917), which demonstrated the ubiquity of spiral structures in nature. Oval Theme (1) builds outwards from a central red wedge, unfurling through larger slabs of colour towards the edge of the composition. The materiality of the work – incorporating hessian and Polyfilla – endows it with a tough physicality. 

In Nine Abstract Artists, Heath identified the importance of the size and format of the area to be painted, as well as his intention that colours and forms should bear evidence of their transitions, becoming richer through the process. As he wrote,

The thing of interest is the actual life of the work: its growth from a particular white canvas or board.[1]

With Oval Theme (1), the relatively large scale and unusual format directed the evolution of the composition. 

[1] Adrian Heath, ‘Statement’ in Lawrence Alloway: Nine Abstract Artists: their work and theory (London: Alec Tiranti, 1954).

[2] Adrian Heath, letter (1 February 1971), in The Tate Gallery Report 1970–1972 (London: Tate Gallery, 1972).

Gimpel Gallery, New York

Private collection USA
The Prudential Assurance Company of America

Osborne Samuel Gallery

Patrick Heron’s exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, in summer 1972, blazed with colour. Focusing on paintings from the last fifteen years, it contrasted sombre reds, on one side of the gallery, against oranges, grass-greens and scarlets on the other. As Hilary Spurling recalled, The space between seems to pulse with colour – so much so that, as one rounds a corner … it is as though one had stepped from a clear, sunny day into a pool of firelight. 1

In the catalogue text, Heron wrote specifically about his use of colour in these recent paintings, conjecturing, ‘Perhaps I am the first wobbly hard-edge painter?’ 2  An eloquent art critic himself, Heron juxtaposed adjectives knowingly. ‘Hard-edge’, a term coined in the United States in 1959 for paintings characterised by areas of flat, cleanly delimited colour, was subverted instantly by ‘wobbly’, thus drawing attention to a critical aspect of Heron’s work. The scintillating colours of Yellows and Browns Interlocking with Soft Cadmium (Blue Flash) intensify by virtue of their blurred edges. Amorphous forms – keyholes, seeking to enclose and subsume– float upon the colour ground: orange, greens, browns and blue against red. At the aqueous margin of these shapes, a fringe of interference appears. Heron was fascinated to observe the effect of this frontier, particularly when its edges were freely, intuitively, drawn. As the eye travels, the spatial position of adjacent colour-areas appears to alternate, as first one side, then the other, comes to the fore.

1.Hilary Spurling, ‘East-End flame-thrower’, The Observer(25 June 1972), p. 28.

2.Patrick Heron, in Patrick Heron: recent paintings and selected earlier canvases (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1972)

The Goodman Gallery, South Africa 

Private Collection, London (acquired from the above in 1981) 

Thence by descent

Osborne Samuel, London

Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture: 1980-86, Vol. 6, London, 1988, no. 788, another cast illustrated, p. 36-37

Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Ursinus College, Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Henry Moore Relationships, Drawings, Prints & Sculpture from the Muriel and Philip Berman Collection, 1993-1994 (another cast).
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Henry Moore, A Centennial Salute, An Exhibition in Celebration of Philip I. Berman, July-November 1998, no. 18 (illustrated, p. 30) (another cast).

A cast from the edition is owned by the Henry Moore Foundation.

In John Hedgecoe’s seminal book on the artist, Moore states, “from the very beginning the reclining figure has been my main theme.’₁  This subject is central to Moore’s creativity throughout his career. In his own words, “the reclining figure gives the most freedom, compositionally and spatially… A reclining figure can recline on any surface. It is free and stable at the same time. It fits in with my belief that sculpture should be permanent, should last for eternity.” ₂

Reclining Nude: Crossed Feet is an iconic sculpture. The initial impetus for the posture of the woman was inspired by the Chacmool figures which the artist first saw at the British Museum in the 1920s; the arms perpendicular to the ground, the knees raised and the twisting contours of the body. However in Moore’s Reclining Figures, the masculine rain god of the Chacmool has been, in William Packer’s words,  ‘transformed into an image more general, unhieratic and benign, as a simple function of the softer, rounded forms that came with the change of sex, and the humanising informality of the relaxed and turning body.’ ₃

The crossed feet and hands are abbreviations of the limbs, an extension of the contradictory, relaxed  torsion in the body. The contours of the sculpture evoke, as Moore noted, the disparate and enigmatic contours of the landscape, opening up voids beneath the shoulders and under the arms, echoed in the arching of the legs.  The sculpture can thus be seen in the round, each angle stimulates a new and perhaps surprising interpretation.

₁ John Hedgecoe, Henry Moore, published by Nelson, New York, 1968, p. 151

₂ Henry Moore cited in J.D. Morse, ‘Henry Moore Comes to America’, Magazine of Art, vol.40, no.3, March 1947, pp.97–101, reprinted in Philip James (ed.), Henry Moore on Sculpture, London 1966, p.264.

