CHRIS BEETLES SUMMER SHOW 2011

CHRIS BEETLES SUMMER SHOW 2011

Copyright © Chris Beetles Ltd 2011 8 & 10 Ryder Street St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com www.chrisbeetles.com IBSN 978-1-905738-35-9 Catalogue in publication data is available from the British Library Written and researched by David Wootton Edited by Catherine Andrews and David Wootton Design by Jeremy Brook of Graphic Ideas Photography by Julian Huxley-Parlour Colour separation and printing by The Midas Press Front cover: Keith Grant, Senja, Snow-Moon [38] Back cover: Albert Goodwin, Sindbad the Sailor: The Enchanted Island! [05]

25 Chris Beetles Summer Show 2011 Celebrating 25 years at 10 Ryder Street St James’s

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY

25 years at 10 Ryder Street This year, Chris Beetles Gallery celebrates a quarter of a century at 10 Ryder Street, St James’s. As a result, it is mounting a particularly special Summer Show, of which this catalogue provides a savour and souvenir. In presenting 25 works by Albert Goodwin and 25 by Keith Grant, the catalogue encapsulates Chris Beetles’ own definite and developing taste for a Romantic tradition in English landscape: from the Victorian artist he has long considered his favourite to a living one that he is equally happy to represent.

Ryder Street, St James’s, is a natural home for Chris Beetles Gallery, for it has long been associated with leading dealers in British art. Reviving the interests of such Edwardian institutions as the Ryder Gallery at no 10 and Carfax & Co at no 17, the gallery has, like them, shown Beerbohm and Conder, Rothenstein and Sheringham. However, the range of work that Chris Beetles has offered for sale, and explored in exhibitions and publications, has been far more comprehensive. And, from sharing his own initial enthusiasms as a collector, Chris has established a dominant position both in the market and on the bookshelf.

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At the core of the gallery’s stock lies a wealth of works on paper. This not only encompasses long-appreciated watercolours and drawings but also popular yet undervalued illustrations and cartoons. Indeed, the admiration of artistic skill and memorable image, regardless of conventional hierarchy, is a hallmark of Chris Beetles’ approach. Which other commercial gallery – or even museum – could confidently draw exclusively on its own store to follow a line from Thomas Rowlandson to Quentin Blake, or, as it has recently done, survey the history of the native watercolour?

Over the last 25 years, Chris Beetles Gallery has arranged and displayed an intensive programme of exhibitions that has invariably enlightened and entertained. Supported by the fixed pillars of the Summer Show and The Illustrators, those exhibitions have included landmarks that have revived reputations or stimulated forgotten pleasures.

The mention of a few key names and titles should be sufficient to summon up so many more omitted: ‘W Heath Robinson: the inventive comic genius of our age’ (1987); ‘Rowland Emett’ (1988); ‘Thelwell’ (1989); ‘Muriel Pemberton’ (1993); ‘The Art of George and Eileen Soper’ (1995); ‘Cecil Arthur Hunt VPRWS RBA’ (1996), ‘Art and Sunshine: The Work of Hercules Brabazon Brabazon’ (1997); ‘Peter Coker RA’ (2002); ‘Betty Swanwick: artist & visionary’ (2002); ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive: British Watercolours & Drawings 1750-1850’ (2008) and ‘The Fraser Family’ (2010).

The gallery has also organised significant touring shows, as epitomised by ‘Albert Goodwin RWS’ (1986), and has built close relationships with other organisations, as signalled by that with Nunnington Hall, a National Trust property in Yorkshire, and the Portico Library in Manchester.Chris Beetles Gallery has always complemented displays of drawings and watercolours with painting and sculpture, including work by the most popular of Royal Academicians, Sydney Harpley. And, in the last five years, it has radically widened its specialisation in works on paper to embrace photography: first the celebrity photographers of the Swinging Sixties, then a broader range of major British practitioners, and now international masters. For the phenomenal success of photography – with both the established clientele and the wider public – has encouraged Chris Beetles, in this anniversary year, to open a second gallery, devoted to this art form, at nearby Swallow Street.

The gallery at 8 & 10 Ryder Street has always offered an environment that, among art dealers, is unusually accessible and welcoming, both day by day and on special occasions. Even since its smart refurbishment, it remains a place in which to browse the half-hidden treasures often found in piles or on the floor, as well as look at works officially presented on the walls.

More formal previews are as likely to be accompanied by coffee and croissants – as is that August staple, The Summer Cat Show – as by champagne and canapés. Parties are opened with celebratory speeches and accompanied by jolly music.

Increasingly, there are opportunities to hear an artist interviewed or watch him demonstrate his skill. All this is there to encourage the idea that looking at works of art and owning them are stimulating and pleasurable activities intrinsic to engaging with life.

David Wootton June 2011

Poetic Naturalism Essential to Chris Beetles’ own enthusiasms as collector and dealer has been the rich native tradition of landscape art: from the pioneering ‘Early English’ watercolourists of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to those of our contemporaries who still believe that paint is a vital medium for interpreting the world.

Central to this interest is the work of the Victorian, Albert Goodwin (1845-1932), for which Chris has long had an intense affection, and which he has done so much to champion. Yet his taste continues to deepen, as is demonstrated by his recent decision to promote the work of Keith Grant (born 1930), a living painter still at the height of his powers.

This celebratory Summer Show allows the opportunity to consider Goodwin and Grant together, and so reflect on their shared qualities as adherents to a particular perception of landscape art, one that may be termed ‘poetic naturalism’.

Goodwin and Grant may have arrived at this by different routes, but both have acknowledged that its origins lie in aspects of Romanticism, notably its endorsement of the personal appreciation and representation of the magnitude and multiplicity of nature.

