The Figurative Tradition: A Celebration of Contemporary British Art

THE FIGURATIVE TRADITION A Celebration of Contemporary British Art

This catalogue and exhibition is dedicated to Mary Cozens-Walker Green (1938-2020)

Copyright © Chris Beetles Ltd 2020 8 & 10 Ryder Street St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com www.chrisbeetles.com ISBN 978-1-905738-97-7 Cataloguing in publication data is available from the British Library Researched and written by David Wootton, with contributions from Keith Grant and Anthony Green Edited by Pascale Oakley and David Wootton Design by Pascale Oakley Photography by Julian Huxley-Parlour Reproduction by www.cast2create.com Colour separation and printing by Geoff Neal Litho Limited

Front cover: Peter Brown, The Rockabilly, Portobello Road [80] Front endpaper: Keith Grant, The Dorset Mural [12] This page: Peter Kuhfeld, Still Life with Titian [detail of 76] Title page: James Butler, Girl on a Bicycle [39] Back endpaper: Ken Howard, Late Afternoon Light, 1993 [47] Back cover: Anthony Green, ‘Le French CanCan’, Chez Lissac, c 1954 [57]

THE FIGURATIVE TRADITION A Celebration of Contemporary British Art

C H R I S B E E T LE S GA LLE RY

BERNARD DUNSTAN

B ER NAR D D N S TA N Andrew Harold Bernard Dunstan, RA PRWA NEAC HPS (1920-2017) Bernard Dunstan was brought up in the tradition of Degas, Sickert and Vuillard, and established himself with intimate 'gure subjects and landscapes in paint and pastel. A member of both the Royal Academy and the New English Art Club for many years, he was much loved and greatly respected.

His work is represented in The Royal Collection, the Royal West of England Academy and numerous public collections, including the National Portrait Gallery.

Further reading: Christopher Masters, ‘Bernard Dunstan’ [obituary], Guardian, 10 September 2017; David Wootton, ‘Bernard Dunstan’, Chris Beetles Summer Show, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2019, page 106 Chris Beetles Gallery exclusively represents the Estate of Bernard Dunstan.

1 Houses by the Canal (Oxford) Signed Oil on canvas 20 x 30 ¼ inches Provenance: Purchased by Sir Henry Rushbury from the Royal Academy, for his own private collection Exhibited: Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 1946, No 364

3 Still Life on Table (opposite below) Signed Signed and inscribed ‘Still Life’ and with artist’s address on reverse Oil on board 7 x 10 ¾ inches

BERNARD DUNSTAN

2 Autumn Flowers & Sepia Postcard (above) Signed with initials Inscribed with title and dated 10.70 on original backboard

Oil on board 5 ¾ x 8 ¾ inches Provenance: Roland, Browse & Delbanco

BERNARD DUNSTAN

4 The Campo, Siena Signed with initials Inscribed ‘Campo ... centre’ and dated 1-2.1.72 on reverse Oil on board 11 x 7 inches

BERNARD DUNSTAN

5 The Bedroom Window Signed with initials Pastel 10 ½ x 13 ¼ inches

BERNARD DUNSTAN

6 Morning Moments Signed with initials Inscribed with title on label on backboard Pastel on tinted paper 10 x 7 inches

BERNARD DUNSTAN

7 Early Morning Signed with initials Pastel on tinted paper 10 Âź x 11 inches

BERNARD DUNSTAN

8 Wendy Signed with initials Pastel on tinted paper 10 ¾ x 12 inches

BERNARD DUNSTAN

9 Reclining Female Nude Signed with initials Oil on canvas 17 ½ x 21 ¼ inches

DIANA ARMFIELD

DIA N A AR MFI E L D Diana Maxwell Arm0eld, RA HRWS HRCamA RWA (Emeritus) HNEAC HPS MSIA (born 1920) An admirer of Bonnard and Vuillard, Sickert and William Nicholson, Diana Arm'eld turned from design to painting early in her career, and has worked for over seven decades in a range of media to produce a strong body of harmonious images. These encompass sensitive botanical still life compositions, atmospheric landscapes and evocative 'gure groups.

Her work is represented in numerous public collections, including the V&A (textile work) and the Royal West of England Academy (Bristol).

Further reading: James Fairweather, ‘Diana Arm0eld’, www.bedales.org, 2013; Julian Halsby, The Art of Diana Arm eld, Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1995; Ngozi Ikoku, ‘Late Flowering’, Crafts, January/February 2001, pages 38-41 [an article on her 0rst career as a designer]; David Wootton, ‘Diana Arm0eld’, Anthony Green RA: Among Royal Artists and Friends, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2018, pages 37-38

10 Camellias in a Silver Rose Bowl Signed with initials Oil on board 8 ¾ x 12 inches Provenance: Browse & Darby, London

KEITH GRANT

K EI TH G R A N T Keith Frederick Grant (born 1930) One of the greatest living British landscape painters, Keith Grant has travelled extensively, and has confronted the elements in order to produce extraordinary, resonant images of nature, especially in the north. Recently, he has preferred to recollect his experiences in the tranquility of his studio in Norway, and work to produce exciting series of imaginative paintings.

His work is represented in the Government Art Collection and numerous public collections, notably the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge).

11 Sketch for the Dorset Mural Signed and inscribed with title Watercolour and bodycolour with pencil 14 x 22 inches

Further reading: David Wootton, Keith Grant: Antarctica, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2018; David Wootton, Keith Grant: Elements of the Earth, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2010; David Wootton, Keith Grant: Metamorphosis, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2016; David Wootton, Keith Grant: North by New English, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2017; David Wootton, with contributions from Helen Faulkner, Keith Grant and Judith LeGrove, Keith Grant: Invention and Variation, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2020

KEITH GRANT

KEITH GRANT

12 The Dorset Mural Signed and dated ‘Keith Grant 1959/2019/Pascale Oakley’ Oil on canvas 97 x 162 inches In 2019, Keith Grant received studio assistance from Pascale Oakley in returning The Dorset Mural to its pristine state.

KEITH GRANT

13 Another Country II Signed, inscribed with title and dated 18.6.66 Acrylic and bodycolour with ink, crayon and pencil 17 x 16 inches

KEITH GRANT

‘This painting is a result of a stay with the Laird of Dundonnell, in Wester Ross, Sutherland. It represents the furthest south of my paintings of the north.

Scotland is the place where I began to sense the special character of the north.’

(Keith Grant, September 2020)

14 Sutherland Signed and dated 72 Watercolour and bodycolour with pencil 15 x 25 ½ inches

KEITH GRANT

INVENTION AND VARIATION In March 2020, the gallery mounted Keith’s highly singular and successful exhibition ‘Invention and Variation’, which comprised a series of paintings in celebration of the trans0guration of nature in the music of Frederick Delius.

Keith has been so inspired by his response to that music that he has extended the series, producing a number of additional works, including scenes of Yorkshire, the county in which the composer was born.

The works that Keith produced for ‘Invention and Variation’ has led him to develop in two particular new directions.

First, he has been making a study of the texts – by Jacobsen, Nietzsche and Whitman – that inspired Delius, and responding with paintings that have in them the seeds of an increased surrealistic element. Second, he has been listening to the music of other composers who have meant a lot to him, and especially that of Karol Szymanowski, and has created a series of works with the overarching title ‘Song of the Night’, an allusion to Szymanowski’s third symphony [See 32-34].

15 The Moonlit Path Signed with initials Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’ and ‘ex-catalogue’, and dated ‘March 2020’ on stretcher Oil on linen 13 x 9 ½ inches

KEITH GRANT 16 The Nightingale’s Wood near Grez-sur-Loing Signed with initials Signed, inscribed ‘Delius Series’ and with dimensions in centimetres on stretcher Inscribed with title and ‘ex-catalogue’ on reverse of frame Oil on linen 13 x 9 ½ inches

17 The Perforated Rock, The Deliuses’ Garden, Grez-sur-Loing Signed and dated 2/20 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Delius Series’, and medium, and dated ‘Feb 2020’ on reverse of frame Oil on linen 10 ¾ x 13 ¾ inches

KEITH GRANT

18 Winter Night at Grez-sur-Loing Signed Oil on linen 28 x 39 ¾ inches

KEITH GRANT

19 Winter Night, The River Loing Signed and dated 3/20 Signed, inscribed with title and ‘New Delius Series begun March 2020’, and dated 3/20 on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ½ x 31 ½ inches

KEITH GRANT

20 Bempton Cli s, North Yorkshire Signed and dated 4/20 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘New Delius Series’, ‘North Country Sketches: Delius’ and ‘Summer’, and dated 4/20 on stretcher Oil on linen 15 ž x 12 inches