₃ Celebrating Moore, selected by David Mitchinson, published by Lund Humphries, 1998, p.125, extract written by William Packer

Christie’s London, 1999
Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich
Private Collection, UK

Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings, vol.3, 1940-49, Aldershot, 2001, no.AG44.75; HMF 2259a, p.228-229

The six reclining figures in this wartime drawing are beautifully drawn ideas for sculpture typical of the artist’s working method. The six figures are isolated in space and float on ledges. These ideas were developed in a drawing from the same period Reclining Figures: Ideas for Stone Sculpture, 1944, in which each figure appears in an individual pod in a subterranean setting. Moore’s interest in underground landscapes had previously been expressed in his ‘Shelter Drawings’ series of 1941, depicting figures taking refuge in the London Underground during the Blitz, and in his coal mining drawings of the same year.

The Leicester Galleries, London
The Honourable Ralph Henry Bathurst
Sotheby’s 1951
B. Jonzen
Roland, Browse & Delbanco, 1953
The Estate of the Late Michael Stratton
Thence by descent

Lilian Browse, William Nicholson, London, 1956 (where titles Monkton Deverill and assigned to c.1922)

Patricia Reed, William Nicholson, Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings, Modern Art Press, London, 2011, no. 694, p.535

London, The Leicester Galleries, 1934, no.14 (as Monkton Deverill)

London, The Leicester Galleries, 1949, no.94 (as Monkton  Deverill)

London, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, 1954, no.3 (as Monkton Deverill)

William Nicholson is celebrated as a painter of the Downs, whether those of Sussex, or Wiltshire where he lived at for over a decade from 1923 at Sutton Veny. One noticeable difference between these two areas is that the thin layer of top soil over chalk of the Sussex Downs could support only flocks of sheep, watered by dew ponds, whilst in this part of Wiltshire the chalk downs fed by streams support arable farming in the fertile valleys, as well as sheep.

Nicholson observed the subtle changes in tone and colour indicating the different crops planted and how they altered over the seasons. Haystacks and corn stooks, withy beds and water meadows became subjects for his expansive landscapes, together with  cloudscapes and undulating hills and valleys seen in this painting. One of the most attractive rivers with its clear water running over chalk and gravel beds is the Wylie. Rising on White Sheet Down to the west of Sutton Veny the River Wylie turns north towards Warminster as it wanders through the Deverills, starting at Kingston Deverill, then Monkton Deverill and on until it reaches Longbridge Deverill. These settlements are medieval or older and grew prosperous trading in wool and corn. The river then runs around the outskirts of Warminster and turns East-South-East to flow on past Sutton Veny on its way to join the river Nadder at Wilton.

The title of this painting is inscribed in the artist’s hand – Monkton Deverill. However, subsequent owners who had lived all their lives in the area identified it as Kingston Deverill: a view looking towards Brimsdown Hill taken from the road that runs between Warminster and Mere. There is in fact less than a mile between Kingston Deverill and Monkton Deverill so Nicholson, a relative newcomer to the area, might have got his Deverills confused.

Patricia Reed

Mrs Gertrude Kinnell, probably purchased
from ISSPG in 1918
Acquired after her death by FBC Bravington
1967 with Marlborough Fine Art, No 17 as oil on canvas board
The Estate of the Late Michael Stratton
(acquired from the above)
Thence by descent

Lillian Browse William Nicholson, London, 1956 no. 278 entitled ‘Lady in Grey’ dated 1918 and no. 622 entitled ‘Madame X as ‘Megan’ in ‘Tan-y-Bryn’’ undated

Andrew Nicholson (ed.) William Nicholson , Painter, London, 1996 entitled ‘Lady in Grey’ illustrated in
colour p.178 

Patricia Reed William Nicholson: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London, 2011 no. 387 entitled ‘Lady in Grey’

Hugh Stokes ‘The Autumn Exhibition of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers’ The Ladies’ Field, 19 October 1918, p180-1

5 October – November 1918 ‘25th Exhibition of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers’ no. 29 as ‘Madame X as ‘Megan’ in ‘Tany- Bryn’’

March 1967 ‘Sir William Nicholson’ Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, London, no. 17 as ‘Lady in Grey’ oil on canvas board

This intriguing work is Nicholson’s only portrait of his second wife Edie whom he married in October 1919. Signed and dated 1918, it must have been completed by the end of September that year when the painting was exhibited at the International Society under the mysterious title of Madame X as ‘Megan’ in ‘Tan-y-Bryn’.  No documentation has been found as to where, or when in 1918 the work was executed.