******* Goodwin synthesised two predominant artistic strands: the Romanticism of J M W Turner and the Pre-Raphaelitism of his own teachers, Arthur Hughes and Ford Madox Brown. His resulting achievement may be described as ‘Ruskinian’, for Goodwin’s mentor, the leading critic, John Ruskin, had himself linked Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites as artists who, while clearly distinct from each other, had each striven after ‘truth to nature’ in opposition to the conventionality of many more revered landscape painters: Claude Lorrain, Salvator Rosa et al.

Ruskin’s understanding of truth to nature may, at least in part, be understood through his own drawing practice for, having no need to exhibit or sell, he was ‘concerned only with the precise recording of natural appearances’ – à la Pre-Raphaelites – and never attempted ‘to fill up the paper’, producing a result that is often ‘like a vortex (as are many of Turner’s paintings)’ (Tim Hilton, The Pre-Raphaelites, London: Thames and Hudson, 1970, page 17). Indeed, in eschewing the angularity imposed by the picture frame, the results replicate sight itself.

However, as both a critic and a collector, Ruskin was well aware that most artists did not have his degree of freedom from opinion or the market. So he employed some artists to record those things – especially those buildings – that mattered

to him, while encouraging others, including Goodwin, to produce landscapes that could at once stay ‘true to nature’ and yet satisfy contemporary expectations regarding composition and finish.

As a glance through this catalogue attests, Goodwin clearly succeeded in fulfilling that challenge. His works remain true to the inspiration of nature in both their detailed articulation of a wide range of terrain and their convincing suggestion of an almost infinite variety of atmosphere, while exploring the potential of pictorial structure and visual drama. Even in his earliest phase [see 01 and 02], he quickly established a location’s most arresting viewpoint, and would make much of its features, perspectives, reflections …

Unassuming and self-critical, Goodwin actually fretted over his speed and facility, and compared himself unfavourably to Alfred William Hunt (1830-1896), who may also be claimed as a poetic naturalist in the Ruskin mould; for Hunt had only ‘painted two little drawings in a summer’ during his stay at Thun (Goodwin’s diary, 1 August 1910).

Nevertheless, Goodwin applied himself constantly and consistently throughout his career, driven by his belief that, The whole natural world, down to the smallest detail, is one great allegory, typically of the spiritual world …

Beauty – the beauty that is in the landscape – is a sealed book to many, hence in a degree the landscape painter may magnify his calling (Diary, Christmas 1888) Deeply evangelical, Goodwin believed, like the young Ruskin before him, that he had the responsibility, as well as the talent, to communicate the beauty – the poetry – of nature in the way that a minister would explain the spiritual meaning of the Bible.

This tendency was at its most explicit when Goodwin employed a Biblical quotation as a title, as in ‘Come out from the midst of her oh my people’ [08] or ‘How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people!’ [09]. Such tags suggest that his understanding of poetic beauty was all embracing, sometimes even apocalyptic.

******* The Ruskinian route, as taken by Goodwin, was only one way to arrive at a poetic naturalism in painting in Britain during the nineteenth century. Another linked William Blake to The Ancients, a circle of his admirers, central to whom was Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). This was perhaps the route that most influenced

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the Neo-Romantics of the early and mid twentieth century, including Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland, who, in turn, have been acknowledged by Keith Grant as influences on him.

The landscapes produced by the young Palmer and his fellow Ancients were often of a more visionary, and less clearly topographical character than those of Goodwin, Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelites, and even of many by Turner. They suggested ‘a golden age of pastoral innocence and abundance that had both Christian and Vergilian overtones’ (Christiana Payne in Jane Turner (ed), The Dictionary of Art, London: Macmillan, 1996, vol 1, page 897). However, the two strands were not mutually exclusive, and Palmer’s later landscapes, with their vivid sunsets over Kent and Italy, fit more closely with the Ruskinian trend.

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Furthermore, both kinds of poetic naturalism were underpinned by the inspiration of actual poetry and other literature, and the images often seem to engage in dialogue with texts. While Blake obviously had a significant role as a poet-artist – affecting the Pre-Raphaelite, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as well as Palmer – Turner also wrote verses to attach to his paintings, considering them as extracts of an unpublished epic he called The Fallacies of Hope. And Goodwin was both a prolific diarist and – like so many of his contemporaries – a painter of literary subjects (see, for instance, his responses to The Arabian Nights [05] and Robinson Crusoe [06]). The NeoRomantics followed in their footsteps … and so does Keith Grant.

******* Keith Grant’s affiliation to these traditions of poetic naturalism can be illuminated by rehearsing his growing devotion to the north. Like Goodwin, Keith stood out from his modest family background at an early age, by revealing an artistic talent, a searching mind and ‘a great sense of wonder’. He has a memory of himself as a child, standing on the beach at Blundellsands, near his home in Orrell, Lancashire, and watching the cumulus clouds moving overhead. Overawed, he desired to follow them north, a feeling he explained in a recent interview: I’d always had this idea that the north must be a totally magical place, to which I was naturally bound to go and explore, and derive benefit from.

As he developed as an artist, he strengthened his connection to the north and, by the time he was studying at the Royal College of Art, in the late 1950s, he consciously sought influences that sanctioned it and helped his exploration of it: every reference to the north I jealously grabbed, because I thought this was confirmation of a mysterious feeling that I had of wanting to go further and further

north and that the atmosphere and mood of the Romantics and Neo-Romantics was in fact a manifestation of the influence of the north on British art Increasingly, he responded to specific artistic and literary examples: I came across Samuel Palmer, and his going up with the group of so-called Rustics to read Shakespeare on a hill, and looking for what they described as the northern gleam. And then Paul Nash did his cliffs facing the north.

Encouraged by his teacher, Colin Hayes, he thought seriously about travelling to Iceland. And, while his first trip to Scandinavia was to Norway in 1957, he finally made it there in 1965 [see 26]. The trajectory has been as spiritual as it has been physical.

The north certainly remains Keith’s province, for he settled in Norway in 1996. However, he has travelled far and wide (as his images of Sicily [27] and Israel [28] indicate). Again this parallels the career of Goodwin. For, while he believed ‘when I first went to Italy’ – in 1872 – ‘it was my firm conviction that I should never be able to afford to go again’ (Diary, 21 April 1909), he later took up opportunities to visit the Americas, Asia and Australia – impressive for a builder’s son from Victorian Maidstone.

