MARY NEWCOMB
MARY NEWCOMB CRANE KALMAN GALLERY LTD 178 Brompton Road, London SW3 1HQ Tel: +44 (0)20 7584 7566 / +44 (0)20 7225 1931 www.cranekalman.com / info@cranekalman.com
An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and watercolours by
MARY NEWCOMB (1922-2008) 12th APRIL – 26th JUNE 2021
CRANE KALMAN GALLERY LTD 178 Brompton Road, London SW3 1HQ Tel: +44 (0)20 7584 7566 / +44 (0)20 7225 1931 www.cranekalman.com / info@cranekalman.com
© Compton Verney Art Gallery and Park
Running concurrently with our Mary Newcomb exhibition, Compton Verney Art Gallery and Park in Warwickshire will host a retrospective of the artist’s work, entitled Mary Newcomb: Nature’s Canvas. Compton Verney is a Grade I-listed Georgian mansion set amidst 120 acres of rolling parkland designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. It is home to six exceptional collections - from Chinese Bronzes (1500 BC to 220 AD) to British Historical Portraiture, Neapolitan Art (1600-1800) to British Folk Art - The Collection of Mr & Mrs. Andras Kalman, all acquired by The Peter Moores Foundation and the late Sir Peter Moore CBE, who purchased Compton Verney in 1993 to showcase his divergent collections. Mary Newcomb: Nature’s Canvas will run from 18th May - 5th September 2021 in association with Crane Kalman Gallery and along with paintings, will feature preparatory sketches, writings from Newcomb’s diaries and works by artists she admired - Milton Avery, L.S. Lowry, Winifred Nicholson and Stanley Spencer. Mary Newcomb
The quotes in this catalogue are taken from Mary’s diary between 1986 and 1988.
MARY NEWCOMB
On my desk is a drawing by Mary Newcomb: “Burnished insect on my book.” It’s unlike any drawing of an insect I’ve ever seen but then again, it’s unlike any drawing I’ve ever seen. When I look at it I feel refreshed. It’s what she does. Her drawings are like rinses for the mind and eyes. Every Mary Newcomb work is an intervention in her own time, in her own history, and in our own time but it’s the most delicate of interventions. Her vision stops her subjectnot dead in its tracks but alive in its tracks. Even buildings and churches seem to have been imbued with a living spirit when she snares them with pen and brush. On a nearby wall in my room hangs a watercolour of a small black self-important dog bustling over a wooden bridge. She draws this delightful mutt three times over on its journey and I swear you can track every step and smell on its way although the detail is not laid down. This is not understatement, it’s the essence of what’s happening here and now, so her work asks for the quality of attention as does a poem. Think of Gerard M Hopkins and his view of All things counter, original, spare, strange. She was the consummate observer and an immaculate draughtswoman who could play tricks with perspective and scale and architecture and show a new way of looking, like say William Blake and John Clare could, and it’s no coincidence that the two artists I cite had an innocence to their startling vision. If you read Clare’s poem, about his watching a bird: Little trotty wagtail, he went in the rain, And tittering, tottering sideways he near got straight again,” -that’s her, that’s Mary, she saw that too, every last titter and totter. She saw it in Goat’s Tent, Fresh food arriving.
French Sunday, 1968 Oil on board 24 x 21 ¾ inches / 61 x 55.2 cm Signed and dated lower right
And Blake’s line: and I made a rural pen and I stained the water clear! This paradox is also how she works. It may be rural but her pen and line is slyly sophisticated and she stains everything startlingly clear. Look at that audacious painting French Sunday--- people streaming from a building from both sides- what is that black building? a chapel silhouetted against a steep hill? and viewed through variegated laurel leaves .. it doesn’t make sense but it makes for a joyous French Sunday. She draws and paints churches and woods and flowers and sees them new every time and then drops the image for us — like an elegant cat. Take it or leave it. She had no toleration of the superfluous and though her drawings and painting are whetted, they are never sharp— they’re always full of tenderness and humour and are uncannily telling. And she was so witty- that’s rare- without ever losing the intensity of attention, the seriousness of what she was seeing—the miracle in front of her—so manifest say in Ivy leaves at Walpole or the man inevitably and silently watching swans, or the enchanting An Outing to See the Seals (and somehow, too, she can turn and give a begonia a slightly menacing quality. ) She doesn’t take liberties --fields, fences, water, buildings, animals – are all their true own and all hers and now ours to marvel at. These past months have disrupted our lives and our habits and curtailed our excursions into the natural world. Looking at these pictures is like finding oneself out again in, in all senses, in a unique world stained clear and full of promise.