With hindsight it has been noted that Nicholson chose to show in the same exhibition a portrait of his ‘former’ mistress Marie Laquelle, Le Bonnet tricolore (private collection), together with that of his future wife. (The two works were for sale.) The faces of both women are in shadow, avoiding the viewer’s gaze, but Edie is shown full face, recognizable by anyone who knew her, while her rosy cheeks and lips, against a pale skin and dark curly hair emphasise her youth – she was 28. However for the artist and his two sitters, like so many people, 1918 was a year of cataclysmic changes.  Two tragedies marked this nine month period – the news that Edie’s husband, Jack Stuart Wortley, was one of the thousands missing in action at Bullecourt, either killed on 21 March, or a prisoner; then on July 13 came the death of Nicholson’s wife Mabel in the influenza epidemic. 

If the painting dates from before March 21 we are looking at a close friend of the Nicholson family, in particular of Mabel’s and of the artist’s son Ben; also a patron, for Edie had commissioned a portrait of her husband from Nicholson executed autumn 1915 (private collection), and the daughter of a patron since the couple had first met in 1912, the year Edie married Jack Stuart Wortley, when Nicholson was painting her mother, Lady Phillips (Johannesburg Art Gallery, on loan to Vergelegen Estate). In the early months of 1918 Nicholson is known to have painted a portrait of Edie’s brother, Capt. Francis Phillips (untraced: last recorded Central Mining and Investment Corporation, London) – a commission from Lady Phillips.

In the following months to the end of June Edie was still clinging to the hope that her husband was alive, though Nicholson and her family thought otherwise.  (His death was not confirmed until after the war had ended.) Nicholson wrote to Ben in America that Mabel was visiting Edie daily. In May Edie is believed to have stayed at Folly Farm, Berkshire where Nicholson was working the dining room murals for Mrs Merton, who was also a mutual friend. The portrait could date from that visit.

After Mabel’s unexpected death Edie joined Mrs Merton, Edwin Lutyens, and other friends of the artist to give him what support they could. In late August she arranged for Nicholson to paint a portrait of her father, Sir Lionel Phillips, but the project was abandoned the following month. (In 1924 two portraits were executed, the smaller version is in a private collection while the other was destroyed by enemy action in 1941.)

The artist and designer Edith ‘ED’ or ‘Edie’ Phillips (1890–1958) was the only daughter of the mining magnate Sir Lionel Phillips and his wife Florence. She exhibited with the Seven and Five Group under the pseudonym Elizabeth Drury, and, later, under her married name, Edith Nicholson. Having studied art in Germany from 1906 to 1907, and Paris in 1909, she enrolled at the Slade in 1911, at the same time as Ben Nicholson, although they did not meet until later. In October 1912 she married Jack Stuart Wortley (1880-1918). Edie became friendly with Mabel and the Nicholson family during this year. As soon as war broke out her husband volunteered and in the summer of 1916 Edie moved with her two young children to Maesyneuadd, a large manor house near Harlech in Wales where Mabel and the Nicholsons were already living. It was during the following eighteen months that she became friendly with Ben. They painted each other’s portraits, which were exhibited together at the National Portrait Society in February 1918, four months after Ben had gone to America: Portrait of E (Sheffield Art Gallery) and Portrait of a Gentleman (untraced) by Edith Stuart Wortley. Mabel also exhibited an untraced work, while Nicholson’s magisterial full-length portrait of Walter Greaves (Manchester City Art Gallery) received all the press attention. 

What clues does the portrait provide? The most striking feature is the use of light and shade. A contemporary reviewer, Hugh Stokes, having noted the title of the work, described it as a theatrical scene, but the line of shade across the dress and broken light in the foreground right could be read as natural light falling through a partially open garden door. There are no other clues as to the setting. It is true that we are looking up at the figure as if she were on the stage, but this might be a device to make Edie appear taller, since she was in fact quite petite.

    The pose is unusual with the right arm raised forming a diagonal with the elegantly extended left foot. (The light catches the shoe buckles – perhaps they are Georgian set with diamante.) Edie’s left hand is concealed in her pocket so we cannot see her wedding ring. In a way the pose recalls those of contemporary fashion mannequins, but also the tableau vivant that were so popular before the war. There was a ‘language’ to hand positions – the raised hand palm outwards conveying rejection or denial.

            Her dress is a contemporary one, but are we looking at ‘Megan’ in costume or at Edie’s choice of dress? It is frustrating that the origin of the title under which the work was first exhibited has so far proved elusive. No published play or novel called Tan-y-Bryn has been found. This Welsh word meaning ‘hill of fire’ can be interpreted in various ways, including a hill lit by the rising or setting sun. A ballad or narrative poem in the great tradition of Welsh oral verse may be the source. Madame X recalls Sargent’s notorious painting, or perhaps it was all an attempt to confuse the viewer and conceal the sitter’s identity?