Though many artists have travelled in search of subjects, Goodwin and Grant have done so with a particularly urgent sense of purpose, revealing and sharing the earth’s complex majesty. In seeing and showing such spectacles as volcanoes and waterfalls, and the extremes of heat and snow, from a point of humility, they have used their experiences to reflect deeply on themselves and the ways they have connected with the world around them. And, as committed diarists as well as painters, they have both struggled against the limits of language in order to find words to match their astonishing visions.

David Wootton June 2011

Albert Goodwin

ALBERT GOOD WIN Albert Goodwin, RWS (1845-1932) In synthesising the influences of J M W Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites, Albert Goodwin may be considered one of the most Ruskinian of Victorian landscape painters. Indeed, he was taken up by John Ruskin and, in 1872, given the opportunity to travel with him on an intensive tour of Italy and Switzerland. This set the pattern for many further and extensive travels. Like Ruskin, Goodwin responded to landscape with a religious fervour and understanding; but he interpreted it with even greater eclecticism than did his mentor, even experimenting with the style of James McNeill Whistler, Ruskin’s adversary in the field of aesthetics.

For a biography of Albert Goodwin, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 1998, page 42.

For further information on the life and work of Goodwin, please refer to Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, 1986; Albert Goodwin RWS 18451932, 1996; and Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, 2007; all published

by Chris Beetles Ltd. Chris Beetles has also published a sumptuous limited edition volume of over 400 pages and more than 200 colour plates, accompanied by extracts from Goodwin’s diaries.

His work is represented in numerous public collections, including the British Museum, Tate, the V&A, The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and The Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester).

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01 The Backwater signed with monogram watercolour and bodycolour 7 1⁄4 x 10 1⁄4 inches

In its confined perspective, focussing attention on trees reflected in a river, this is characteristic of Goodwin’s compositions of the 1860s and early 1870s. The approach is comparable to that of The Brent at Hendon by his teacher, Ford Madox Brown (Tate, 1854-55).

‘Hence, it is only a few steps beside the river to the Ponte alle Grazie.The extreme picturesqueness of the ancient bridge was annihilated in 1874. It was built by Lapo, father of Arnolfo de’ Lapi, in 1237, for Messer Rubaconte da Mandella, a Milanese Podestà …

The name Alle Grazie came from an image of the Virgin in a little chapel situated on the right bank.The quaint houses which stood on the piers were originally hermitages erected by nuns who, shocked at the immorality of their convents, lived here in retreat – Romite del Rubaconte – under the direction of one Madonna Apollonio.’

(Augustus Hare, Cities of Northern and Central Italy, Vol III: Florence, Siena, and other towns of Tuscany and Umbria, London: Daldy, Isbister, 1876, page 68)

‘Mr A Goodwin’s Ponte alle Grazie before its Demolition (121), is a grandly suggestive drawing of the ancient bridge, with its triple towers raised high against the evening sky, and with the smooth Arno reflecting the arches inverted and gloomy buildings in their twilight shadows. It is a dignified subject most feelingly treated’ (The Athenaeum, 1886, page 721)

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02 The Ponte alle Grazie Before its Demolition, Florence signed and dated ’83 watercolour with pen and ink 11 1⁄4 x 17 3⁄4 inches Provenance: The John Cleese Collection Exhibited: Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, Summer 1886, no 121 (illustrated in the catalogue)

Given that the Ponte alle Grazie was rebuilt in 1874, Goodwin almost certainly prepared this composition on his first visit to Italy in 1872, as one of those accompanying John Ruskin. The party stayed in Florence between 8 and 11 May, on the way to Rome, and again on 1 June, on the way back. Six years earlier, John Wharlton Bunney produced a less dramatic watercolour of the Ponte alle Grazie (Sheffield Galleries & Museums Trust), probably at Ruskin’s prompting.

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03 Windsor signed with monogram and dated 89 watercolour with pen and ink 10 1⁄4 x 13 3⁄4 inches

Goodwin produced a number of watercolours of Windsor, including another in 1889 (which was once in the collection of Lord Fairhaven).

It shows a similar view to the present one, though with Eton boats in the foreground. These are exactly contemporary with Jerome K Jerome’s novel, Three Men in a Boat.

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04 Niagara signed, inscribed with title and dated 1902 pen ink, watercolour and bodycolour on paper laid down on paper with a decorative border 8 1⁄2 x 11 inches Literature: Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, limited edition volume, Chris Beetles Ltd, 1986, plate 76 Exhibited: ‘Albert Goodwin’, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, 1981-82, no 102 Goodwin produced this view of Niagara during his first tour of the West Indies and the eastern seaboard of North America.

On 22 January 1902, Goodwin left the Isle of Wight for Barbados, accompanied by his daughter, Edytha. The initial journey was made aboard the WIMS Trent as guests of Arthur McConnell, the husband of Goodwin’s niece, Emily.

His connection to McConnell gave Goodwin a privileged opportunity to travel to the Americas. Arthur McConnell (1866-1952) was a Director of Booker Brothers, McConnell and Co, a company trading in sugar and rum. It had substantial plantations in Demerara, British Guiana, and developed a significant shipping line.

As Goodwin recorded in his diary at the start of the journey, We are bound first for Barbados, there to cruise in among the Islands, then to stay a week in Demerara and a month in Jamaica, after that to see something of Canada, Niagara, and the possibility of getting as far as Quebec before returning in May. Goodwin and Edytha arrived at Niagara by train on Wednesday 16 April. They spent almost a week there, and each day Goodwin noted his impressions of the falls, the rapids and the surrounding area.

On Tuesday 22, he wrote, Got up early to see sun over the Horseshoe Fall. River much higher – change of wind bringing water of lake into river, in consequence the falls are more impressive, indeed, till to-day I seem not to have really seen them. Morning at Whirlpool.