Polly Devlin OBE
MARY NEWCOMB: A DISTINGUISHED ODDNESS
If general curiosity is what makes us look at pictures, it is a particular point of interest in a painting that makes it truly memorable. With Mary Newcomb the particular interest factor is usually quite evident: a noticeable disparity of scale, an awkwardness of drawing, a lyrical use of colour, an exact but surprising observation, or any combination of these. Her paintings are distinctive and highly personal, but they are, above all, real. She always aimed to make an image that she herself could believe in. She invites us to do the same. Newcomb was blessed with endless curiosity about the world and the way people and animals behave. She loved festivities and markets, the life of the countryside being lived by its inhabitants. And yet hers are not narrative pictures. Ben Nicholson, who was an admirer of Newcomb’s work, wrote: ‘so many of these are imaginative ideas and not pictures’. Imagination acted upon observation like yeast, and gave rise to images of a distinguished oddness. Her art was a kind of dialogue with herself. It required both sophistication and self-belief to disregard perspective and scale in the way Newcomb did. She studied Natural Sciences (including Botany, Zoology and Chemistry) at Reading University (1940-3) and then taught science and mathematics at Bath High School for six years, attending evening classes at the nearby Corsham Court
art school. Her first exhibited works were in pottery, but as she gradually gained belief in her painting and drawing, two-dimensional work took over. Her first exhibition of paintings with Crane Kalman was in 1970, and her work has been represented by the gallery ever since. Newcomb emphasised the importance of standing still and looking. Hers was a naturalist’s eye, focused on detailed notetaking: place, time and type of country, weather conditions, precise description (written or drawn) of what she actually saw. In fact, she wrote a great deal, and was happier keeping a diary than a sketchbook, while her drawings tended to be on odd fragments of paper, anything to hand. Her unclouded vision is direct and to the point, easily accessible, painted with clarity but not photographically. These images come from the heart. She was self-taught like another great naturalist-painter, John Nash, which accounts for the spontaneity of her work and its lack of constraint by rules. She wasn’t fulfilling anyone’s expectations but her own, she was simply recording what she saw or remembered, interpreted through the prism of her imagination and emotions. Titles were important; often equally as evocative and poetic as the pictures — and quite likely to be bestowed before the painting was actually begun, which reinforces Ben
Nicholson’s belief that many of Newcomb’s paintings were ‘imaginative ideas’. She wrote of looking for something she expected to find, and then painting it. The rational scientific approach was in her married with the intuitive and lyrical. In her work there is a dialogue between particularity and disguise: natural camouflage vies with identifying detail. Thus her paintings are frequently composed of swarms and thickets of brushstrokes, as if driven by some elemental force. Her paintings evolved slowly in the studio with a distinctive economy of gesture. She started with an atmospheric spread of colour, pre-painted on a canvas. That prepared underpainting penetrated the imagery, mingling background with foreground, influencing the whole picture in a formal dance which emanates vitality through awkwardness, drawing energy from apparent gaucheness. There remains something slightly rickety or incomplete about her drawing, but curiously enough, this only imparts vigour to it. As regards size, things are drawn according to their importance in the artist’s mind, not in terms of their usual relationship to what surrounds them. There is sometimes a dream-like quality to the imagery, an unexpectedly other-worldly air for pictures so tied to observation, which reveals the meditative side to Newcomb. As she wrote, she was ‘trying to say something about peace
and calm and space around oneself ’. Hers was a very practical approach and she wasn’t much interested in theory, though she greatly enjoyed the work of artists she admired from the past. Her shapes, for all their occasional oddness, are arresting, memorable. Her colour is often beautiful, beguiling. Each drawing was an experiment for this artist who shunned preconceptions and readymade solutions. An experiment and an exercise in discovery: drawing as a means of finding out about things. Towards the end of his life, that great art critic Robert Hughes called for a slow art to counter all the fast art that was clogging up museums and galleries. He defined it thus: ‘art that holds time as a vase holds water; art that grows out of modes of perception and making, whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks on to something deep-running in our natures.’ This is the kind of art that Mary Newcomb made, and that we celebrate in this exhibition.