The work was probably purchased direct from the International Society by Mrs Gertrude Kinnell at the same time that she acquired Le Bonnet tricolore. She already owned Nicholson’s portrait of Max Beerbohm (National Portrait Gallery). The title was changed to Lady in Grey by the subsequent owner, the collector F. B. C.‘Bim’ Bravington who was a friend of Kit Nicholson, the artist’s youngest son. Grey rather than black was the colour worn by war widows which might suggest the work was painted after March 1918.

Concluding his review of the International Society exhibition Hugh Stokes declared he would like to dance to the music of Moussorgsky in front of the paintings of Mr McEvoy, Mr Nicholson and Mr Philpot. Referring with WN’s two portraits: ‘These are canvases in which the artist leaves nothing more to be said.’ This is true, although there are some things the viewer might like to know. 

Christie’s, London 1977

Private collection, purchased from above 

Scolar Fine Art, London

Private collection, UK (purchased from the above 2001)

Osborne Samuel, London

Cambridge, Kettle’s Yard, Winifred Nicholson,
November 21st – December 16th 1972, cat. no. 3

Looking towards Bewcastle Fells in Cumberland, Winifred Nicholson’s painting draws no boundary between still life and landscape. Rather, the ridged or striped china seems placed on a stone ledge, its patterning continuing in shadows beneath it and stretching as a ribbon – whether river or drystone wall – into the distance.

Winifred had felt a strong attachment to Cumberland since the 1920s. In 1924 she moved with her husband, Ben Nicholson, to Banks Head, an old farmhouse on the Roman Wall. This is where she would return at the outbreak of war, after her marriage had collapsed and after spending time with her young children in Paris. The theme of a still life with flowers, whether table-top or framed by a window, was the most significant, distinctive and enduring of Nicholson’s career. As she recalled, ‘I have tried to paint many things in many different ways, but my paint brush always gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower.’[1] The flowers in Bewcastle, possibly white nemophila and yellow ranunculus, are painted joyously and without fussiness.

Bewcastle unites the elements of its composition not only through form, but through colour. Yellow flowers and rimmed china link to the ochre landscape, grey drawing the eye from the foreground to the hills and skittering clouds. Nicholson’s friend, the poet Kathleen Raine, paid tribute to her skill in conveying the essence of this landscape, writing,

  Mountains she loved, but above all skies; the grey luminosity of the Cumbrian skies she depicted with virtuosity in her handling of the mingling of light with cloud and mist.[2]

[1] Winifred Nicholson, ‘The Flower’s Response’, in Andrew Nicholson (ed.), Unknown Colour: Paintings, Letters, Writings by Winifred Nicholson (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), p. 216.

[2] Kathleen Raine, ‘The Unregarded Happy Texture of Life’ (1984), reproduced in Unknown Colour, p. 199.

The McDowall Collection
Thence by descent
Osborne Samuel Gallery

S. John Woods. ‘John Piper: Paintings, Drawings and Theatre Designs.’ 1955: Curt Valentin. illustrated.

Peter Wakelin, Romancing Wales: Romanticism in the Welsh Landscape since 1770, MoMA Machynlleth 2016, p. 5.

Romanticism in the Welsh Landscape,  at MoMA Machynlleth in 2016

Painted during one of the artists ‘return’ journeys to the mountains and quarries of Wales. 

John Piper was, alongside Graham Sutherland, the most influential artist to revive Romantic landscape in a new Modernist language. He found Wales a constant inspiration and spent long periods working here. In 1946 he began renting a farmhouse with his family on the north side of Tryfan in Snowdonia, from which he would walk out in all weathers. He had been an abstract painter in the 1930s and his sense of form and texture led him to avoid conventional views and concentrate on the boulders, outcrops, veins and fissures of the mountainside. His pictures of Tryfan conjure a sense of excitement and awe at the inhuman scale and wildness of nature to equal the ‘sublime’ of Turner. This example seems to look downwards from the slopes. The vast foreground boulder is first in a multitude of rocks falling to a distant stream and rhythmic dry-stone walls and folds.

We are grateful to Dr. Peter Wakelin in the above cataloguing.

Private Collection, USA

In 1943 Piper received a commission to document a slate quarry inside the mountain of Manod Mawr, north Wales, where the collections of the National Gallery were sent for safe storage during the war. While the interior proved too dark to draw, Piper took the opportunity to explore the region, using John Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in North Wales (1898) as his guide.