Afternoon at last saw the Horseshoe with unclouded aspect, a mass of solid moving malachite, rainbow clad, with huge billowing vapour (spray) rising from base like great clouds.

This seems to suggest the mood of the present image, with the view of the Horseshoe Fall as seen from the Canadian shore.

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05 Sindbad the Sailor:The Enchanted Island! signed, inscribed with title and dated 1894 watercolour and bodycolour with pencil 7 1⁄2 x 10 inches

This is one of a series of paintings that Goodwin produced in response to The Arabian Nights. Others include Shipwreck: Sinbad the Sailor Storing his Raft (1887) and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1901) (both oils on canvas in the Tate collections).

‘Although the bulk of Goodwin’s work could be correctly described as poeticised topography, he also had a penchant for imaginative works inspired by his readings of the Arabian Nights (his grand-daughter recalls that Sinbad was one of his favourite stories), the Bible, Dante etc and seen in works such as his Robinson Crusoe …

The Veil of the Temple … and The Invincible Armada.’

(Elizabeth M M Hancock, Albert Goodwin 1845-1932, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, 1981, page 9)

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06 Robinson Crusoe & The Savages signed, inscribed with title and dated 1912 watercolour with bodycolour 10 x 13 3⁄4 inches

This is one of a series of paintings that Goodwin produced in response to Daniel Defoe’s novel of 1719. Others include The Story of the Shipwreck from Robinson Crusoe (an oil on canvas in Maidstone Museum and Art Gallery) and Robinson Crusoe, ‘Friday escaping from the savages’ (which was exhibited at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, Summer 1906, no 218).

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07 St Pauls signed, inscribed with title and dated 1903 pen ink and watercolour 9 x 12 1⁄4 inches Provenance: The John Cleese Collection Literature: Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, limited edition volume, Chris Beetles Ltd, 1986, plate 80, as ‘St Paul’s, Sunset’ Exhibited: ‘Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932. 129 of his best works borrowed from private collections. A museum tour of the Royal Watercolour Society’, Sheffield Mappin Art Gallery, Ruskin Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent City Museum and Art Gallery, May-October 1986, no 55

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08 London. St Pauls from Southwark ‘Come out from the midst of her oh my people’ signed, inscribed with title and dated 1908 watercolour with pen ink and bodycolour on tinted paper 10 1⁄4 x 14 3⁄4 inches Provenance: The John Cleese Collection Literature: Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, limited edition volume, Chris Beetles Ltd, 1986, plate 166

Since his Maidstone childhood, when he attended Bethel Chapel, Goodwin’s imagination was coloured by the Bible – in its atmosphere, language, narrative and teaching. Here he quotes from a version of Chapter 4 of Revelation to suggest the almost apocalyptic nature of the metropolis. It is the London of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, which was published the year before, in 1907.

‘Mr Goodwin’s mannerisms are rather exceptionally pronounced this year, and among six or seven works, as beautiful as they are, there is nothing quite as good as the “Salisbury” of a year or two ago. He has however, a fine “Siena”, and for his principal work, a highly poetical “Pompeii by Moonlight”.’

(The Times, 11 April 1904, review of the summer exhibition of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours)

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09 A Silent Highway, Pompeii ‘How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people!’ signed, inscribed with title and dated 1904 watercolour and bodycolour 19 1⁄2 x 25 inches Provenance: The John Cleese Collection Literature: Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, limited edition volume, Chris Beetles Ltd, 1986, plate 85

Exhibited: Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, Summer 1904, no 111, as ‘Moonlight Silence, Pompeii’; ‘Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932. 129 of his best works borrowed from private collections. A museum tour of the Royal Watercolour Society’, Sheffield Mappin Art Gallery, Ruskin Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent City Museum and Art Gallery, May-October 1986, no 59 Goodwin has taken his tag from Chapter 1, Verse 1 of Lamentations, as translated in the King James Version of the Bible.

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10 Taormina signed and inscribed with title oil on board 9 3â „4 x 13 1â „2 inches

Goodwin visited Sicily on at least two occasions: by 1905, when he exhibited Taormina and Etna at the Royal Academy, and in May 1914.

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11 Venice. From the Hebrew Cemetery signed, inscribed with title and dated 1904 watercolour 20 x 23 3⁄4 inches

Goodwin first visited Venice in 1872, during his tour of Italy with Ruskin, and must have returned to the city on a number of occasions, for he regularly exhibited Venetian subjects. Despite the artist’s modesty, the city gave him the opportunity to compete with the spirit of Turner, his great inspiration.

Provenance: The John Cleese Collection Exhibited: Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, Winter 1904, no 15

Here, Goodwin chose an unusual view from the Lido di Venezia, which had played host to a Jewish cemetery since 1389, centuries before it became a resort. Turner had made a drawing from a similar position in 1833 (see the Tate sketchbook Finberg CCCXIV), and Ruskin had visited it with his wife, Effie, in 1852. Though extremely beautiful, Goodwin’s sunset may act as a reminiscence of Ruskin’s belief, explained in The Stones of Venice (1851-53), that the decline of Venice as an imperial power should act as a warning to England.

