Journeys 2022 | Gladwell & Patterson

J OURNEYS

JOURNEYS

We will meet again.

Four very poignant words.

They remind me that life is here to be enjoyed and appreciated to its fullest. The power and presence of art to enhance this cannot be underestimated. As we travel through life we encounter beautiful creations which delight and enthral us. Works of Art which take us on part of their journey and let us be part of their history.

What tales these pieces could tell? The journey of the artist from inception through creation to completion. Their onward history where they keep silent watch over our everyday lives and experience our fascinating individual stories. Consider those paintings and sculptures in palaces, in staterooms, in boardrooms, in gardens and in our homes, what interesting events they must bear witness to - the signing of treaties, declarations of war and peace, births, proposals, marriages and deaths, the rollercoaster existence that is all of our lives.

And then their paths are changed when they are passed on to future generations or moved on to a new custodian. They can travel around the world and they find new journeys to go on.

Our personal adventure through life is punctuated by memorable events and a work of art often becomes an enduring special reminder of these.

We are often brought together by art, sharing in its beauty or its meaning, in its ethereal qualities or by its effects on us. Finding common ground with others and allowing us to form friendships based on the harmonious feelings it kindles within.

As you look at each work of art in our exquisite collection, may I suggest you allow your mind to wander and consider the journeys that each has taken along its intriguing path. Which ones will speak to you and tell you their tale?

Enjoy, dear reader. Glenn

ALEXANDRE LOUIS JACOB

(1876-1972)

ALEXANDRE LOUIS JACOB French, (1876-1972)

GUSTAVE LOISEAU

French, (1865-1935)

“Gustave Loiseau, endowed with intense sensitivity, possesses the delicacy and subtlety of a poet. Attracted by the half-tones of the morning fog floating on the river or by the muted nuances of a sunset, he has little liking for either the violent light of the midday sun or the bright light of fine weather, preferring the effects of rain, frost and snow. The ceaseless effort to transform the heaviness of pictorial matter into the lightness of an impression by use of the alchemical shades of colour has always remains the heart of his research, revealing an unmatched knowledge of his craft.”

- Dider Imbert

La Seine en Hiver

Painted circa 1914 Oil on Canvas

50 x 65 cms / 19¾” x 25½”

Price on Application

Provenance

Wally Findlay Galleries, Chicago.

Private Collection; acquired from the above in 1969. Private Collection, Florida; acquired from the above in May 2016. Gladwell & Patterson, London; acquired from the above in 2022.

GUSTAVE LOISEAU

French, (1865-1935)

Loiseau’s Seine en Hiver is a brilliant demonstration of the artist’s colouristic subtlety, a quality that often receives less attention than his compositions or complex brushwork. In this work, the artist engenders a particularly striking contrast between the vibrant, icy blues with which he portrays the banks and the houses on the one hand, and the saturated browns used to capture the bare trees. At the same time, the painting also features Loiseau’s characteristic touches of bright primary colour. On the lower riverbank and in the front-central ice flow the artist employs sparing dashes of bright red pigment. Far from undermining the overall palette of blues and whites, these contrasting hues serve to animate the icy scene, suggesting the almost imperceptible reflections of winter sunlight.

While the colouring of the work is for the most part a skilled exercise in subtlety and restraint, Loiseau’s rich brushwork is on display in full force. In characteristic fashion, the artist has covered the surface of La Seine en Hiver with thick areas of impasto which protrude from the painted background. The most notable instances of this technique are found in the rendering of the ice floes, or glaçons , that dot the surface of the Seine. These hallmarks of the winter riverscape had been a favourite subject of Claude Monet, one of Loiseau’s primary influences.

Monet had been one of the first artists to realise the importance of the relationship between painters and the quickly growing rail networks, who were able to reach natural settings such as the Seine in less than an hour from Paris. A generation later, Loiseau was able to build upon this example with his extensive journeys around the rivers of northern France. After signing with Durand-Ruel, Monet’s dealer, Loiseau would spend his mature career travelling around Normandy and documenting the Seine from its source to the sea. Such was his association with the river that Loiseau has come to be known as the Historiographer of the Seine , an appropriate epithet given his intimate knowledge of its entire course.