Andrew Lambirth - writer, curator and critic January 2021
Bridge with Waterlilies, 1979 Oil on board 25 x 24 inches / 63.5 x 61 cm Signed and dated lower right
The Jester Dog, 1980 Oil on board 10 ¾ x 15 inches / 27.2 x 38.1 cm
Warm Evening, Le Lavandou, 1989 Oil on board 14 x 15 ¾ inches / 35.5 x 40 cm Signed and dated lower right
Goat Tent, Fresh Food Arriving, 1993 Oil on canvas 28 x 36 inches / 71.1 x 91.1 cm Signed and dated lower right
Man in a Hat Watching Swans
Ewe with Two Lambs
Pencil and Watercolour on Paper, 7 x 6 inches / 15 ½ x 17 cm Signed lower right
Pencil on paper 4 ¼ x 5 ¾ inches / 10.5 x 10.25 cm
Houses with Telegraph Wire Pencil and watercolour on paper 6 x 5 ¼ inches / 15 x 13.5 cm Signed lower right
Ivy Berries at Walpole Watercolour and pencil on paper 5 x 8 inches / 12.7 x 20.3cm Signed lower right
“The morning sun was orange – yellow in the middle of the day – burning to a white with blue floating patches – apricot in the evening.This seems to be a feature of east Anglia or areas of clear air near the sea.” 28th August
“Go to France slowly if possible.Very slowly and peacefully” 8th September
“I draw in two ways either travelling on buses and trains or sitting in one particular place and drawing anything that happens.” 15th August
Garden Above the Sea, Le Lavandou, 1990 Oil on canvas 28 ¼ x 22 ¼ inches / 71.6 x 56.5 cm Signed and dated lower right Exhibited: Mary Newcomb’s Odd Universe, A Memorial Exhibition, Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, 9th May - 28th June 2009, travelled to Crane Kalman Gallery, London 17th September - 31st October 2009.
Birdcage at the Railway Station, 1980 Oil on board 24 x 24 inches / 61.5 x 61.5 cm Signed and dated lower right
An Outing to See the Seals, Blakeney, 1994 Oil on canvas 40 ½ x 45 inches / 112.8 x 114.3 cm Signed and dated lower right Exhibited: Mary Newcomb’s Odd Universe, A Memorial Exhibition, Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, 9th May - 28th June 2009, travelled to Crane Kalman Gallery, London 17th September - 31st October 2009 Mary Newcomb, Pier Art Centre, Stromness, Orkney, June - July 1995
Swan on the Marshes,The Waveney, Suffolk Border, 1980 Oil on canvas 24 x 34 inches / 61 x 86.3 cm Signed and dated lower right On display at Compton Verney Art Gallery
Goats in the Greenwood, 2000 Oil on board 12 ½ x 15 ½ inches / 32 x 39 cm
The Old Greenhouse at Spottiswood (Tropaeolum Against the Yew Hedge), 1988 Oil on board 12 x 12 inches / 30 x 30 cm Signed and dated lower right
The Apple Tree, (Lady Sudeley variety) 1992 Oil on canvas 19 ½ x 20 inches / 49.5 x 50.8 cm Signed and dated lower right Titled, signed and dated verso
Red and Yellow Tulips, 1998 Oil on board 23 x 18 inches / 58 x 46 cm Signed and dated lower right
“Dandelions now outshine the sun.”