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12 After the Storm signed, inscribed with title and dated 1904 watercolour 19 3⁄4 x 25 1⁄4 inches Literature: Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, limited edition volume, Chris Beetles Ltd, 1986, plate 84 Exhibited: ‘The Works of Albert Goodwin to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Artist’s Death’, Southgate Gallery, Wolverhampton, 1982

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13 The Interior of Durham Cathedral signed and inscribed ‘Durham’ watercolour with pen and ink 10 x 14 3⁄4 inches Provenance: The John Cleese Collection

14 Waste Lands. Rye signed, inscribed with title and dated 1908 watercolour on paper laid down on board 10 1⁄4 x 14 1⁄4 inches Provenance: Fine Art Society Literature: Charles Holme (ed), Sketching Grounds, London: The Studio, 1909

‘It is only amongst the elders now living of our Old Water-Colour Society that there are to be found those who may claim to have thoroughly exploited [Rye and Winchelsea]. Herbert Marshall and Albert Goodwin are amongst those who have made these towns their own, and amongst the latter’s most beautiful drawings must be counted some of the grey and red Cinque Port of Rye.’ (Charles Holme, Sketching Grounds, London: The Studio, 1909)

15 The Rigi from Lucerne signed, inscribed with title and dated 1912 watercolour and bodycolour with pen and ink on paper laid down on board 10 1⁄2 x 14 inches Goodwin painted this view following his third recorded visit to Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, in May 1911. Unashamedly Turnerian in approach, it shows the same aspect as Turner’s three famous watercolours: The Blue Rigi (Tate, circa 1841-42), The Dark Rigi (private collection, 1842) and The Red Rigi (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1842).

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16 West Indian Sunset. Barbados signed, inscribed with title and dated 1912 watercolour and bodycolour on tinted paper 9 1⁄4 x 13 3⁄4 inches Provenance: The John Cleese Collection Exhibited: ‘Water-Colour Drawings and Paintings by Albert Goodwin, RWS’, Leggatt Brothers Gallery, 30 St James’s Street SW, 1912, no 1

Goodwin produced this view of Barbados during his second tour of the West Indies and the eastern seaboard of North America.

On 4 January 1912, Goodwin left England for Barbados, accompanied by his daughter, Alice, who was known as ‘Daisy’, probably as guests of Arthur McConnell. They were certainly together on 16 April, when they arrived in New York from Georgetown, Demerara, British Guiana, on the SS Saramacca.

On 21 January – six days after his arrival in Barbados – he recorded the following impression: Once again at this, the most perfect climate in the world, I am convinced, for the winter. If only it were known more invalids would be sent here from all quarters of the earth. Hot sun – cool wind, blowing in straight from a violet-indigo and green sea (like Kynance Cove, Cornwall), and this day after day unvarying, unless sometimes there is more wind, but that wind being the essence of health, for health one could hardly have too much of it.

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17 Dover signed, inscribed with title and dated 1913 watercolour and bodycolour 10 x 14 1â „2 inches Possibly the work exhibited at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, Winter 1913, no 217

‘It is barely twenty-four hours that I have been here, but it seems a week since I left home.

The wonderful cathedral more impressive than ever, though I have seen it under most forbidding conditions.

A grey hard sky, wind and rain and very cold! The swarming soldiers everywhere in the town!’

(Diary, 13 April 1915, Falstaff Hotel, Canterbury)

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18 Canterbury signed, inscribed with title and dated 1915 pen ink and watercolour enclosed by a decorative border 10 1⁄2 x 15 inches

‘Surprised to find I was allowed to make notes of the sunset across the sands, from the St Leonards pier.

Nothing, surely, could be more beautiful than a setting sun on a seashore.The endless beauty of the curving lines of the wavelets, the colour, the drama of the day’s-ending, a nightly symbol of our little day’s conclusion: all combine to make it, if not one of the most wonderful, certainly one of the most impressive of all the things seen by mortal vision.’

(Diary, 24 August 1915)

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19 St Leonards signed and inscribed with title watercolour and bodycolour with chalk on tinted paper laid down on board 10 x 14 inches

‘The worst of painting such things as sunsets on wet sands is that never is it seen on two evenings alike.The sun is in a slightly different position, and the tide is changed and the whole line of waves and unsubmerged rocks different.

This is not to mention any matter of the fact that no two nights are alike; and when all depends on the wind for the effect on the water, and the slightest shift of this completely altering the whole effect! I went into St Leonards to get another look at my sunset; it was like another scene, save that the uninteresting part, the lodging-houses, remained the same! No wonder few try these kind of subjects, except to make slight sketches, blots, impressions!’

(Diary, 27 August 1915)

‘A war-cloud sunset to-night: and though I had meant to make only separate cloud studies, I was obliged to get the whole panorama of the sky, it was so splendid.’

(Diary, 13 August 1915)

‘Spent day in memory realization of last night’s sunset. I ought to try and make these definite facts, as far as I can: no idealization (which too often is not idealization, but mere mannerism). Nature is generally a good deal ahead of what we call our ideal of her; and too often the so-called ideality is a mere excuse to get a cheap, well-known effect, when, to get as near to the actual fact, would involve far more trouble.’

(Diary, 14 August 1915)

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20 Wartime signed, inscribed with title and dated 1916 watercolour and bodycolour 13 1⁄2 x 20 1⁄4 inches Provenance: The John Cleese Collection

Literature: Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, limited edition volume, Chris Beetles Ltd, 1986, plate 170 Exhibited: Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932. 129 of his best works borrowed from private collections. A museum tour of the Royal Watercolour Society, Sheffield Mappin Art Gallery, Ruskin Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent City Museum and Art Gallery, May-October 1986, no 58

‘A day spent indoors – rain – seeing Harold off by train this morning, when he went back to camp at Salisbury. Better, I hope: his sick leave having been used well and wisely, living in the open, here mostly. One seems more able to work with enjoyment, with the contrast of grey rain outside, and the realization of a fiery oven of a sunset, seen a few nights ago.’

(Diary, 28 September 1915)

21 In the South Sea Islands signed and inscribed with title watercolour and bodycolour on tinted paper 12 x 18 1⁄2 inches

In November 1916, Goodwin sailed to New Zealand and Australia, visiting his son, Desborough, in New Zealand, where he was working as a surveyor.

Provenance: The John Cleese Collection

22 Hills of the Robbers signed, inscribed with title and dated 1920 oil with pen and ink on paper laid down on board with a decorative border 13 1⁄2 x 20 1⁄2 inches

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Goodwin’s watercolour illustrates Verse 4 of Psalm 76, as translated in The Book of Common Prayer: ‘Thou art of more honour and might than the hills of the robbers’.