Loiseau’s extensive journeys through France are one of the biggest contributors to the beauty of his paintings. The advent of the railway had for the first time allowed artists to easily visit the same settings again and again, giving them a more intimate knowledge of these places than any previous painters. Thanks to the expertise gained on these extensive voyages, the artist is here able to invert the typical impressionist focus on riverbanks and trees, a choice which lends the work its distinct optical qualities. In putting so much of his textural attention on the ice floes and privileging blues and whites over the more commonly seen greens and browns, the artist draws attention to the atmosphere and feel of winter itself. Where most paintings present a solid wall of greenery that restrains the sense of depth, Loiseau instead chooses to capture the expansive vistas and icy atmospheres of winter with expertise that could only have been gained through year-on-year journeying.

GUSTAVE LOISEAU

French, (1865-1935)

“Gustave Loiseau, expert in the research and subjects of the Impressionists, assumes his rightful place at their side through his own unique style. Yet this inspiration was a spontaneous one; he neither copied nor plagiarised, nor did he restrict himself with rigid theory. His single stated objective, ‘sincerity’, perfectly summarises the work of this delicate painter of light and lover of nature.”

- Dider Imbert

Peupliers sur les Bords de l’Yonne

Painted in 1907

Oil on Canvas

60 x 73 cms / 23¾” x 28¾”

Price on Application Provenance

Durand-Ruel, Paris; acquired from the artist on 24 July 1907.

Durand-Ruel, New York; acquired from the above in October 1908.

Schoneman Gallery, New Work; acquired from the above on 21 October 1946.

Private Collection, Beatriz Arsimendi de Plaza and Jose Luis Plaza, Venezuala.

Private Collection; acquired as a gift from the above.

Gladwell & Patterson, London; acquired from the above in 2022.

Exhibited

Durand-Ruel, Paris, Tableaux par Gustave Loiseau , 1908, no. 8.

GUSTAVE LOISEAU

French, (1865-1935)

Peupliers sur les Bords de l’Yonne is a masterful treatment of one of Loiseau’s most emblematic subjects: poplars by a riverside. With their strict linearity and intrinsic decorative elegance, poplar trees were a favoured artistic motif in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, most notably in the work of Monet and Sisley. A quintessential feature of rural France, poplars were often placed along roads, used as windshields for fields, and were planted along the banks of rivers to diminish the possibility of flooding. Moreover, the poplar tree had been deemed the tree of liberty after the French Revolution, possibly because of the derivation of the name from the Latin populus , meaning both “people” and “popular.” The trees therefore combine both a strong compositional appeal with a contextual significance for the French nation, both of which assure their iconic status for modern painting.

After 1905, Loiseau had begun to increasingly focus on a smaller group of emblematic subjects, studying them more deeply and recording them throughout the changing seasons. In the artist’s early phase (1898 to 1905), Loiseau would travel much more widely, painting Breton harbour scenes one month, cliffs at Étretat the next, and then return to Vaudreuil or Pontoise to paint riverbanks. While this extensive output allowed the still maturing artist to hone his compositional skills, the change after 1905 prompted a deepening understanding of his craft. Peupliers sur les Bords de l’Yonne is therefore one of the first expressions of the artist’s new attitude, standing as a wonderful evocation of the French countryside at the pinnacle of Loiseau’s Impressionist manner. Loiseau is recorded as staying in the Auxerre on the River Yonne for the month of August in 1907, escaping the heat of Paris and electing instead to study the effects of midsummer light in the small town. The current work is a rare example of one of the few river scenes that the artist produced outside of Auxerre in 1907, although the location clearly resonated with the artist as he returned to this setting far more often on his 1908 visit. Loiseau painted in the deep rural countryside some miles outside the city, following the Yonne until he found the perfect mixture of poplars and peasant dwellings. The artist’s works from this 1907-1908 period represent perhaps his most naturalistic output, characterized by an unprecedented sharpness of brushwork and an unusual degree of tonal realism in his palette. Loiseau had clearly honed this new approach through his multiple studies of Auxerre cathedral across the Yonne, and they demonstrate the same subtle coloring and clarity that define Peupliers sur les Bords de l’Yonne . Paintings from this Auxerre period are also characterised by a more intensely worked sky, predicated on a lattice of near vertical brushstrokes which deliver a complex variety of blue tones. Given that the majority of Loiseau’s works from his forty year career are defined by Loiseau’s use of bright primary highlights, this naturalistic two year period stands as unique within the artist’s oeuvre.