Too much these Dandelion Lands, 1974 Oil on board 22 ¾ x 27 ¾ inches / 57.8 x 70.5 cm Signed and dated lower right
15th April
“Keep in mind how men carry colour, how animals carry green, how green invades, overwhelms and then recedes at the end of the year” 13th February
Young Men Bathing, 1977 Oil on board 16 x 20 ½ inches / 40.5 x 52 cm Signed and dated lower right
Man Running through a Forest, 1979 Oil on board 24 x 28 inches / 61 x 71 cm
Night Moths Going Up, 1972 Oil on board 23 ½ x 23 ½ inches / 60 x 60 cm Signed and dated lower right
“There is a small tin chapel near here – in a lane, a small, narrow lane where few people walk. Everything is green – the corrugated walls and roof are green but flaked and the flaking shows a patchwork of pale blue.There is a tin patch near the apex of flecked dull blue and white.The same as – and mirroring – the clouds – on this particular evening.” 26th August
Chapel of the Green Light, 1999
Chapel of the Green Light, 2000
Pencil and wash on paper 8 x 10 ½ inches / 20 x 26.5 cm Initialed lower right
Oil on board 22 x 24 inches / 55.9 x 61 cm Signed and dated lower right
Roe Deer disturbed while looking for New Green Shoots, 1996
Ascension Day, Dear Lord, 1972
Oil on canvas 23 x 25 inches / 58.5 x 63.5 cm On display at Compton Verney Art Gallery
Oil on board 24 ¼ x 23 inches / 61.5 x 58.4 cm Signed and dated lower right
Country Chapel, 1973
The Sun is a Lantern, 1983
Oil on board 28 ¾ x 30 ¾ inches / 73 x 78 cm Signed and dated lower right
Oil on board 18 x 24 inches / 45.7 x 61 cm Signed and dated lower right
Birds Scattering around a Tree, 1988 Oil on canvas 50 x 66 inches / 127 x 167.6 cm On display at Compton Verney Art Gallery
BIOGRAPHY
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
1922
Mary Slatford born in Harrow-on-the Hill
Tate Gallery, London
1970
1995
1933-40
Attends Trowbridge High School
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich
First one man show at Crane Kalman Gallery, London
1940-44
Reading University, B.Sc. Natural Sciences, and an Education Diploma
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Norwich
Vaccarino Gallery, Florence, Italy
University of Nottingham, Nottingham
1972
Crane Kalman Gallery, London
1944-50
Teaches Science and Maths at Bath High School
The Ingram Collection of Modern and British Art, London
1973
Galerie Delpire, Paris, France Crane Kalman Gallery, London
exhibits at Crane Kalman Gallery, London
Northampton Museums and Art Gallery, Northampton
From 1970
Crane Kalman Gallery, London
Marries Godfrey Newcomb, a farmer and later a potter. Lived at Mill Farm, Needham, in Suffolk’s Waveney Valley with daughters Hannah and Tessa
Ipswich Art Gallery, Ipswich
1975
1950-71
Pembroke College Oxford, JCR Art Collection, Oxford
1976
Crane Kalman Gallery, London
1996-1997 Mary Newcomb a Retrospective, travelled to Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria 1st October - 10th November 1996, Schoolhouse Gallery, Bath, England, 15th November - 31st December 1996, Kings Lynn Art Centre, Norfolk, 15th January - 25th February 1997, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 1st March 1st April 1997
Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster
Galerie de Beerenburght, Eckenwiel, Holland
1999
Newport Museum and Art Gallery, Newport
Galerie Kusten, Gothenburg
Djanogly Art Gallery, The University of Nottingham, England
Pier Art Centre, Stromness
1977
Galerie de Beerenburght, Amsterdam
2001
Fermoy Art Gallery, Kings Lynn, England
Two Lyrical Painters,Winifred Nicholson and Mary Newcomb, Crane Kalman Gallery, London
1979
LYC Gallery, Cumbria, England (with Winifred Nicholson)
Atkinson Museum, Southport, England
Annexe Gallery, London
Crane Kalman Gallery, London
Galerie de Beerenburght, Amsterdam
1981
Fermoy Art Gallery, Kings Lynn, England
Galerie de Beerenburght, Amsterdam
1982
Crane Kalman Gallery, London
Bath Contemporary Art Fair, Bath, England
1983
Mercury Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
1984
Galerie Nanky de Vreeze, Amsterdam
1985
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, England
Galerie XX, Hamberg
Graham Modern Gallery, New York
1987
Beaux Arts Gallery, Bath, England
1988
Crane Kalman Gallery, London
1992
‘The Rural poetry of Three English Women Artists’ (Mary Newcomb, Winifred Nicholson, Mary Potter), Crane Kalman Gallery, London
1951-63
Member of the Norfolk & Norwich Art Circle
1971-81
Lives at Woodfarm, Linstead Magna, Suffolk. In 1981 received award from Eastern Arts Association 3 Artists Award Scheme
1981-1999
Lives at Rush Meadow, Newton Flotman, outside Norwich.