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23 Lincoln signed, inscribed with title and dated 1920 and ‘June 1920’ chalk and watercolour with bodycolour on tinted paper 12 3⁄4 x 20 inches Exhibited: Fine Art Society, April 1958

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24 Sunset. Down the High Street. Canterbury signed, inscribed with title and dated 1922 watercolour and bodycolour 15 3⁄4 x 22 3⁄4 inches Provenance: Matthew Biggar Walker Exhibited: ‘An Exhibition of Oil Paintings, Watercolour Drawings, etc

by Albert Goodwin RWS RWA loaned by M B Walker Esq’, Municipal Art Gallery and Museum, Wolverhampton, December 1925, no 81; ‘A Collection of Oil Paintings, Water Colour Drawings etc by Albert Goodwin RWS RWA lent by M B Walker Esq’, City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 1926, no 82; The Walker Art Gallery, 1927; The Atkinson Art Gallery, 1928

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25 Hastings signed, inscribed with title and dated 1925 pen ink and watercolour 11 1â „4 x 15 1â „2 inches

Keith Grant

KEITH GRANT Keith Grant (born 1930) One of the greatest living landscape painters, Keith Grant travels extensively and confronts the elements in order to produce extraordinary, resonant images of nature from the Northern Lights to the waterfalls of South America.

For a biography of Keith Grant, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 2008, pages 44-45.

Representing Keith since 2009, the Chris Beetles Gallery held the highly successful solo show, ‘Elements of the Earth’, in 2010, and is planning to publish a major monograph on the artist in the near future.

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26 Midnight Sun, Surtsey bodycolour and polymer on board 21 1⁄2 x 44 inches Provenance: Sir Frederick Gibberd Exhibited: ‘Keith Grant. The Northlands – Paintings’, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, 1967; ‘Keith Grant’, Rochdale City Art Gallery, September 1967, no 9 Keith Grant had a ‘phenomenal time’ on his first visit to Iceland in 1965. This generated an extensive series of paintings, and prompted his return in May 1966. On that occasion, he filmed the eruption of two volcanic islands in the Westman archipelago: Surtsey and Syrtlingur (little Surtsey), its newly emergent sister.

In a recent interview, he explained: I was teaching at Hornsey College of Art then, I remember, because I took their photographic assistant with me to take the

photographs, and we were given a small aeroplane … so we flew around an island that had come out of the sea next to Surtsey.

It’s been washed away now, and I think it was called Syrtlingur, yes I’m sure it was … I’ve got some very dramatic pictures of that – movie picture as well … I’d made quite a few paintings based on that experience for an exhibition at the New Art Centre.

At the time, he recorded his impressions in his diary: An hour ago we flew again over the volcanic eruption near Surtsey. The billowing steam was rubbed with dirt, its whiteness burst by great black and brown protrusions of ascending lava and ash. Like fingertips of giant hands rising out of the sea, black and stretching upwards, as if clawing for the top of the mushrooming clouds, and then relaxing and falling outwards in arcs and returning in graceful arcs into the sea.

(Diary, 20 May 1966)

27 L’après-midi d’un faune – Upon your lava, when a solemn slumber thunders ... signed, inscribed with title and ‘Etna series’, and dated ‘Oct 77’ ink and watercolour with bodycolour and pencil on board 13 1⁄4 x 10 3⁄4 inches Keith first visited Sicily in 1964, with his new wife, Gisèle, and her sister, Monique. A decade later, in 1977, he returned to the island, leading a group of students from the Hornsey College of Art. At the time, his head was full of Stéphane Mallarmé’s sensual poem, L’après-midi d’un faune, which is set on Sicily, and Claude Debussy’s symphonic Prélude, which it inspired. He remembers: I was very interested in L’après-midi d’un faune and the evocative music of Mount Etna, and the mood of it, and the Roman connection, and all sorts of echoes … from the Classical side of my interests … I was fascinated by the places there they had developed, made, and Sicily was an amazing place for that.

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28 The Dead Sea – Israel signed and dated 88 inscribed with title and ‘no 18’ on reverse oil with chalk and watercolour 9 x 20 inches

During four weeks, over April and May 1988, Keith visited Israel, having been given a leave of absence from his position as the Head of the Department of Art at Roehampton Institute of Higher Education.

Initially inspired by the collector, Norman Hyams, he went as a guest of the British Israel Arts Foundation and the Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

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29 The Night signed twice, inscribed with title ‘Green Aurora ... Norway’ and ‘Aurora behind gathering clouds’, and dated 4/95 and 10/5/95 acrylic and ink on paper laid down on board 9 3⁄4 x 16 inches

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30 Evening Sun signed signed, inscribed with title and ‘Sunset’, and dated 07/08 on backboard oil on canvas 24 x 25 1⁄2 inches

‘The “In the Forest” is framed and is one of the most significant of the forest series and ought to be “the standard below which I must not fall” for the subsequent works on the forest theme. Once again it is the balance between the “the language of paint” and the truth of the subject which has preoccupied my mind during the creation of this small canvas.’

(Diary, 22 November 2010)

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31 In the Forest signed signed twice, inscribed with title and dated 2006 and 2008/10 oil on canvas over board 13 x 16 1⁄4 inches

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32 Idyll of The Waterfall and The Weir signed and dated 2009/10 signed, inscribed with title and and ‘KG15/2009’ on stretcher oil on canvas 35 1⁄4 x 45 1⁄2 inches Exhibited: Annual Exhibition, Royal Society of British Artists, Mall Galleries, March 2011

‘The large “Day” painting dedicated now to the memory of Caroline Neill is completed.

I have hung it on the large wall in the studio next to “Night” on which I have written “for Roy”. Both paintings are 120 x 225 cm and I would hope that they might not be separated, though to find a buyer for these “twins” might prove difficult. I have a profound sense of relief that I have achieved at the age of 80 two canvasses of these dimensions upon which I have worked for months often to the point of exhaustion.