21 Gannets Rise Above the Edge of Bempton Cli s, North Yorkshire Signed Signed, inscribed with title, ‘New Delius Series’ and ‘Autumn’, and dated 4/20 and ‘April 2020’ on stretcher Oil on linen 10 ž x 14 inches

KEITH GRANT 22 Sketch near Rosedale, North Yorkshire Signed with initials Signed, inscribed with title and ‘New Delius Series’, and dated 5/20 and ‘May 2020’ on stretcher Oil on linen 8 ¾ x 10 ¾ inches

23 The Rainbow and the Thunder Cloud Signed Signed, inscribed with title, ‘New Delius Series’ and dimensions in inches and centimetres, and dated ‘May 2020’ on stretcher Oil on linen 12 x 16 inches

KEITH GRANT 24 Descent from the North Yorkshire Moors at Rosedale Signed with initials Signed, inscribed with title, ‘New Delius Series’, ‘North Country Sketches Delius’ and ‘Winter’, and dated 4/2020 on stretcher Oil on linen 11 x 14 inches

25 Spring, Harome Village Pond, North Yorkshire Signed Signed twice, inscribed with title, ‘New Delius Series’ and ‘New Delius Series North Country Sketches’, and dated 4/20 and ‘April 2020’ on stretcher Oil on linen 12 x 15 ¾ inches

KEITH GRANT

26 Spring Snow in the Paradise Garden Signed and dated 4/20 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘New Delius Series begun March 2020’, ‘Alternative title “Stillness of the Forest Dance”’, and dated April 2020 on stretcher Oil on linen 23 ½ x 31 ½ inches

KEITH GRANT 27 Single Birch Against Falling Snow Signed with initials Signed twice, inscribed with title and ‘New Delius Series’, and dated 5/20 and ‘May 2020’ on stretcher Oil on linen 13 ¾ x 11 inches

28 Beacon and Full Moon with Scudding Clouds from the West Signed, inscribed with title, ‘New Delius Series’ and ‘Beacon’, and dated 5/20 on stretcher Oil on linen 12 x 12 ¾ inches

KEITH GRANT

29 Forest Proscenium (Forest Dance) Signed and dated 5/20 Oil on linen 25 ½ x 31 ¾ inches

KEITH GRANT 30 Remains of an Ancient Saw Mill, on the River Bø, Telemark, Norway Signed with initials Oil on linen 10 ¾ x 8 ¾ inches

31 Woodland Path – Forest Management Signed with initials Oil on linen 16 ½ x 26 ¼ inches (comprised of 8 canvases each measuring 7 ¾ x 6 inches)

KEITH GRANT

TRIPTYCH: SONG OF THE NIGHT with a commentar y by Keith Grant ‘My 90th birthday on the 10 August coincided with drawing to a close my two-years-long Delius project “Invention and Variation”.

During this protracted period of work, I listened exclusively to the music of Frederick Delius, which provided me with sustained inspiration in the creation of 100 paintings comprising the complete series.

The emotion Delius felt through his empathy with nature, especially his interactions with the landscapes of Norway, he personi0ed in musical terms of the deepest perception and originality. His music describes aspects of the natural world with astonishing clarity, enabling the listener to almost visualise the heights of mountains, the ascent and descent of hills, spatial distances, the sea and the poignance of loss and separation. Essential to understanding the descriptive power of Delius’s soundscapes is the profoundly subtle use of the solo human voice, choirs of wordless song and orchestral invention, which inform so many of his compositions.

As a painter of landscapes, I have always sought to achieve a de0nitive expression of my subject but predictably have always failed; as if a subconscious intention intervenes to remind me that nothing in living nature is 0nite. Likewise, the end of my Delius-inspired painting project is not a de0nitive closure, nor could it be, since I am still seeking inspiration from music, albeit that of other composers whose work is pointing to a new direction in my painting – a new direction and a new subject, that of the Night.

I had in the past made descriptive paintings of the Northern night, portraying the Aurora Borealis, stars and planets related to speci0c locations in Norway and Greenland, but none of these paintings I felt as yet expressed the deep mystery behind the pageantry of the night skies I observed.

I listened to the music of Schoenberg, Mahler, Strauss and others but could not equate their creations with my need for a new approach to the subject of the Night. Even Schoenberg’s Trans gured Night, which in the past held me entranced, did not work for me. I knew in order to advance my work I needed to explore beyond imagery and go towards, despite the odds, an unpaintable dimension of painting and that the mood and universal mystery of the night would transcend any necessary images I used in composing these new works.

Keith Grant working in his studio in Gvarv, August 2020

KEITH GRANT

For many years I had known the music of Szymanowksi and it meant a great deal to me, wonderful creations such as his Stabat Mater and The Love Songs of Ha z, but I had neglected his symphonies.

I played his 3rd symphony, Song of the Night. The e ect was instantaneous! Here was the music I needed. I played the compact disc time and time again with mounting thrill and excitement. I felt that no other western composer had ever expressed the multi-layered mystery of the night so passionately. The music was the perfect accompaniment to the text of the ancient Persian poem by the greatest Su0 poet, Jalal al-Din Rumi. I knew I had come upon a perfect matrix of sound full of the sonorities and all-pervading spatial enigma of the Night and because this music of Szymanowski was for me a “cosmic” expression, I felt I could 0nd within it an abstract dimensionality. A further thought-provoking aspect of Song of the Night was its association with Islamic culture and its long history of astronomical investigations and discoveries. But I realise that to attempt to analyse a mystery is to divest it of its raison d’être so I intend now to explore new directions even if that means freedom from the logic of appearances.

My three compositions forming the Triptych: Song of the Night may be described as follows: I Song of the Night I [32] is meant for sustained meditation and if possible viewed, as we did at my birthday party in Norway, whilst listening to the third movement of Szymanowski’s 3rd Symphony. The painting is an evocation of the universe, an abstraction of the cosmos through a process of counter change between the many observations I have made of the Night in sub-arctic Norway, in Greenland and in the tropics, and what I have learned from reading and the imagery associated with astrophysics. But no amount of observation or research can transcend the mystery of the Night itself and its in uence on the imagination. The Night itself is the source of all being and the primeval consciousness of wonder.

II Song of the Night II, subtitled Star Mirror [33], is a composition derived from a series of sketches I made while crossing the Tysford in North Norway by boat and driving on the narrow roads which de0ne some parts of its coastline. I have made several paintings of the fjord in the past and of the spectacular mountain chain which contains Norway’s national mountain, Stetind, a subject for many artists including the stylistically innovative Norwegian artist, Peder Balke.

In Star Mirror I have tried to realise the surreal stillness and visual purity of the scene, the razor-sharp pro0le of the mountains, the shimmering re ection of the largest island in the fjord, its darkness being contrasted with the snow-covered mountain sides. The sky is conceived as a tapestry animated by pulses of light from the cut-diamond sharpness of the stars and ooded with the lambent light of the full moon as if behind the viewer of the painting. These pictorial devices are invitations to the enigma of the night’s mysterious depths and astronomical reality.

III Of the three works comprising my triptych of the night, Song of the Night III, Winter Landscape Illuminated by the Moon, Geilo, Norway [34] is the most place speci0c. Although the place is not topographically accurate, it represents a night of intense cold in mid-winter and the unimaginable clarity of the sky ablaze with starlight. Against the velvet blackness of the Night, a full moon, as if in majestic arrested motion, illuminates the deep snow and throws deep shadows under trees and around the ice-encrusted rocks. The temperature was below minus 22ºC, but I felt neither cold nor fatigue so imprisoning was the mystery and the splendour I was experiencing. ltimately, I skied back to the distant hut, the windows of which emitted a 0tful small glow of warmth. The factual depictions and details in Song of the Night III are like the recognisable elements in paintings I and II – there to enhance not detract from the overwhelming beauty and mysteriousness of the northern Night, the principle motivation of the triptych.

My future work I feel has been to some extent prescribed by my studies of the Night – studies that have grown out of the subject and owe much more to that which is within than without. My painting has always been informed by nature but I feel is now becoming concerned with the intensi0cation of the elemental reality of creation and the subject which I feel a ords me the best way forward is the Night and any recognisable imagery in support of my “philosophy” of the Night is to be subsumed in the supremacy of the subject matter itself. Wish me success!