Returning to Snowdonia in the summer of 1945, he discovered and rented ‘Pentre’, a cottage halfway down the Nant Ffrancon valley, through which a river runs, and to which, at the time, there was an unmade track barely passable in winter. Piper acquainted himself with the geology of the area by reading A.C. Ramsay’s The Old Glaciers of Switzerland and North Wales (1860) and by drawing the mountains repeatedly, thereby beginning to notice how rocks near to hand often resembled the contours of those in the distance. Writing to Paul Nash in November 1945, he described a gale ‘which made the clouds whirl round the mountains in circles and lifted the water off the river in spray’, adding, ‘I hope you will see the place one day.’¹

It is likely that Rocky Sheepfold, which resembles Piper’s photographs of a drystone enclosure in the Nant Ffrancon valley, relates to the landscape near this cottage.² The painting balances topographical detail against broad washes of tone, evoking the mood of lithographs commissioned for the poetry volume English Scottish and Welsh Landscape (1944), described in a review as ‘sinister … livid and menacing’.³ To the perimeter of Rocky Sheepfold, scattered stones extrude from the grass; larger boulders shelter and form part of the enclosure. Elemental and windswept, it demonstrates an opportunistic intervention into the landscape.

¹ Frances Spalding, John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 267–8.

² John Piper, photographs of sheepfold in Nant Ffrancon, Caernarvonshire (c. 1930s–1980s), black and white negatives, Tate Archive TGA 8728/3/3/10–11.

³ English Scottish and Welsh Landscape 1700–c. 1860, verse chosen by John Betjeman and Geoffrey Taylor, with original lithographs by John Piper (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1944); The Studio (December 1944), p. 192.

Osborne Samuel, London
Private collection Italy
Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia

Coppel, Stephen. Linocuts of the Machine Age: Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School. (Scolar Press, Aldershot: 1995). no. SA 9

Leaper, Hana. Sybil Andrews Linocuts: A Complete Catalogue. (Lund Humphries, Surrey: 2015). no. 11.

White, Peter: Sybil Andrews – Colour Linocuts/Linogravures en couleur, Calgary 1982,
cat. rais. no. 9

Private collection, UK

Coppel, Stephen, Linocuts of the Machine Age, published by Scolar Press, 1995, CEP 32, p.99 
Vann, Philip, Rhythms of Colour and Light: The Linocut Art of Cyril Power (1872-1951), published by Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, no.32, p.85

Modernity : British Colour Linocuts of the 1920’s and 1930’s, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, 21 November 1999- 16 January 2000.
Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 30 January – 1st June 2008; Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, New York, 23 September – 7 December 2008; Wolfsonian, Florida International University, 29 November 2009 – 28 February 2010
The Linocut Art of Cyril Power, Osborne Samuel, 2008

Machine-age London and its modern transport system became a central subject for the Grosvenor School artists. The expanding London Underground, the cities’ red buses and the reliable rush-hour crowds provided the artists with dynamic and contemporary subject matter. The Underground in particular was a favoured venue for Cyril Power, who recorded the escalators full of featureless commuters descending; a tube train carriage with its passengers, some strap-hanging, others claustrophobically seated with reticent English demeanour reading their newspapers; a Greenline bus with an open ‘sunshine’ roof or the swing-boats at funfairs were immortalised by Claude Flight and his followers.

The Tube Station made by Power in 1932 is one of his best known and collected linocuts. It is printed in five colours from five linoleum blocks on a thin oriental tissue paper. In total there were 120 impressions printed; the edition was numbered 1/60 – 60/60 in pencil and signed. The US edition such as this impression was inscribed USA Ed 1/60 – 60/60. 

Power’s notes identify this as Bank Underground station which is named after the Bank of England and opened in 1900. It is served by the Central, Northern and Waterloo & City lines.  Here we see the iconic red London tube train as distinctive as the red London double-decker buses as it leaves the station waved off by the guard.  Its passengers are seen through the four windows, probably buried in the morning newspapers.  The curve of the roof is accentuated by the pattern and rhythm of the architecture, the fixtures of the indicator boards and the convex mirror that enabled the tube driver to see the platform.

Cyril Power was one of a group of artists that studied at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art under the guidance of their teacher Claude Flight, in London’s Pimlico district near Victoria Station.  Their imagery and the execution were at the cutting-edge of contemporary printmaking in the 1930s and is now widely collected and is some of the world’s greatest museums from the British Museum to New York’s Museum of Modern Art where there is a room dedicated to the Grosvenor school linocuts.

The Redfern Gallery, London
The Earl Jeffrey John Archer Amherst, 5th Earl Amherst
Private  Collector, USA (gift from the above, 1985)

Osborne Samuel, London

Reynolds’ intense study of nature led him to create sketchbooks filled with botanical studies, pressed leaves, grasses, seedpods and feathers – forms upon which he based abstract landscapes during the first, figurative stage of his career. Among the most significant sequence of paintings derived from these studies was ‘The Four Seasons’, showing landscape transformed across the cycle of the year.