I leave any comments on the quality of these works to others not saying that I would need two life-times to be able to act upon the many lessons I have learned from my engagement with the two compositions.

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33 The Sea and the Staircase, Moon Bay, Night (For Roy) signed twice, inscribed with title and dated 6/10 and 2010 signed, inscribed with title and dated 2010 on stretcher oil on canvas 47 1⁄2 x 87 inches

The first, “Night”, like “Day”, is considered as of the “Sea and the Staircase series” of paintings, a theme which I intend to continue for as long as possible.The work I have just completed underwent many changes – especially the harbour area water which proved the greatest problem and challenge of the canvas. I finally disturbed the valedictory mood of the tremorless inner sea to me of chastened, silver ripples, which relate to the handling of the rest of the painting being a more plausible expression of the roughness of the ocean beyond the harbour walls to the relative calmness within them. Certainly, however this work is judged, it is I feel the best of me and as I wrote previously of “Night” it comes the closest I can expect to my masterwork.’

(Diary, 18 November 2010)

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34 The Sea and the Staircase, Day (In Memoriam Caroline Neill) signed, inscribed ‘Day’ and ‘In memoriam Caroline Neill’, and dated ‘Nov 2010’ signed, inscribed with title and dated 2010 on stretcher oil on canvas 47 1⁄2 x 87 inches

35 Green Aurora over Shallows signed signed twice, inscribed with title and dated 11/12/2010 on stretcher oil on canvas 35 3⁄4 x 47 1⁄2 inches

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‘I have worked on the painting introducing a magenta tint to the hem of the aurora’s skirt and intensified the green veils of light above. I think there would be very little to do now except to vary the intense arc of the aurora at its lowest edge.’

(Diary, 1 December 2010)

36 Night of the Aurora signed and dated 1/11 signed, inscribed with title and dated 1/11 on stretcher oil on canvas 35 1⁄2 x 47 1⁄4 inches

‘paintings in which I hope to return to a formalism akin to my earliest northern works’ (Diary, 27 December 2010)

37 Senja Idyll signed and dated 12/10 signed, inscribed with title and dated 12/10 on stretcher oil on canvas 10 1⁄2 x 13 3⁄4 inches

‘I have worked on the 2nd Senja work and altered the foreground removing the staircase ... It must now be inferred from a concrete path which parts the rocks of the foreground and ends abruptly above the small waves far below. I have also introduced an image of the moon, right above the serrated teeth of a range of mountains.The geometric circle relates to the oblong mass of concrete below in a direct symbiosis impossible to achieve in relationship to the natural rocks. How strange as if a man-made element can interact with the heavens but not naturally with terrestrial nature.

Though I suppose that’s the task of art if there would be gain by it.’

(Diary, 1 January 2011)

38 Senja, Snow-Moon signed and dated 1/11 signed, inscribed with title and dated 1/11 on backboard oil on canvas over board 23 1⁄2 x 19 1⁄2 inches

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39 The Small Birch and the Waiting Forest signed and dated 1/11 signed twice, inscribed with title, ‘the forest from Patchy’s viewpoint’ and dated ‘Nov 2010’, 1/11 and 17.1.11 on backboard oil on canvas over board 16 1⁄4 x 16 1⁄4 inches

40 Evening Cloud against a Mountain signed and dated 2/11 signed, inscribed with title and dated 2/11 on reverse mixed media on board 9 x 9 inches

41 41 Full Moon Rising over Old Skagen signed and dated 2/11 signed twice, inscribed with title, ‘(UK visit Jan 2011) from observing the sea at Old Skagen on the outward journey from Skagen to Esbjerg and the inward journey from E to S ( Jan 2011)’ and dated 12/2/2011 and 3/11 on reverse acrylic and watercolour 15 1⁄4 x 24 inches

42 Looking to Vesteralen from Andøya signed, inscribed ‘near Harstad’ and dated 2/11 inscribed ‘from a sketchbook made on Feb 2011 visit to Harstad and Andøya – with Trym Ivar Bergsmo. (photographer)’ below mount signed, inscribed with title and dated 2/2011 on reverse acrylic and watercolour on board 8 3⁄4 x 11 inches

43 Moon Harbour signed and dated 3/11 signed and inscribed with title and dated ‘March 2011’ on reverse acrylic and ink on board 12 1⁄2 x 16 1⁄2 inches

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44 Nocturne in the North signed and dated 3/11 signed, inscribed with title and dated 3/2011 on reverse acrylic 15 1⁄4 x 23 3⁄4 inches

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45 Rain on a Road in Senja signed, inscribed ‘rain’ and dated 3/11 signed and inscribed with title on reverse mixed media on board 10 1⁄4 x 6 1⁄4 inches

46 The Road to Senja I signed and dated 3/11 signed, inscribed with title and dated 23/3/2011 on reverse acrylic and ink on board 11 x 8 inches

47 Settling Sky, Encroaching Night signed and dated 3/11 signed, inscribed with title and dated 3/2011 on reverse acrylic, ink and resin varnish on board 12 x 15 1⁄4 inches

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48 Storm Light and Cloud Wrack, Senja signed and dated 3/11 signed, inscribed with title and dated ‘4/March/2011’ on reverse acrylic and ink on board 12 x 15 1⁄4 inches

49 Spiralling Sun Bleik Harbour, Andøya signed and dated 3/11 signed, inscribed with title and dated 3/2011 on reverse acrylic on board 14 1⁄4 x 7 1⁄4 inches

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50 Sea Birds below the Setting Sun signed and dated 4/11 signed and inscribed with title and dated ‘April 2011’ on reverse acrylic on board 13 1⁄2 x 17 1⁄2 inches

In Memoriam CAROLINE NEILL (née Debenham) Patron of Keith Grant, born 9 January 1930, died 27 October 2010

I married Caroline in 1954. She was then aged 24 and I was 27. She had many talents. She could cook a delicious dinner at record speed.