Keith Grant (Gvarv, Norway, September 2020)

KEITH GRANT

32 Song of the Night I The Cosmos Touches the Sea Signed and dated June 2020 Oil on linen 44 ¾ x 61 inches

KEITH GRANT

33 Song of the Night II Star Mirror, Tysfjord, Norway Signed twice and dated 8/20 Oil on linen 43 ¾ x 47 ¾ inches

KEITH GRANT

34 Song of the Night III Winter Landscape Illuminated by the Moon, Geilo, Norway Signed and dated 7/20 Oil on linen 39 ¼ x 47 ¼ inches

KEITH GRANT 35 The Mountain, the Comet and the Stars Signed Oil on linen 15 ¼ x 15 ¼ inches

36 The Beacon, the Aurora and the Stars Signed Oil on linen 15 ¾ x 15 ¾ inches

KEITH GRANT

37 The Curtains of the Night Signed and dated 8/20 Oil on linen 23 ½ x 27 ½ inches

JAMES BUTLER

JA M ES B T L E R James Walter Butler, MBE RA FRBS RWA (born 1931) One of Britain’s foremost 'gurative sculptors, James Butler is well known for both his public commissions, large and small, and his personal compositions. Having gained a thorough grounding in carving early in his career, he then developed equal mastery as a modeller. He has since created many cherished monuments in Britain and abroad that stand securely in a tradition that can be traced from Donatello through Charles Sargeant Jagger to Giacomo Manzù.

Further reading: John Meulkens, James Butler, RA: A collector’s personal view, Warwick: J Meulkens and J Butler, 2006; John Meulkens, James Butler: An extended personal view of a collector, Radway: John Meulkens and James Butler, 2013 (third edition); David Wootton, ‘James Butler’, Anthony Green RA: Among Royal Academy Artists and Friends, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2018, page 58

38 Scramble Signed, numbered 6/10 and dated ’15 Bronze No 6 from an edition of 10 12 ¾ inches high x 9 inches wide x 5 ½ inches deep On a black marble base measuring ¾ x 8 x 5 inches Literature: John Meulkens, James Butler: An extended personal view of a collector, Radway: John Meulkens and James Butler, 2013 (third edition), page 107 as ‘Scrambling Pilot’ (illustrated) Exhibited: ‘Chris Beetles Summer Show 2017’, No 185

JAMES BUTLER 39 Girl on a Bicycle Signed and numbered 4/10 Bronze No 4 from an edition of 10 16 ¾ inches high x 14 inches wide x 6 inches deep On a black marble base measuring 3 ¾ x 15 x 4 ¼ inches Exhibited: Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 2019, No 780

JAMES BUTLER

40 Young Ballerina 1977 Signed and dated ’77 Bronze 15 1 4 inches high x 3 3 4 inches wide x 4 1 2 inches deep

JAMES BUTLER 41 Mother & Babe Signed, numbered ‘I/XII’ and dated 96 Bronze No 1 from an edition of 12 5 ¼ inches high x 2 inches wide x 4 inches deep On a black marble base measuring 2 x 4 x 4 inches Exhibited: Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 2017, No 950

42 Time to Sleep Signed and numbered II/X Bronze No 2 from an edition of 10 7 ½ inches high x 11 inches wide x 7 inches deep On a black marble base measuring 1 x 12 x 7 1 2 inches Exhibited: Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 2019, No 1572

JAMES BUTLER

43 Sir Bobby Moore Signed and numbered 2/10 Bronze No 2 from an edition of 10 22 inches high x 9 inches wide x 6 ½ inches deep On a black marble base measuring 5 ½ x 9 ½ x 9 ¼ inches Literature: Summer Exhibition Illustrated, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2019, page 60 Exhibited: Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 2019, No 1037

JAMES BUTLER

44 Isambard Kingdom Brunel Signed, inscribed with title, numbered VII/X and dated ’07 Bronze No 7 from an edition of 10 26 inches high x 7 1 2 inches wide x 6 1 2 inches deep Literature: John Meulkens, James Butler: An extended personal view of a collector, Radway: John Meulkens and James Butler, 2013 (third edition), pages 182-185 (iIlustrated) Exhibited: Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 2009, No 565, as ‘Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Sketch for a Portrait Statue’; ‘Chris Beetles Summer Show’, 2017, No 184 A maquette for a statue commissioned by Felix Dennis for his garden of heroes and villains in Dorsington, Warwickshire

JAMES BUTLER

NEW WORKS TO BE EXCLUSIVELY EXHIBITED IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION 6 OCTOBER 2020 – 3 JANUARY 2021

JAMES BUTLER

On 1 August 2020, James Butler’s statue of Shakespeare was unveiled in Henley Street, Stratford, close to Shakespeare’s birthplace.

KEN HOWARD

K E N H OWA R D James Kenneth Howard, OBE RA HonRWS HonRBA ROI RWA PPNEAC HonSGFA (born 1932) Ken Howard is one of Britain’s best-loved painters.

His light-'lled landscapes and studio scenes are always greatly anticipated by visitors to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and, though thought to be unfashionable, they outsell the submissions by the Young British Artists. An outstanding example of the British 'gurative tradition, he may be considered the pre-eminent father 'gure of the New English Art Club.

His work is represented in numerous public collections, including the City of London Corporation and the Imperial War Museums; and Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery.

Further reading: David Wootton, ‘Ken Howard’, Anthony Green RA: Among Royal Academy Artists and Friends, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2018, pages 56-57 45 Wren’s City Churches: St Mary Le Bow, St Paul’s Cathedral and St Magnus Martyr Oil on hardboard 11 ½ x 10 ½ inches We are grateful to Professor Ken Howard for help with identifying this unsigned work.

KEN HOWARD

46 St Botolph in Bishopsgate Signed Oil on board 15 ½ x 11 ½ inches

KEN HOWARD

47 Late Afternoon Light, 1993 Signed Signed, inscribed with title, medium and artist’s address, and dated 93 on Royal Academy label on reverse of frame Oil on canvas 60 x 72 inches Exhibited: Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 1994, No 1017

KEN HOWARD

KEN HOWARD

48 Brooklyn Bridge, Evening Light; Manhattan from Brooklyn, Evening Light (above) Each signed Signed and inscribed with titles on reverse Signed and inscribed ‘Brooklyn Bridge Evening Light’, artist’s address, medium and dimensions in inches on label on reverse Oil on canvas on board on two panels 7 ¾ x 9 ¾ inches Exhibited: Royal Society of British Artists, Mall Galleries 2017; ‘The New English Art Club at Chris Beetles Gallery,’ February 2020, No 106

49 Fondamenta Nuova (below) Signed Inscribed with title on stretcher Oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches Exhibited: ‘The New English Art Club at Chris Beetles Gallery’, February 2020, No 108

KEN HOWARD 50 Mango Plantation near Mooketsi, Limpopo, South Africa Signed Inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘Jan 2014’ on reverse Oil on canvas on board 7 ¾ x 9 ½ inches Exhibited: ‘The New English Art Club at Chris Beetles Gallery’, February 2020, No 107

51 The Old Brompton Road Signed Oil on canvas 19 ½ x 23 ½ inches Exhibited: ‘The New English Art Club at Chris Beetles Gallery’, February 2020, No 109

ANTHONY GREEN

AN TH O NY GR E E N Anthony Eric Sandall Green, RA HonRBA HonROI LG NEAC (born 1939) No visitor to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition can overlook the work of the painter and printmaker, Anthony Green. His large, irregularly shaped oils rehearse the experience of his life, and especially his marriage to his muse and fellow artist, Mary Cozens-Walker, with exuberance, humour and passion.

His work is represented in numerous public collections, including Tate.

52 1944, MaĂŽtre de Moulins/Croix de Lorraine Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 16 x 16 inches

Further reading: Martin Bailey (ed), A Green Part of the World: Paintings by Anthony Green, London: Thames & Hudson, 1984; Martin Bailey, Anthony Green: Painting Life, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2017; Paul E H Davis, Anthony Green: Printed Pictures, niversity of Buckingham Press, 2019; David Wootton, Anthony Green: Among Royal Academy Artists & Friends, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2018

Nos 52-73 are the sequence of new small works

by Anthony Green

ANTHONY GREEN

A SE !ENCE OF NEW SMALL WORKS with a commentar y by Anthony Green Anthony Green has produced a new series of 22 small works that are evocative and entertaining in equal measure. By mining a rich seam of memory, they explore aspects of his artistic growth. These include his very 0rst creative achievements, which respond to his enthusiasm for the cartoons of Walt Disney; his early experiences of the School of Paris, and of the French capital itself; and his holidays with Mary Cozens-Walker, both before and soon after she became his wife. Despite their diminutive scale, these works are highly characteristic of Anthony’s art at its best, in their idiosyncratic use of shape, space and colour to tell compelling visual stories.

1944 1944, Maître de Moulins/Croix de Lorraine (opposite) ‘I painted this little painting to remind myself – upon re ection and thinking back deep into one’s memory – that there was art in my family, though I didn’t know it was called art, and it was in all sorts of unlikely places.

This is my bedroom at 17 Lissenden Mansions, seen by me lying in bed as a very small boy, at the age of four. It’s what the world looks like when you’re lying at on your back. Things like lampshades that hung out of ceilings seemed to be growing like plants out of at ground – a thought that allowed me, 40 years later, to paint ceilings in crazy perspective.