Legend in December (1955) relates to this series, showing a winter landscape in which the moon hangs low over the horizon. Bushes cast pallid shadows, and whitened seed heads appear like fireworks against the sky. On the roof of a chapel, haloed, is a cross mirrored in a reflection below. This detail, coupled with the title Legend in December, suggests a memory of Christmas.

Robert Melville, writing in October 1955 about Reynolds’ forthcoming exhibition ‘The Four Seasons’ at the Redfern Gallery, acknowledged the artist’s debt to Samuel Palmer, but denied that he shared Palmer’s Christian outlook. Melville instead drew attention to a reading of landscape by the writer and naturalist Richard Jefferies, who described that being ‘aware of the sun overhead and the blue heaven, I feel that there is nothing between me and space. This is the verge of a gulf, and a tangent from my feet goes straight unchecked into the unknown. It is the edge of the abyss as much if the earth were cut away in a sheer fall of eight thousand miles to the sky beneath’.¹

This same sense of space permeates Legend in December, which places the horizon low within the composition to emphasise an immense sky.

¹ Richard Jefferies (1848–87), quoted in Robert Melville, ‘Alan Reynolds’, Apollo, Vl. 62 No. 368, (October 1955), p. 100–101.

Redfern Gallery, London
Dr Lederman, 1953 (purchased from the above)
Piccadilly Gallery, London
HJE Haggard, 1961 (purchased from the above)
Private Collection, UK

Alan Reynolds, Redfern Gallery, London, 1953

Moth Barn in the Fenlands of East Anglia is a subject Reynolds often returned to. There are several recorded versions of the same view including a watercolour in the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge. One of the three finished oil paintings is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Alan Reynolds’ solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery, in February 1953, consolidated an impressive early reputation, featuring landscapes of abstracted trees and foliage: compositions formalised into ‘silhouettes of almost Chinese assurance and decisiveness’.¹ Even before the exhibition opened, Sir Kenneth Clark had reserved the large-scale painting, Moth Barn II, September Morning (1952), for the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Reynolds made numerous paintings on the theme of ‘moth barn’, in addition to a lithograph dating from 1956. Moth Barn Interior 3 (1952) is a diminutive variation, beautifully composed from a mirroring of spiked and curved foliage, whose palette suggests winter: chalk whites and greys, with a leavening of green. Here, landscape is reduced to its bare bones, stripped of unnecessary or lush detail. Yet it is also eloquent, built upon a series of curves derived from a seed pod, expectant in the foreground. First bought in 1953 by Dr Manuel Lederman, a pioneer in the field of radiology, the painting was later acquired by the geologist H. J. E. Haggard.

¹ M.H. Middleton, ‘Alan Reynolds (Redfern)’, The Spectator (13 March 1953).

The Fine Art Society, London

The Nicolas and Frances McDowall Collection

Thence by descent

New York, Durlacher Brothers, Alan Reynolds, 6 April – 1 May 1954, cat. no. 25

In April 1954, Village, October (1953) was shown in a solo exhibition of Reynolds’ work at the New York branch of Durlacher Brothers. It was an impressive achievement for an artist still in his twenties. Reynolds had left the Royal College of Art only a year earlier, without completing his studies, following criticism from his tutors for exhibiting with commercial galleries while studying. A New York Times review described the paintings as the type of ‘severe, sullen romanticism’ in which Durlacher Brothers excelled. Based on hop fields, ‘spongy trees’ and moody skies around Shoreham in Kent, they recalled the mystically charged landscapes of Samuel Palmer, while using ‘a method of semi-abstraction that schematizes shapes’, fitting them into intricately structured compositions. The review concluded, ‘This is grave and impressive work, painted with admirable dexterity of hand.’1

Village, October (1953) depicts a landscape in tones of muted green, grey, brown and white. Its trees  include the fir, a favourite of Reynolds, characteristically reduced to a stack of curved branches. Architecture is less visible, although its presence is indicated by the gable and round window of the central building. It is a complex scene, nonetheless. The imagery is dense and claustrophobic, conveying a potent sense of the year – and the day’s light – nearing its close.

Originally owned by Frances and Nicolas McDowall, Village, October took its place alongside paintings, prints and book illustrations by John Piper, John Craxton, Keith Vaughan, Ceri Richards, Paul Nash, John Minton and Graham Sutherland, within a collection that traced neo-romantic art from its roots in the work of Palmer and Blake to artists working in the 1990s. Nicolas McDowall credited the awakening of his interest specifically to Reynolds, however, whose work he had first seen, aged fifteen, at the Redfern Gallery.  