She loved animals – starting with dogs and later including (on a small scale farm) Welsh badger-faced sheep and Welsh black cattle. She could make her own clothes and stitch by hand gros point carpets.

She adored music especially opera and played the piano well until rheumatoid arthritis damaged her hands too gravely.

Another irrepressible talent was a love of drawing and painting. Some of her work was in watercolour but probably the best were her pastel paintings. She was inspired in this field by the French artist Simon Bussy.

He was a good friend of her aunt Alison (daughter of Sir Ernest Debenham – married name Alison Leplatt) who had studied at the Slade and who herself often worked in pastels.

Caroline also worked with her artist friend Barbara Dorf who taught her some of the technical skills required in producing pastel paintings.

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However, my assessment is that Caroline was to a great extent selftaught. She learnt much from studying the work of Simon Bussy. Her first acquisition was his oil painting The Golden Pheasant, which her grandfather (Sir Ernest Debenham) allowed her to remove from the walls of his house. Throughout her life Caroline maintained a strong admiration for Bussy and built up a collection of his works.

KEITH GRANT The North oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches

One project on which she was still engaged at the time of her death was translating into carpet from an oil painting of the Norwegian Arctic by her friend Keith Grant. Caroline greatly admired Keith’s work, her final acquisition being his marvellous jewel-like painting of the sun setting on the Lofoten Islands.

Her range of subject matter was wide and it included still lifes, interiors, landscapes, river scenes, crowds, and waterfalls.

Painting did in the end become very difficult and painful for Caroline and the rate of production declined. But it is my hope that the examples of her work, which Chris Beetles is exhibiting here, will give much pleasure to the eyes of the beholders.

Patrick Neill June 2011

‘One project on which she was still engaged at the time of her death was translating into carpet from an oil painting of the Norwegian Arctic by her friend Keith Grant.’

The North: Hommage to Keith Grant gros point (right-hand section) 103 x 79 inches

Caroline demonstrated in so many ways the miracle of nature and how our lives might reflect our gratitude for being in this world at all.

Her own work as an artist, her wonderfully questioning and trenchant mind, her deep responsiveness to the predicament of living a creative life, and being the devoted mother of a large and exemplary family is, for me, a continuing influence and inspiration.

Morning Mists and Haar 1, Glenisla, Angus, Scotland signed with initials pastel, 12 1⁄2 x 15 3⁄4 inches

I am very proud to be sharing part of Chris Beetles’ Summer Exhibition with her, and to salute the work of a fellow artist of great sensitivity and generosity.

(Keith Grant, Norway, June 2011)

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Morning Mists and Haar 2, Glenisla, Angus, Scotland pastel, 21 3⁄4 x 29 3⁄4 inches

Caroline Neill’s artworks are on loan from the Neill family.

Li River, Guelin, China pastel, 22 1⁄2 x 30 inches

Summer Show 2011 At the heart of this year’s Summer Show lie works by Albert Goodwin and Keith Grant, as represented in this catalogue.

However, as always, the exhibition contains a wide range of the very best of British art from the early nineteenth century to today, as is synonymous with the Chris Beetles Gallery.

Here in bright abundance are the jewel-like images of the Golden Age of watercolour: intense genre, still life and landscape, including museum quality works by William Callow, David Cox and John Varley, and a significant album of drawings by Thomas Rowlandson.

Part two of the John Cleese Collection is displayed for the first time, showing with equal beauty the quality associated with this significant collector, part one having sold through the gallery with great success and critical acclaim last year.

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HELEN ALLINGHAM, RWS (1848-1926) The Kentish Farmhouse signed watercolour 12 x 14 3â „4 inches

The twentieth century works, including major examples by Michael Ayrton and Donald Hamilton Fraser, epitomise the achievements of this tumultuous age and so extend the scope of the show.

Before his early death at the age of 64, Sydney Harpley RA (1927-1992) was the most popular sculptor at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. In representing his estate, Chris Beetles Gallery continues to display his works with great success. This year, we present a large group of some of his most famous sculptures, drawn from a private collection and last seen on the market some thirty years ago.

The many major artists in the exhibition include:

Helen Allingham RWS Pietro Annigoni RP Val Archer Michael Ayrton RBA Stanley Roy Badmin RWS RE AIA Roland Batchelor RWS Hercules Brabazon Brabazon NEAC PS Henry Bright Reginald Brill Thomas Churchyard Peter Coker RA Thomas Hartley Cromek ANWS Francis Dodd RA RWS NEAC Myles Birket Foster RWS Donald Hamilton Fraser RA Richard Garbe RA William Fraser Garden

Louis Ginnett ROI Albert Goodwin RWS Frederick Gore CBE RA Keith Grant James Hamilton Hay LG Edward Steel Harper RBSA Sydney Harpley RA FRBS Keith Henderson OBE RSW ROI RP Alfred William Hunt VPRWS Cecil Arthur Hunt VPRWS RBA Francis Edward James RWS NEAC RBA Karin Jonzen RBA Charles Knight RWS ROI Norman Neasom RWS RBSA SAS James Orrock RI ROI Enzo Plazzotta Samuel Rayner

PETER COKER, RA (1926-2004) Agave signed dated ‘Oct 79-Feb 1980’ on reverse oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

Ivor Roberts-Jones RA Sir William Rothenstein RP NEAC Thomas Rowlandson Hans Schwarz Caroline Sharpe Thomas Hosmer Shepherd Arthur Reginald Smith ARA RSW RWS Joseph Edward Southall RWS RBSA NEAC Clarkson Stanfield RA Betty Swanwick Janet Agnes Cumbrae Stewart Algernon Talmage RA ROI RWA ARE Feliks Topolski Walter Tyndale RI William Walcot RBA RE Louisa Anne Marchioness of Waterford George Weatherill

Literature: David Wootton, Peter Coker RA, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2002, Catalogue Raisonné, no 400 Exhibited: Gallery 10, 1980, no 7; Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, 1981, no 47

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY 8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com

www.chrisbeetles.com

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