The objects in the room really did exist. The brown table and the wind-up gramophone with its lid up in the air and its cupboard for my toys – these had been dumped there as what I’d call “things for the boy”. The leather screen on the right simply disappeared as the years went by, but it was there right the way through my childhood.

It was only in retrospect that I realised that the table – which I could play at, and draw at, and paint at – was important to me and has followed me right through life. I’ve still got it in the studio, and I work on it now. When I had it in London in the 1960s, I painted it white because it was fashionable.

It took me months to scrub it back to boring old brown.

I also tried very hard to be honest about the colours in the room. It was a green eiderdown. The tables were brown.

The lampshade was a sort of dirty ochre colour. The walls were painted with distemper. Everything was much duller.

When you look at a black and white movie now of the 1940s, you always think how dull life was. It was dull. In fact the colour of life was probably the colour of the matelot’s face in the shade.

The two key things in this painting are: [1: Maître de Moulins] Over my bed as a child was a colour reproduction of a nativity which my mother had cut out of an art magazine or some sort of glossy magazine. It was only many years later that I realised that the painting was in fact by a French artist called Maître de Moulins [Jean Hey (active 1475-1505)]. I’ve made it huge, so that it’s one of the biggest

things in the painting. But there it was over my head. It was only later, when I went round France with my wife, Mary, that we discovered the same painting in Autun. We had actually gone to Autun to see the cathedral, where there was a Maître de Moulins over the high altar, and so we went to the museum as well and there, to my utter amazement, was my nativity [Nativity with Donor Portrait of Cardinal Rolin].

The image of the nativity had an e ect on me at the age of four. It was above my bed, and, every time I woke, my eyes clicked open and I had an upside down version of a Virgin Mary. I knew what it was, and it was there for religious reasons.

My mother pasted it up because it seemed the right thing to do. And I suppose that this involvement with Catholicism, and the fact that Catholicism consisted of image making, made me sensitive to Catholic imagery when I went to the National Gallery and the Louvre and looked at a nativity or a cruci0xion. They had been part of my upbringing. I couldn’t spell the word Art, but I knew all about the cruci0xion.

[2: Croix de Lorraine] Then above me was this French matelot head. It was, in fact, a small rubber image of a French sailor glued to the spare bedroom door where my aunt, Yvonne Lissac, who was a refugee from France, spent the war years with us. And the funny thing was that, if I was held up in my parents’ arms, I could stick my little 0nger into its mouth and wiggle the one tooth that he had sticking out, and I thought that this was marvellous. Of course, little did I know that not so many years into the future my cousin, Michel, who also spent the war years with us, would do his national service in the French navy, aboard the Richelieu, the one battleship which the British failed to sink at Mers-el-Kébir, because it was out on manoeuvres. So the French connection is also in the badge at the top right corner, which is the key thing.

Obviously, the Free French were seen to be France’s last hope as we hunkered down to be bombed by the Germans.

And that is the little badge, which I still have, that was issued to all the Free French supporters, with General de Gaulle’s Croix de Lorraine on it.’

ANTHONY GREEN

MASTER GREEN AND MR DISNEY ‘I had The Beano and The Dandy delivered, which was 0ne, and then, for some unknown reason, I found that I was having Mickey Mouse Weekly delivered. It was in full colour, not in what I call three colour o set litho. It was really rather beguiling. Also, by then, I’d been to see Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs. It was released in 1937, and I probably saw it in 1945. Of course, it was simply magical. I was enthralled by Disney. One’s got to bear in mind, I knew nothing about art.

I just thought that these were wonderful. I loved the noise the 0lm made. I loved the colours. And it was funny. The whole package was utterly enchanting, and I wanted to be part of that.

I’m perfectly aware that Walt Disney was himself a minor technician. He managed to draw Steamboat Willie and then left it to experts; but what was so incredible was that he produced a family that created a visual language for the movies. After Steamboat Willie, there was a revolution and animation became sophisticated. When full colour came in, the world was never going to be the same again. Disney had teams of very good artists doing those watercolour

backgrounds, and they developed a unique art form in its own right. Pinocchio, Dumbo were done with backgrounds, and those for me are the classics, the ones that I absolutely adored. When they moved on later to Xerography, they changed the language.

I drew the Disney characters freehand, and never traced one in my life, and my parents encouraged me. So I immediately buckled down in that room with the wax crayons and pots of poster paint, and kept on going. And, of course, the bits of paper got bigger and bigger until I was bought large sheets of art paper. In the end – this was ’48, ’49, ’50 – I was doing the whole of the Seven Dwarfs – taking a dwarf from here and a dwarf from there – and putting them all together with Snow White. I always found her incredibly di cult because she was so pretty. It was easy to draw an ugly dwarf, but it didn’t half push the old hand to do a pretty Snow White. I used to creep up onto a stool or chair and pin the drawings to the wall and, over a period of about three or four years, I 0lled the entire ten-foot-high room with Disney pictures. And, by then, people were beginning to suggest that I do something original.’

1948/49 Beati Mundo Corde, 1948/49 (opposite) ‘Here am I, with my teddy called Rupert, named after the character in the Daily Express, which my family read. I’m just beginning to make drawings of Mickey Mouse and Pluto and Donald Duck. The poster paints are ready on the table for me to start using them, and Mickey Mouse is on the horizon [hence the outline of the image].

The table is there on the right, and has actually become real because, if you look carefully at it, the two little pots of paint standing on it are the eyes, and it’s doing the jogtrot towards you.

Then on the left there is a very proud father saying “this is my son with whom I am well pleased”. There’s a whole series of paintings of my father done over a number of years in which he becomes almost like a Greek icon, the way that he is looking down.

By this stage, I was at a North London Catholic infant school called St Aloysius. And the title of the picture was the motto of the school, “Blessed are the pure in heart”. Behind me is a carpet. I’ve taken what I could remember of a rather threadbare, nondescript carpet, which I’ve “arti0ed” by turning it from a rectangle into a Mickey Mouse roundel. That’s what I call artistic licence. It also creates a sort of halo, because anybody who is brought up under the motto “Beati Mundo Corde” has to have a halo.

The three circles could suggest the Trinity. By then I was being earwashed by the concepts of Catholicism. Religion was simply being injected into me. It is the beginning of civilisation. I frequently think that it wouldn’t matter if I stopped having all these crazy Christian ideas because Florence isn’t going away. We are the children of that civilisation. It’s as simple as that, and I’d be very unhappy if I thought that Assisi was in vain. What clever people human beings are to make that.’

ANTHONY GREEN

53 Beati Mundo Corde, 1948/49 Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions, and dated 2019-2020 on reverse Oil on board 15 x 17 ½ inches

ANTHONY GREEN

1949 1949, Doing Donald I & 1949, Doing Donald II ‘One thing that I ought to say is that Donald Duck, and anything that he got up to, with Pluto and Goofy, was funny.

I wasn’t aware of the humour to begin with, and copying Mickey and Minnie Mouse was rather a serious business. But suddenly, by 1949, I had realised that Donald was actually an anarchic 0gure, a suppressed lunatic. He was a great invention.

Here I have traced the outlines of the drawings of two Donalds that I did in 1949, and which I still have, as frames for the

narratives of their making. Doing Donald II is a little more complicated than that because I’m not just sitting and doing it; I’m actually looking at what I’ve actually achieved. And, of course, Donald reappears again lower down at the bottom.

The actual eye of Donald is also coming out from behind the leather screen, which was in my room. It’s pictures within pictures within pictures. I’m always aware of the fact that to enjoy a painting you’ve got to read it in the way that you read a book – with verbs and semicolons and things like that and pauses – to get the full force of it. That’s why a Poussin picture is so di cult to enjoy immediately because you’ve really got to work at it.’

ANTHONY GREEN

54 1949, Doing Donald I (opposite) Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 10 ¾ x 13 inches

55 1949, Doing Donald II (above) Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 12 ¾ x 8 ½ inches

ANTHONY GREEN 1948 1948, Master Green and Minnie Mouse ‘The reason that I have given the work this title is because Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck was the 0rst early Green that I had the courage to reproduce in a book about me [Martin Bailey (ed), A Green Part of the World, 1984]. And I have to say that it’s a very naughty title because the alternative, Master Bates and Minnie Mouse, slips o the tongue very easily. I don’t think the viewer’s got to be egged on to that, but it’s people with such twisted minds as mine that would choose the title in the 0rst place!

56 1948, Master Green and Minnie Mouse Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 10 ¼ x 10 ½ inches

I started wearing glasses at the age of seven. My mother was suddenly worried that I couldn’t see things properly, so I got hauled o to an opticians in London and got a pair of National Health specs that made me look like a little English nerd. I’m astigmatic, apparently, and I’ve had them on my nose ever since. I never take them o . It’s never been a hardship wearing spectacles, and as the years have gone by they have become a kind of signature because I use the re ections in the lenses as an artistic device. I’d be lost without my spectacles.