1.    S.P., ‘Reynolds Pastorals at Durlachers’, New York Times (6 April 1954), p. 33.

Sotheby’s, 1984

Sotheby’s, 1987 (where mistitled The Ferry and dated 1940)

Sotheby’s, 1996

Private Collection UK

Williams, Andrew Gibbon, William Roberts, An English Cubist, published by Lund Humphries, 2004, p.104, fig.76

Royal British Artists Society 1949 (priced at £75)

Royal Academy 1980

Newcastle 2004, Hatton Gallery, William Roberts 1895-1980

Nottingham 2006, Djanogly Gallery,  A Day in the Sun – Outdoor pursuits in the art of the 1930’s

Chichester, Pallant House Gallery,  England at Play

Chichester, Pallant House Gallery,  Neo-Classicism in Modern British Art, 2016

Born in the East End of London in 1895, William Roberts began observing and documenting people in his local community from very early on in his career. At the age of just eighteen, in 1913, prior to the outbreak of World War I, his remarkable capacity for draughtsmanship and complex pictorial design were confidently outlined in two drawings, Leadenhall Market (Tate Gallery) and Billingsgate (Private Collection).

Then, during World War I, working as an Official War Artist, he produced some of the most searing images of the conflict on the Western Front, in particular the Battle of Ypres.

By the outbreak of World War II, and despite Roberts’ significant contribution to early British Modernism and the Vorticist movement, he and his wife Sarah were still living in poverty in London. Many artists had already escaped the capital to the relative safety of the countryside, but Roberts remained. Through various friendships, notably with Sir Muirhead Bone who was responsible for the organisation of war artists, Roberts again secured a commission from the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, in January 1940, and was dispatched to the munitions factory at Woolwich Arsenal. Shortly after, during an early bomb raid and a direct hit on their road, the Roberts decided to follow their old friends Bernard and Nora Meninsky, to Oxford. They settled in a council flat in the suburb of Marston on the banks of the River Cherwell, the setting for his impressive oil, Parson’s Pleasure, which has also been known by the title, On the Lawn.

Andrew Gibbon Williams comments on this time, ‘The Oxford suburb of Marston, for example, in its limited way, turned out to be as generous a source of subject matter as London. A gypsy encampment around the corner from where the Robertses lived was precisely the kind of thing the artist could make something of, and the River Cherwell, with its punting, fishing and riverside picnics, offered the mixture of nature and human activity that Roberts liked best.’ 1

The area, Parson’s Pleasure, was located in the University Parks of Oxford University beside the River Cherwell, and up until as recently as 1991 was a secluded location for male-only nude bathing, traditionally frequented by dons and undergraduates of the university.

Roberts’ circa 1944 canvas, showing a group of naked men reclining and conversing, very much recalls the Classicism of the French 17^th century painter Nicolas Poussin, and is imbued with a strong sense of calculated design and stylisation. The figure located upper centre for example, preparing to dive into the river with his outstretched arms and bent knees, appears frozen in time, and the curves of the river cleverly follow the contours of the heads of the standing man upper left and seated figure upper right, with a towel over his shoulders. Everything in the canvas has an exact and purposeful positioning, which creates an overall coherent and sophisticated composition.

Commentators have readily offered high praise for the painting in this regard:

‘The impulse of Roberts to classicise, traceable through several works of the 1930s and paramount in a picture such as The Judgement of Paris, achieves a magnificent apotheosis in one of his finest works Parson’s Pleasure. It was against Roberts’ nature to wholly invent a subject, and for this reason the idea of manufacturing a nude composition for its own sake would have struck him as bogus. But the notorious Oxford student bathing spot frequented by generations of male undergraduates offered the perfect legitimising excuse.’ 2

The artist’s second spell as an Official War Artist became increasingly fractious. A trip to France, for instance, was aborted by Roberts at Folkestone who offered ‘heavy fog’ as an excuse for not making the Channel crossing. His relationship with the War Artists’Advisory Committee eventually deteriorated beyond repair, and Roberts spent the rest of the war mainly in Oxford, where he embraced the English landscape tradition, so beautifully realised in Parson’s Pleasure.

Andrew Gibbon Williams remarks on this important oil painting, ‘Parson’s Pleasure is a remarkable picture to have emerged from wartime England…Notwithstanding the abstract reliefs of Ben Nicholson and the three-dimensional work of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, Parson’s Pleasure represents the most convincing attempt to recapture the Classical spirit in mid-twentieth century English art. 3

1    Andrew Gibbon Williams, William Roberts, An English Cubist, Lund Humphries, 2004, p.102

2       op. cit. p.105

3       ibid.