Paysage à Vetheuil

Oil on Canvasboard 28 x 35.5 cms / 11” x 14” £3,500

LAURENT VIALET

French, (Contemporary)

Paysage à Saint Mammes

Oil on Canvasboard 28 x 35.5 cms / 11” x 14” £3,500

RAYMOND THIBÉSART

French, (1874-1968)

Raymond Thibésart’s ethereal landscapes won great acclaim in the French Salons in the early twentieth century. Born in the elegant town of Bar-sur-Aube, surrounded by gently rolling hills and the champagne vineyards of the Grand Est region, the beauty of the French landscape and the artistic possibilities that it evoked made a deep impression on the young Thibésart.

Raymond Thibésart constantly sought to understand his surroundings, always looking for new scenery which he could beautifully delineate. Travelling frequently along the rivers of France, he also made numerous journeys to Italy, Switzerland and Belgium with fellow artist and friend Henri Martin to find new sources of inspiration.

Thibesart worked in pastel outdoors, allowing him to make rapid sketches of changing light effects and atmospheric qualities of the landscape. Within the tranquillity of his studio, Thibésart would then transfer the colours, movements and atmosphere captured in pastel onto large scale canvases whilst ensuring the spontaneity of his subject was never lost. His works capture the astounding range of rural settings he encountered on his journeys across Europe.

Cerisier en Fleurs et Boucle de la Seine

Oil on Canvas 60 x 81 cms / 23½” x 32” £39,500

RAYMOND

(1873-1939)

GEORGES CHARLES ROBIN

French, (1903–2002)

After seventy years of dealing with Georges Charles Robin’s fantastic landscapes, there is perhaps no other artist more important to our journey as a gallery. From our early dealings with him in the 1950s, we have come to be recognised as the leading authority on his painting. The Catalogue Raisonnée which we are in the process of writing will mark another step on our journey to establishing him in his rightful place as one of France’s pre-eminent twentieth century painters.

Empreints des Pas dans la Neige Oil on Canvas 50 x 73 cms / 19¾” x 28¾” £16,500

AGAPITO CASAS ABARCA

Spanish, (1874-1964)

View of Camprodon

Oil on Board 37 x 41 cms / 14½” x 16¼” £1,950

PAUL FLAUBERT

French, (1928-1994)

Couple en Bord d’Étang

Oil on Panel 32 x 40 cms / 12½” x 15¾” £4,950

HENRI LE SIDANER

French, (1862-1939)

“It is l’heure de Le Sidaner, the time when he is most profoundly himself … the colours become spiritual as they resist the falling darkness to which they will ultimately succumb. The ordinary is transformed into magic by the miracle of the moment and of the silence. Le Sidaner is able to depict the sweetness of life transfigured by love and made visible through physical objects.”

Evening Glow

Painted in 1916 Oil on Canvas 65 x 81 cms / 25½” x 31¾”

Price on Application

Provenance

Georges Bergaud (director of the Galerie Georges Petit). Louis Loucheur; acquired from the above.

Private Collection, France.

Sale; Salle Galliéra, Paris, 18 June 1961, lot 51. Private Collection, France.