Contact lenses wouldn't cut it.’

ANTHONY GREEN

57 ‘Le French CanCan’, Chez Lissac, c 1954 Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 18 x 15 inches 1954 ‘Le French CanCan’, Chez Lissac, c 1954 ‘Between giving up Mickey Mouse in 1950 and producing Le French CanCan in 1954, I painted invented compositions in gouache at Highgate School. The 0rst of these was of the lying-in-state of George VI, suggested by my teacher, Ky n Williams, and based on a press photograph.

(Along with three or four others, it is now owned by Highgate School.)

I spent Christmas 1954 on holiday in France. By then, I had received a Skira book on Toulouse-Lautrec, which included images of can-can girls and the Moulin Rouge, and inspired me to paint Le French CanCan. As I have failed to track it down, I have had to recreate it from memory, but basically I painted a row of chorus girls based on one of the great Lautrecs. And my optician uncle, Maurice Lissac, was amazed, and said that he was going have it framed and hang it on the wall, which he did. For years and years, it hung in his lounge in the middle of France. He really did encourage me, and his heirs have a collection of about 30 of my very early paintings.

So what you’ve got in the present painting is a little school boy of 14 with a tiny painting of the French cancan, while I’m at the bottom now remembering then.

Toulouse-Lautrec was part of the French connection. It was the fact that I was staying so long in France during the holidays. There was no television, so instead I’d often go to the pictures three times a week, watching all those wonderful movies with actors like Jean Gabin. And, of course, they were very racy compared with some of the English black and white 0lms of the time. They included marvellous sex bombs like Martine Carol and Françoise Arnoul. And that’s what I cut my teeth on.’

ANTHONY GREEN

58 ‘An eye full’, Crantock Beach, 1958 Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 9 ¾ x 9 ¾ inches 1958 ‘An eye full’, Crantock Beach, 1958 ‘We’ve jumped four years to 1958, and courting. I’m a student at the Slade, and Mary’s been there a year. Her parents have invited me to join them, Mary and her sister, Vicky, for their summer holiday at Crantock Beach, near Newquay, in Cornwall.

The painting shows Mary looking at me, her boyfriend, trying to erect a deckchair. Because she and her family were laughing at me, because I was having di culty, I hammed it up. We had all just seen Jacques Tati in Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, which was absolutely marvellous, and he has trouble putting a deckchair up. So what I was doing was not original!

I think that I chose to make this a tondo because Mary was wearing a straw hat, which was round and, in strong sunlight, cast very strong shadows with ickers of light coming through. This provided an opportunity for an outrageous composition. You’ve got the sky and the beach in the distance, with possible impossible vanishing points,

and then, very close up, right round the edge, you’ve got key elements like an outrageously tiny cupid mouth, which could be from an Orson Welles 0lm.

I got the most outrageous swimming costume I could 0nd, which was electric cadmium yellow with blue sides with laces. Men had only just got out of Jantzen knitted woolly ones, and were into what I call Australian budgie smugglers, a male calling card. However, it didn’t occur to me what her parents would think. I thought a swimming costume was a swimming costume.

I can see now that their reason for inviting me down wasn’t necessarily that they approved of me as Mary’s boyfriend, but simply that they didn’t want her sulking for four weeks in Cornwall when she’d rather be with me in London. As a result, she was as happy as Larry, and so was I. My mother was the one who wasn’t happy, because she thought they were being rather dominant. She didn’t make a big deal out of it, but said “They’ve taken you over darling, have they?”

“No, no, mum, don’t worry”, I replied, “I can look after myself”.’

ANTHONY GREEN

59 1958, Courting Display, Crantock Beach, I Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 8 ¼ x 12 inches

1958, Courting Display, Crantock Beach, I ‘The second Crantock scene is a little squarish picture. The leisurely shape is the result of the realisation that you can actually break the rectangle but only a little bit. You don’t have to make a big deal out of it. That a picture is not exactly square has been a running gag in my artistic family.

I could never have produced this painting without those wonderful postcards of beaches by Donald McGill. When I did the drawings for it in my sketch book, I had to struggle, but when I hit it, I thought, “it’s Donald McGill perfect”, and you can’t go any further than him.

This picture also pays attention to the edges. For instance, the sea is going uphill. That’s another thing that’s amused me.

I once did one of Mary at the seaside in France, down near Cannes, and the painting was actually exhibited at the wrong angle with the sea horizontal. Whoever hung it didn’t read the instruction on the back.

However, the shadow by the deckchair has a Bonnard quality to it, and a Bonnard tone. When you see a good shadow that really equals sunshine you don’t forget it.’

ANTHONY GREEN

60 Courting Display, Crantock 58, II Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 12 x 12 inches

ANTHONY GREEN

BONJO!R MONSIE!R SO!TINE: THE ART WORLD OF THE LATE 1950S ‘In 1957, while I was a student at the Slade, I came across a book on Chaïm Soutine [1893-1943] in the reading room. It was a huge discovery. A friend at the Slade, who was very into Bomberg, had introduced us all to German Expressionism – Schmidt-Rotlu , Kirchner – and I became as boring about the School of Paris as he did about the Germans. Through the books I’d read, I understood that Soutine was part of Expressionism in Paris with Modigliani and Pascin, and artists like that.

We were, of course, in the middle of Social Realism. Bratby was being shown at the same gallery that Bomberg would be shown at, the Beaux-Arts. He hadn’t yet been devalued, while American Abstract Expressionism was still a twinkle in everybody’s eye, and hadn’t landed like a steam roller. Of course, I’d been to Paris, and I’d seen Courbet, who was the big Social Realist turn on for me. And an artist who’s completely forgotten now was Bernard Lorjou, who, at the time, was a sort of a French Bratby.

I was also an admirer of Peter Coker, from the time that I saw his huge butcher’s paintings in 1956, on one of my 0rst

trips to the Royal Academy. They were so powerful, the whole way that they were put together. I thought, this is like the French Social Realist stu that I’m used to, and here it was happening in England. It was wonderful.

Soutine’s painting was all wrist and emotion, painted at the speed of thought, how your gut was telling you. It was so 0ercely 0gurative, like 0gurative action painting. Artists weren’t doing that any more. After 1959-60, 0guration was dead in the water. Balthus survived because he was so big they couldn't bury him. Bacon survived because if you’d buried him he’d have dug himself out and eaten you alive, probably as a sort of bonne bouche for breakfast. They were artists that you couldn’t touch. They were beyond murdering.

One forgets that people were being very rude about Picasso.

When Norman Rosenthal put on ‘A New Spirit in Painting’ [at the Royal Academy in 1981], and showed a whole room of late late Picassos, people said that the silly old bugger’s gone over the top. But actually Rosenthal was right. They were just as remarkable as late Titians.’

1958/59 ‘I didn’t discover real Soutine paintings until my visit to Paris in 1959. Before then, I had only seen them in books. However, having seen reproductions of fantastic paintings of chickens hanging up and all sorts of other things, I felt impelled to do the same. So I got my mother to buy a chicken with head, feet and all from the butcher’s in Muswell Hill. We then brought it home to 12 Friars Avenue, Friern Barnet, and I nailed it to my bedroom wall, and painted a picture of it, quite quickly, in the heat of the moment. It probably took me two days. It was 48 inches high and 36 inches wide, and it 0tted into a frame of exactly those dimensions that I’d picked up in a junk shop. So I whipped it into the frame as soon as the paint was touch dry, and said “I’m going to hang this in the dining room”. My mum replied, “alright darling”, so I took down what was hanging already, and hung up the big picture in our small dining room. Meanwhile, mum took the bird down and proceeded to cook it, so that we had roast

chicken for supper. When my stepfather, Stanley Joscelyne, came in to have his evening meal, hanging on the wall of the dining room was a chicken that was bigger than the one that we were eating, strangled and hanging up from a nail!

So there’s the chicken, there’s me – butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth – there’s mum, absolutely unperturbed, and there’s poor Stan. He said, “It’s no good darling. I can’t sit here eating this roast chicken; not with that thing looking at me. I just can’t do it. I’m very sorry”. So I took the painting down.’

ANTHONY GREEN

Chicken Supper I (hunting scenes table mats) ‘This painting shows our dining room at 12 Friars Avenue, an Art Deco house with Crittall windows. I was dressed like that, and Stan wore a business suit when he was going down to direct operations at the family’s wholesale 0sh business at Billingsgate. He had inherited the honour of owning the company that introduced the Dublin Bay Prawn to the London market at the turn of the century.

The table was set with mats that hunting scenes on them, which was, of course, the na est table mat you could have in England. When I was teaching at Highgate School, I would say, “Good morning boys, how many of your families have table mats to eat o of in your dining rooms?” Being a public school, they all had dining rooms. “Any table mats?” “Yes sir”, “yes sir”. “How many have got hunting scenes?”