The Artist

Waddington Galleries, London, May 11, 1987

Private Collection, USA

Thence by descent

Amanda A Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, published by the Henry Moore Foundation, 2005, no.267, p. 176

London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull, 1995 (another cast);

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull, 1998, cat no.1, p.16, illustrated p.17 (another cast);

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull, 2004 illustrated p.32 (another cast);

London, Sotheby’s S|2, William Turnbull, 9 October – 17 November 2017, p.140, illustrated p.17 (another cast).

‘The idea of metamorphosis in Turnbull’s work is at its most intense in the Blade Venus series. These large sculptures suggest the shapes of Chinese knives, Japanese Samurai swords, pens, paintbrushes, leaves and goddess figures in one elegant, slightly curved form. Their form and inspiration relate them to the Zen paintings that inspired Turnbull and to the calligraphic paintings, drawings and reliefs that he produced in the 1950s. Like a single gesture, with a wide and a thin section, they combine all of the breadth of the front view with the slenderness of the side view in one perception. Part of their ambiguity and their dynamic presence stems from the spectators’ simultaneous ability to see both the wide element and the narrow section as the handle or the blade or tip of the tool. Although they are absolutely still they are also balanced on their sharpest point, poised to act.’

(Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, Henry Moore Foundation & Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, pp.72-73).

Agnew’s, London ‘Keith Vaughan,’ 2012, no.25

Austin Desmond Fine Art, Keith Vaughan, May-June 2012, no.25

Beginning to make a gouache, Vaughan would first block out colours, working intuitively. He thus started 

as usual, with no more than a process. The making of a series of wet marks across the white board in a sequence of colours (blue black I fancy at the moment) and see where it leads.¹

Indian ink might then amplify the emerging forms, outlining figures against the coloured ground. Each decision was guided by what came before, as part of a complex, fluid approach.

The texture and composition of Maze of Figures bear witness to this method of working. Tonally, the image consists of layers of colour – brown, blue and green – in slabs and lines, wet on wet, dripped and spattered, from which emerge and recede the overlapping silhouettes of figures. A connection with abstraction expressionism proves tempting if elusive. In his journal for 1974, Vaughan recorded,

Looked at some pictures of Jackson Pollock. Some are still good. Though I could do better. Scale, energy and nerve is all one requires.²

Energy and nerve are present in abundance in Maze of Figures: its lines effervesce, calligraphically and contrapuntally, against a tapestry of colour.

¹ Keith Vaughan, Journal (2 July 1972).

² Keith Vaughan, Journal (26 November 1974).

Redfern Gallery, London 

Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London 

Christie’s London, 1991

Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above) 

Osborne Samuel, London

In 1964 Vaughan bought a row of derelict cottages in the heart of the Essex countryside and set about renovating them. He created a small studio upstairs where he worked on small-scale oil paintings and gouaches at the weekends and during the summer months. Having nowhere to swim, he cleared a patch of land at end of the garden and excavated a waterhole. Railway sleepers interspersed with plants were dug into a shallow embankment to create a picturesque setting. The pool was more than a mere source of recreation. The theme of bathers had been a central subject in Vaughan’s work since the mid 1940s and now he began to paint friends reclining and drying themselves at the water’s edge in his garden. Two Bathers by a Pool depicts such a scene. Fellow artists were invited to visit Harrow Hill cottage at weekends. Patrick Procktor was a regular guest from 1966 onwards as was Mario Dubsky, one of Vaughan’s most talented pupils at the Slade. He recalled days spent making drawings of each other by the pool and Vaughan being at his most relaxed:

‘Keith and Patrick and I had some great fun. We held summer parties in the garden, swimming naked of course, and drank freezing drinks in between skinny dips in the pool. Mrs. Vaughan sometimes sat knitting in her deckchair, at the other end [of the garden], keeping a watchful eye on us. God knows what she thought of me and Patrick larking around after several gins. But we also had some serious discussions well into the night, about painting and literature. Keith would tell me what I should be reading. Patrick and Keith used to talk endlessly about the ways they could turn their personal experiences of life into art.’1

Procktor also brought with him the filmmaker Derek Jarman who, apparently, loved nothing better than to strip down and dive off the railway sleepers into the pool. The BAFTA-winning documentary maker Peter Adam visited along with his illustrious friends, including David Hockney, the grand master of the pool-painting genre. He recalled them all swimming and wallowing together in Vaughan’s garden pond – a far cry from the glamorous Californian pools he was used to:

‘David was living in Los Angeles but on his annual visit to his family in Bradford, (his mother still thought that it was the sun that bleached his hair!), he always took care to visit Keith. Once we drove in his new Morris Minor convertible to Essex. We splashed about in his little natural pool…All that amused Keith greatly.’2

Gerard Hastings

1. Mario dubsky, from gerard hastings, ‘paradise found and lost: keith vaughan inessex’, pagham press, 2016 

2. Peter adam, from ‘gerard hastings, keith vaughan: the photographs’,pagham press, 2013