1987
The Contemporary Arts Society acquires a painting; the Arts Council of Great Britain acquires two paintings.
1996-1997
A fully illustrated monograph by Christopher Andreae is published by Crane Kalman Gallery in association with Lund Humphries. The Tate Gallery, London acquires a large painting entitled People Walking Amongst Small Sandhills
1999
Live at Farthings, Peasonhall, Suffolk
2003
Godfrey dies in April
2003
Mary has a stroke in October and is no longer able to paint
2006
Christopher Andreae’s monograph is reprinted
2008
Mary dies on 29th March
2018
A fully illustrated monograph entitled Mary Newcomb:Drawing from Observation by William Packer is published by Crane Kalman Gallery in association with Lund Humphries
Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney Islands, Scotland
2003-2004 Mary Newcomb, Crane Kalman Gallery, London 18th November 2003 - 17th January 2004 2006
Mary Newcomb, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 17th November - 23rd December 2006
2009
Mary Newcomb’s Odd Universe, A Memorial Exhibition, Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, 9th May - 28th June 2009, travelled to Crane Kalman Gallery, London 17th September - 31st October 2009
2013
Mary Newcomb, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 25th April - 1st June 2013
2016
Mary Newcomb, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 7th April - 1st May 2016
2018
Mary Newcomb: Drawing from Observation, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 20th September – 3rd November 2018
2021
Mary Newcomb: Nature’s Canvas, Compton Verney Art Gallery and Park,Warwickshire 2nd April – 18th July
MUSEUMS AND PUBLIC GALLERIES THAT HAVE ACQUIRED PAINTINGS FROM CRANE KALMAN GALLERY
Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland
The Felton Bequest, Melbourne, Australia
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, USA
Baltimore Museum of Art, USA
Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany
Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland
The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn., USA
University Art Museum, Berkley, California, USA
Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA Dundee Art Gallery, Dundee, Scotland
The Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art, Cornell University, New York, USA
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, USA
Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf, Germany
The Louvre, Paris, France
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries, Glasgow, Scotland
Touchstones Rochdale Art Gallery, Rochdale, England
Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum, Japan
Museum of Art, Sao Paulo, Brazil
The City Art Gallery, Leicester, England
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Musée des Beaux Arts, Le Havre, France
National Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England
The Museum of Everything, London, England
The Tate Gallery, London, England
The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA
Arts Council of Great Britain, London, England
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Imperial War Museum, London, England
Museum of London, London, England
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, England
City Art Gallery, Manchester, England
Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, England
Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, Manchester, England
Front Cover:
Garden Above the Sea, Le Lavandou, 1990
MARY NEWCOMB
MARY NEWCOMB CRANE KALMAN GALLERY LTD 178 Brompton Road, London SW3 1HQ Tel: +44 (0)20 7584 7566 / +44 (0)20 7225 1931 www.cranekalman.com / info@cranekalman.com