“Yes sir”, “yes sir”, “yes sir”. And we’d got them too!’

61 Chicken Supper I (hunting scenes table mats) Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions, and dated ‘July/Aug 2019’ on reverse Oil on board 13 x 12 ½ inches

ANTHONY GREEN

Chicken Supper II, 12 Friars Avenue ‘This one’s a variation on a theme. The chicken’s the other way up, hanging by a paw with the head dangling in the bottom right-hand corner.

There are no hunting scenes. I’m looking just as po-faced and Stan’s looking just as furious, but he’s kicking the frame here and upsetting the vase of owers on the table that I’d inherited from my French grandparents, which, eventually, I turned into a piece of sculpture. The dining table also still exists because I turned that into a sculpture as well. The chairs are phoney Jacobean, probably made in 1949, and very uncomfortable!’

62 Chicken Supper II, 12 Friars Avenue Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 18 x 20 inches

ANTHONY GREEN 1959 1959, Galerie Charpentier, Paris ‘When I went to France to stay with my French relatives, I would sometimes spend a week en route in Paris with my father, as a way of he and I having a holiday together. Once I’d got him safely parked in a café, with a double Pernod in front of him, I used to go o and do the galleries, including those like Charpentier in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

In 1959 – on one of those days where the temperature is about 40 degrees – I walked into Charpentier and found a gallery full of Soutines. It was a bolt from the blue, like St Paul on the road to Damascus, because they were so small. I hadn’t had the intelligence to read the small print in the book, so busy was I absorbing the power of the image. There were tiny pictures of choir boys painted with a uidity, icked in paint at the speed of light, and I was absolutely trans0xed.

I thought, my God, I’ve been getting it so wrong. I’ve been painting mine with earth-moving equipment, with Bombergism, and here’s this man ashing it onto pieces of cardboard or lino or canvas, and it was all so liquid and fast and light.

That’s what this painting is about. Round the walls are all the little paintings that I saw in that show at Charpentier. It was a revelation.

That’s me and my strangled chicken, and me again, top right, oating out inspired, with my own resulting version, Plaice with Bottle. That painting still exists, and was exhibited either at the London Group or the Young Contemporaries.’

63 1959, Galerie Charpentier, Paris Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions ‘inc French ag + pole’, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 23 ½ x 21 inches

ANTHONY GREEN 1959, Soldat à la médaille – mais pas d’étoile pour notre jeune artiste Soldat à la médaille is the name of the painting that I’m working on in the picture, of which fragments remain, because it’s been bastardised by me. I gave it away to a brother of a school friend of mine, and it was only returned to me 40 years later. And that is what prompted all this hullabaloo about Soutine and my doing this series of little pictures. It was also speci0cally the catalyst to painting this picture, which is basically saying, “he may have been painting redcoat soldiers in Soutine’s style but he’s not going to win any prizes with it”. There’s no medal for the young artist. In other words, “mais pas d’étoile”, there are no stars – as in a three-star restaurant – for our young artist. “Notre jeune artiste” is a patronising term of a ection. It’s playing on the soldier with the medal and the artist without the star.

There are two further red pictures in the background of the painting: a concierge or lift boy (which I still have) and Soldat e rayé (which was exhibited at the Young Contemporaries or maybe the London Group, and has also come back to the fold). If anyone wants to make a comparison and say, look here’s the picture he’s painted now, you want to see the ones from the 1950s, they were terrible, then you can put up these two and the 0sh from Galerie Charpentier.’

64 1959, Soldat à la médaille – mais pas d'étoile pour notre jeune artiste Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 18 ¼ x 14 ½ inches

ANTHONY GREEN

1960-1 – A YEAR IN PARIS ‘I lodged at the Hôtel Central in Paris in 1960-61, for just under a year, coming backwards and forwards. It was near Les Halles (the French Covent Garden), right in the centre of Paris. It was cheap and small, but so central. It was marvellous.’

65 Jeune Homme, Hôtel Central, Rue Bailly, 3ième Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 11 ½ x 11 ½ inches

Jeune Homme, Hôtel Central, Rue Bailly, 3ième ‘This painting is all to do with the virgin boy, sleeping in Paris.

What you see in the picture is not artistic licence. I pulled the bidet up alongside the single bed, and used to keep my alarm clock and my glasses in it. I could touch the wardrobe, and if I opened the windows they almost touched the bed where the table was. Everything was like that. The erotic painting of the nude is on the table and propped up against the window.

On the bed are the love letters that I’ve just received from Mary. She was on holiday on the Isle of Wight at the time.

So we’ve got these letters arriving with great big colourful Hollywood kiss marks on the back, “sealed with a loving kiss”.’

ANTHONY GREEN

Bidet euri I was sitting in my studio idling away thinking, what am I going to do about being in Paris all by myself in 1960? Then it suddenly dawned on me, why don’t I make the most outrageous thing that I can, which is a vase full of naked women. The only naked women I had seen at the time, of course, were models at the Slade. So the Bidet euri is simply a ight of fancy of that room. There’s a tiny drawing, a very wild drawing for it in my sketch book, and it’s based on that.’

66 Bidet euri Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions, and dated 2019-2020 on reverse Oil on board 14 ¼ x 10 inches

ANTHONY GREEN

67 1960, Bonjour Anthony, Bonsoir M Courbet Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated ’19 and 2019 on reverse Oil on board 8 ½ x 8 ½ inches

1960, Bonjour Anthony, Bonsoir M Courbet ‘This work relates to the painting of the girl on the table in Jeune Homme, which only exists because of one of the best and most outrageous of erotic pictures, Courbet’s The Origin of the World. But then Balthus would not have existed without that painting. We really do owe Courbet a lot. He was very brave and I’d forgive him anything.

This little work is a loose interpretation of that early erotic painting. I’ve merely added the words around it [which allude to Courbet’s 1854 painting, Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet]. The principle is the same. In other words, it’s a tribute to Courbet.’

ANTHONY GREEN

68 !n glaïeul Soutine, Paris, 1960 Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions, and dated 2019 on stretcher Oil on canvas 12 x 12 inches

Un glaïeul Soutine, Paris, 1960 ‘By the time that I had left the reading room at the Slade, I had also 0gured out that Soutine had painted gladioli. So I had to go out and buy a bunch of those owers and see what I could do with them. The only really signi0cant result appears in this little painting. Basically, I painted gladioli in a pot in the room at the Hôtel Central, propped up against

the wardrobe. Now owned by the widow of an old friend of ours in London, it was totally derivative. This was before I had made the breakthrough, in a spurt of energy, and decided that I’m going to paint my girlfriend, and stop being a Soutine clone.’

ANTHONY GREEN

1961 Painting Prawns, Paris, 1961 ‘Very few paintings survive from that Paris period. I either gave them away, burnt them, threw them away or they’ve disappeared into the woodwork.

There’s one, entitled Still Life with Shrimps, which was given by Ky n Williams to the National Museum of Wales. When I was teaching at Highgate School, Ky n mounted an exhibition of art in the common room, and I put that painting in. To my absolute amazement and horror, Ky n bought it for himself. When he died, he donated it to the National Museum of Wales. They already owned one, again thanks to Ky n recommending me.

If I think quite objectively about it, I was capable in those days of making up pictures. I didn’t need to have a bucket of prawns in front of me to paint them. Sitting in my hotel room, I suddenly thought, I’ll paint a picture and, because Soutine had been painting 0sh, that I’d make it a plate of prawns.

The dish isn’t total invention. The Limoges compotier was one owned by my grandparents, which I’d seen and which I then whacked prawns on.

Of course, I was very good at prawns because my mother used to bring them home from Billingsgate on Saturdays for a light lunch. So I just closed my eyes and painted a prawn.

The format is a square that I’ve tilted into a diamond shape. I’m sitting on the bed, and looking into the mirror of the wardrobe, with the table in between. If anything moves out of place, everything will collapse. It’s like painting in a cardboard box.’

ANTHONY GREEN

1962 69 Painting Prawns, Paris, 1961 (opposite) Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2019 on stretcher Oil on canvas 16 ½ x 16 ½ inches

70 1962, Doing the Vosges – on to Colmar Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 7 x 17 inches

1962, Doing the Vosges – on to Colmar ‘Mary and I are now newlyweds, a year after we have married.

We were on our way to Colmar to see the Matthias Grünewald [The Isenheim Altarpiece, 1512-16], and en route we did the Vosges, and we went to Strasbourg as well, where the choucroute is cooked in champagne and brandy, which is very nice. However, though this looks like a lot of fun, the weather was appalling.

The wind’s howling and we’re getting wet, and the headlights are on in the middle of the day. We didn’t have the hood up or anything as we whistled along at 25 miles an hour in the tiny little Austin 7 Special. Talk about Mary being a good sport!’

ANTHONY GREEN

71 Carennac, 1963 – un pipi d'urgence à l'aube Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 9 ¾ x 11 ¾ inches

Carrenac, 1963 – un pipi d’urgence à l’aube ‘In 1963, we toured the Lot, the Tarn and the Garonne, visiting Romanesque churches – and the small church at Carennac had got a particularly interesting tympanum. Monsieur Le Comte owned the bed and breakfast that went with the church, but when we got there, there was no room at the inn. It was known to the artistic fraternity, and had obviously been booked up months in advance. The man who ran it was very nice, and said, “if you go down into the village, Madame Laverne rents out rooms”. Well Madame Laverne was, in fact, a V8 supercharged French peasant in black and small print, who insisted on kicking all her chickens out so that we could put our 1938 Morris 10 in the chicken run. I couldn’t stop her doing it. And the bedroom … talk about a sociological event. There was a lampshade hanging over the bed that had got little 1920 French co ee bean decorations on them, which in itself was really rather charming. However,

these were super-coated with second-hand y droppings.

And Mary, being 5 foot 11, brushed her head across this thing every time she climbed into bed. And it was a roasting summer.

We’d had a con t d’oie in the local café the night before and put down lashings of alcohol. So sleeping was complicated, the lavatory arrangements were complicated, and the whole thing was deliciously embarrassing on every level.

At dawn Mary needed to go and have a leak. So she had to go in what was her trousseau nightie, with her torch, down through the vegetable patch of French beans etcetera to the wooden hut and the ra a ring, which can be in this little painting. Had she been married to a less demanding husband, she’d have been in a comfortable bed in a suite in Biarritz!

That’s how we used to spend out summer holidays until the children turned up.’

ANTHONY GREEN

1948/2019 1948, Donald Speeding ‘This is simply me, married and old in 2019, distantly remembering having drawn Donald in his motor car in pencil and wax crayon in 1948. I have made a painting of myself now holding the original drawing. I don’t have that drawing – somebody else owns it – so I had to reinvent it.’

72 1948, Donald Speeding Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 10 x 8 ¾ inches

ANTHONY GREEN

73 The studio, red-eyed Donald, the artist going up to Heaven wearing thermal socks Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in inches, and dated 2019 on reverse Oil on board 14 x 9 ½ inches

)

1948-?

The studio, red-eyed Donald, the artist going up to Heaven wearing thermal socks ‘The last in the series shows me going up to Heaven in my thermal socks, which I wear to help my circulation. And, as I don’t know where heaven is, I am blind, without eyes.

Donald is sweeping out the muck of the studio, and has red eyes because he’s in mourning. The old boy’s dead, long live the new king, whoever that may be.

That’s the table again. And I am aware of the fact that this series of paintings does actually go full circle because they go right the way back to Disney, and are also cartoony in themselves. They are as cartoony as most of the pro0les in Picasso’s Guernica. It’s how you read things. If you put up your hand and admit you were in uenced by Walt Disney, people are going to say it was his high spot, after that he went downhill all the way!’

ANTHONY GREEN

74 !RC/The Ghost I Signed, inscribed with title and medium, and dated 1995 and 95 on reverse Oil on board 30 ¼ x 32 ¾ inches Literature: Martin Bailey (ed), Anthony Green: Painting Life, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2017, Catalogue Raisonné No AG381 Exhibited: Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 1998, No 640

ANTHONY GREEN

75 A Gardener’s Palette Signed and dated 06 Signed, inscribed with title, medium and dimensions, and dated 2006 Oil on board 39 x 48 inches Literature: Martin Bailey (ed), Anthony Green: Painting Life, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2017, Catalogue RaisonnÊ No AG472

ANTHONY GREEN

WORKS TO BE EXCLUSIVELY EXHIBITED IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION 6 OCTOBER 2020 – 3 JANUARY 2021

PETER KUHFE LD

PE TE R K HFE L D Peter H Kuhfeld, RP NEAC (born 1952) Peter Kuhfeld maintains the strong traditions of the New English Art Club in capturing the play of light and eeting experience through a cool-toned palette and a handling that, though broad, incorporates telling detail. While he has developed a reputation as a distinguished portrait painter, his atmospheric oils encompass a range of subjects that includes landscapes, townscapes and interiors.

Peter Kuhfeld was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, on 4 March 1952, the only child of Heinrich Kuhfeld, who had been a German prisoner of war, and Petronella (née de Blois Rowe), an English classical pianist.

Between 1972 and 1976, Kuhfeld studied art at the City of Leicester Polytechnic. He then taught drawing and painting at Rugby School of Art in the years 1976-78, securing a place at the Royal Academy Schools in 1977. Studying there under Peter Greenham, he garnered an impressive number of awards: the David Murray Landscape Scholarship (1978-79), the Eric Kennington Prize for Drawings (1978-79), the RA Silver Medal for Drawing (1979), the Royal College of Surgeons’ Dooley Prize for Anatomical Drawing (1980), an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Scholarship (1980-81) and the Richard Ford Award (1981). He was also made a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers in 1978.

In the same year, he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions. He taught drawing and painting at the RA Schools in 1981.

In 1980, Kuhfeld married Cathryn Showan, a fellow student of the RA Schools and, by 1982, they had settled at 15 Sinclair Mansions, Richmond Way, Shepherd’s Bush. They would have two daughters. During the 1980s, Kuhfeld established his reputation through contributions to mixed exhibitions and then by holding his 0rst solo shows. Mixed exhibitions included those at the New Grafton Gallery, London, the Jonleigh Gallery, Guildford, and the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol. His earliest solo shows were held at the Highgate Gallery from 1983, though it was a joint show with Christine Ga at the Grafton Gallery in 1985 that proved a particular breakthrough, and led to his election to the New English Art Club in 1986. He held a solo show at the New Grafton Gallery in 1986, and became one of the artists of the New Grafton’s Portrait Centre, which had the aim of ‘putting artists, sculptors and their potential sitters in touch with one another’.

In September 1985, the art historian and collector, Sir Brinsley Ford, invited Kuhfeld to submit some of his paintings for

consideration by Prince Charles, and suggested that he should include examples that demonstrated his ability in painting children. As a result he received a commission to paint the portraits of Princes William and Harry, and would later paint the Prince of Wales himself. In 1987, Ford included work by Kuhfeld in the exhibition, ‘A Personal Choice’, held during the King’s Lynn Festival. Around that time, Kuhfeld began to show at an increasing range of mixed exhibitions, including those at W H Patterson and ‘The Discerning Eye’, held at the Mall Galleries, both in London. At the end of the decade, he and his family moved to Wye, in Kent, and settled at The Corner House, pper Bridge Street.

In 1990, Kuhfeld accompanied the Prince and Princess of Wales on tours of Africa (speci0cally Nigeria, Cameroon and Tunisia) and Japan. Some of the resulting works were included in a signi0cant solo show held at Agnew’s, London, in 1991.

He accompanied the Prince of Wales on further tours, to Poland (1993) and the Middle East (Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia in 2004), and both the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 2010). In 1998, his work was included in two exhibitions on the theme of royal patronage: ‘Princes as Patrons’, held at the National Gallery of Wales, Cardi , and ‘Travels with the Prince’, held at Hampton Court Palace. In 2012, the Prince of Wales commissioned him to paint the royal wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

In 1992, Kuhfeld was elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. In 2019, his painting The Executive Chef was awarded both the society’s Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture and its Gold Medal for the most distinguished portrait of the year.

In 2004, Kuhfeld was awarded the Freedom of the City of London. In the same year, he held a joint show with his wife, Cathryn, at the New Grafton Gallery. During the same period, he held exhibitions at Roy Petley Fine Art, in both London and Monte Carlo.

His work is represented in the collections of several National Trust properties, including Antony, in Cornwall (which contains portraits of members of the Carew Pole family).

PETER KUHFELD

76 Still Life with Titian Signed Inscribed with title on stretcher Oil on canvas 18 x 20 inches

PETER KUHFE LD

77 Alexandra Signed Oil on canvas 30 x 24 inches Exhibited: BP Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, June-October 2000

PETER KUHFELD

78 Portrait of a Young Woman Wearing a Brown Coat Signed Oil on board 20 x 15 inches

PETER KUHFE LD

79 Portrait of a Girl in a Red Cardigan Signed Oil on canvas 18 x 14 inches

PETER BROWN

PE TER B ROW N Peter Edward Mackenzie Brown, HonRBA ROI RP PNEAC PS (born 1967) While the practice of many artists is described as en plein air, Peter Brown really does do most of his painting outside. He sets up his easel in all weathers and happily works among people and directly from the subject, in a vigorous impressionist style. Even when completing larger canvases in the studio, he never refers to photographs, but utilises the charcoal drawings, pastels and smaller paintings that he has made on site. He is probably best known for his views of British cities, including London, Cardi and Edinburgh – and especially his adopted home of Bath. However, his range is wide, and he has engaged with the cli s and beaches of the West Country and Brittany, a number of European cities, and many more distant locations.

Recently, he has also developed an interest in painting interiors. And, whether he is working inside or out, he always instils his canvases with a dynamic sense of life, for he is interested in people as well as places, and is equally skilled as a portraitist.

Since 2018, he has further demonstrated his empathy and sociability as a highly successful President of the New English Art Club. He has acknowledged fellow members, Tom Coates and Ken Howard, as among his inspirations.

Chris Beetles Gallery is pleased to be exhibiting the work of Peter for the rst time.

Peter Brown was born in Reading, Berkshire, on 28 July 1967, the son of Geo rey Brown and his wife, Julia (nĂŠe Blakiston). He grew up in the hamlet of Oare and was educated at Presentation College, a Catholic school in Reading. He studied art at ‘A’ Level, and though, by his own admission, was the weakest of the 0ve students taking the subject, managed to secure a place on the diploma course in Art Foundation Studies at Bath College of Higher Education.

His teachers – David Atkinson, David Cobb and Jackie Harding – encouraged him out of the studios and onto the streets in order to paint from life; as a result, he engaged for the 0rst time with the city’s distinct architectural character and the way that people interacted with it. On completing his diploma in 1987, he was awarded a commendation in painting.

Though ‘his ambition’ at the time ‘was to get an HGV licence, and take to the road’ (Tina Rowe, West Country Life, 28 September 2013), Peter went to Manchester Polytechnic to study for a BA in Fine Art. He assumed that he was going to be a Modernist and, during the three years of his degree,

focussed on abstraction. On graduating, he remained in the city, and continued in the same vein for two years, painting in an old mill building in Ancoats, and supporting himself by working at the Mattessons Wall’s sausage factory in Tra ord.

Then, in 1992, he moved to Eltham, in London, to take a PGCE in Further Education.

In 1993, Peter returned to Bath, where, virtually giving up painting, he took a job with a 0rm that installed television aerials. Despite his su ering from vertigo, the time that he spent up on the roofs gave him a fresh perspective on the city. Soon, he began to make charcoal drawings of its buildings and of the life that went on around them. Working solely in that medium for a couple of years, he eventually returned to painting in oils and, in 1995, began to exhibit regularly at the Bath Society of Artists and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (soon becoming a member of both).

In 1996, Peter married Lisa O’Donovan in Bath. They have continued to live in the city, and have had 0ve children together.

In the same year, he won his 0rst prize, the Non-Members Award of The Pastel Society; he has since shown with the society regularly, has become a member, and has won both its Tom Rice Gallery Award (in 1998) and its Arts Club Award (in 2001).

The late 1990s were signi0cant years for Peter, as he began to establish his reputation by contributing to a wide range of mixed shows, including those mounted by leading societies.

He started to exhibit at the Royal Society of British Artists (winning the St Cuthberts Mill Award in 1997), the Royal West of England Academy (winning the Bristol Fine Art Oil Painting Prize in 1998) and especially the New English Art Club (being elected a member in 1998). It was in 1998 that he met the NEAC member, Peter Kuhfeld, on the streets of Bath, who then introduced him to the dealer, Bill Patterson.

Peter held his 0rst solo show in the year 2000, at Bath’s prestigious Victoria Art Gallery. An ideal showcase for his scenes of the city, it has since hosted another eight of his solo shows. Exhibiting at W H Patterson Fine Arts, in London, from the same year, he was given solo shows there in 2002 and 2003. In 2004, he held the 0rst of 14 solo shows at Messum’s, which had as its theme the course of the Thames from source to city (as he explained in the 0rst of a series of occasional articles for the magazine, The Artist). The capital remained important to him as both an art centre and a subject, as he began to show at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2002-4, 2006, 2008, 2010-11) and became the 0rst Artist-in-Residence at the Savoy Hotel (2006). By taking on that position, he followed in the footsteps of Whistler and Monet, both of whom had worked from the hotel during the late nineteenth century. He also expanded his repertoire by painting in Cardi and Edinburgh, and exhibiting the resulting

PETER BROWN

works in two-man shows at the Albany Gallery, Cardi

(2006 & 2010), and a solo show with Alexander Meddowes in Edinburgh (2009). Nevertheless, Bath remained the place closest to his heart as he demonstrated with the publication of Brown’s Bath (2008), a chronicle of his 0rst 15 years of drawing and painting in that city. While best known as a painter of landscapes and townscapes, he also developed his talent for portraiture and, in 2008, began to exhibit with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (of which he is now a member).

During the decade, Peter garnered a number of prizes, including the W H Patterson Memorial Award (2000), the Arts Club Award (2002) and the Critics’ Choice (2009) (all at the New English Art Club), and also the Drawing Prize (Hunting Art Prize, 2005), the Cross Gate Gallery Purchase Prize (2005), the Prince of Wales Award for Portrait Drawing (2008) and The Arts Club Award (Royal Institute of Oil Painters, 2008).

In 2012, Peter was encouraged by his artist friend, Patrick Cullen, to join him and some other painters on a working trip to daipur in Rajasthan. This resulted in a joint exhibition at the Tryon Gallery, London, and a book, entitled My Indian Travels (both 2013). It also sparked a wide range of further foreign painting trips. These have included one to Varanasi in

2015, in the company of Patrick Cullen, Ken Howard and Neale Worley, the results of which were shown in a group show later that year at Indar Pasricha Fine Arts, London.

Others, arranged by the magazine, The Artist, have seen him lead groups of students to such destinations as Cuba and Vietnam.

Peter has continued to exhibit widely and to gain prizes. His work has been the Critics’ Choice on a further 0ve occasions at the New English Art Club, and also won the NEAC’s Winsor & Newton Award in 2017. Other of his awards include the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers Prize (2011) and The Le Clerc Fowle Medal (Royal Institute of Oil Painters, 2013).

Peter has published two further books, both with Sansom & Co: London: Paintings by Peter Brown (2015) and Bath: Paintings

by Peter Brown (2018). Recently, he has developed an increasing interest in painting interiors as well as exteriors.

In 2018, Peter was elected President of the New English Art Club.

PETER BROWN

80 The Rockabilly, Portobello Road (opposite) Signed and dated ’18 Oil on canvas 15 ½ x 19 ½ inches

81 Autumn, Richmond Bridge (above) Signed and dated ’19 Dated ‘5th + 6th November 2019’ on reverse Oil on canvas 19 ½ x 24 ½ inches Exhibited: ‘The New English Art Club at Chris Beetles Gallery’, February 2020, No 23

PETER BROWN

82 End of the Day, Primrose Hill Signed Oil on canvas 19 ¾ x 44 inches

PETER BROWN

PETER BROWN

83 Little Venice, Twilight Signed and dated 05 Oil on canvas 19 ½ x 49 ½ inches

PETER BROWN

PETER BROWN

84 Rain, Lower Regent Street (above) Oil on canvas 29 ½ x 29 ½ inches Exhibited: ‘The New English Art Club at Chris Beetles Gallery’, February 2020, No 21

85 Winter Sun and Christmas Tree, Lower Regent Street (opposite) Signed and dated ’19 Oil on canvas, 24 ½ x 19 inches Exhibited: ‘The New English Art Club at Chris Beetles Gallery’, February 2020, No 22

PETER BROWN

PETER BROWN

86 April from Tower Bridge Signed and dated ’14 Oil on canvas 30 x 30 inches

PETER BROWN

Waterloo Bridge to the City 2014 (top) Signed and dated ’14 Oil on canvas 12 x 40 inches

Hammersmith, Early Morning Sun (above centre) Signed Oil on board 8 x 24 inches

Beginning of Twilight, Hammersmith Houseboats (right) Signed and dated ’20 Oil on board 11 ½ x 15 ½ inches

PETER BROWN

PETER BROWN Shaftesbury Avenue (opposite above) Signed and dated ’17 Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches

Downtown Afternoon, City Hall Park, New York (opposite below) Signed and dated ’17 Oil on board 8 x 24 inches Exhibited: ‘Peter Brown: Bath Is It’, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, November 2019-February 2020

The Backs, Cambridge (above) Signed and dated ’18 Oil on board 12 x 16 inches

Morning, the Path, Jesus Green, Cambridge (above right) Signed and dated ’19 Oil on board 6 x 12 inches

Primrose Hill, Leading up to Lockdown (right) Signed and dated ’20 Oil on board 10 x 12 inches

C H R I S B E E TLE S GALLE RY 8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com www.chrisbeetles.com