Gladwell & Patterson, London; acquired from the above in 2022.

Bibliography

Yann Farinaux-Le Sidaner, Henri Le Sidaner : Paysages Intimes, (Editions Monelle Hayot, 2013), n°355, reproduced p.146.

- Camille Mauclair on Le Sidaner’s evening light

HENRI LE SIDANER

French, (1862-1939)

While most of Henri Le Sidaner’s works are the products of a single setting, Evening Glow is almost unique in its combination of the parks of Versailles and the artist’s garden in Gerberoy. Understanding the separate influences of these two locales is therefore crucial for an analysis of this work.

Having spent over a decade in which he would work in Gerberoy over the summer, and travel to warmer climes in the winter, Le Sidaner found his established routine interrupted by the Great War. He would therefore spend most of 1916 painting in Versailles. For Le Sidaner, whose genius was best exemplified by his views of human absence, the near-abandoned Versailles would offer him the perfect setting in which to refine his painting. As the artist recalled: “The leaves form thick and heavy carpets, which surround the beauty of the architecture and encircle the water in the basins”. The profuse vegetation which clings to the house and the water in Evening Glow , a departure from Le Sidaner’s previous neatly manicured settings, is clearly a product of Versailles.

In the September of 1916, Le Sidaner would return to Gerberoy to spend a week enjoying the company of his close friend, the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren, a leading exponent of Symbolism who was nominated for the nobel prize on six separate occasions. It was this stay with Verhaeren which inspired the artist to create Evening Glow . Over the week in Gerberoy, Le Sidaner would produce multiple studies of a small summer pavilion constructed next to his rose garden, which he then combined with the canals and autumnal impressions of Versailles, even going so far as to stretch the square pavilion into a rectangular shape to better integrate it with the composition.

Transiting between Gerberoy and Versailles so as to create a perfect subject matter is emblematic of Le Sidaner’s unique approach to painting. Realising that he would never have the time to fully capture changing light and atmosphere, Le Sidaner instead sought to experience and memorise these moments, then re-create them perfectly once they had passed.

After completing the work, Le Sidaner likely showed the painting to Verhaeren in a final meeting before the poet’s tragic death later in the month. The painting was then bought from the Galerie Georges Petit by the industrialist Louis Loucheur, a senior figure in the French government and an avid art collector. A great supporter of Les Nabis (his portrait by Vuillard can still be seen in Lille), Loucheur was a highly discerning collector whose endorsement of Evening Glow is testament to its quality. That we have such a clear understanding of both the conception and early ownership of the painting allows us a rare opportunity to fully understand the individual context and creative process behind the work that now stands before us. Such was the artist’s pride in the work that he would use it as the subject for one of his few etchings.

EMILE CLAUS

Belgian, (1849-1924)

The Apple Orchard

Painted circa 1910 Oil on Canvas

65 x 82 cms / 25½” x 32¼”

Price on Application

Provenance

Max Paul von Bleichert, Leipzig, acquired directly from the artist, 1910.

Bleichert Family Collection, Zurich, 1929.

Madeleine Alice Paterson (née Bleichert), Kenya, 1938.

Thence by descent.

Gladwell & Patterson, London, acquired from the above in 2022.

EMILE CLAUS

Belgian, (1849-1924)

Unseen in public for over 110 years, Emile Claus’s Apple Orchard represents a startlingly unique work within the artist’s oeuvre. Combining rich luminosity with a Post-Impressionistic exploration of spatial planes, the reemergence of this painting sheds new light on a crucial period in Claus’s career. Set in the garden of the artist’s studio home, named ‘Sunbeam’ ( Zonneschijn in Flemish) for the quality of its light, The Apple Orchard is a brilliant evocation of what drew Claus to this setting.

Rather than passing through the hands of the artist’s dealer, The Apple Orchard was bought directly from the artist in 1910 by Max Paul Von Bleichert, one of Germany’s leading art collectors before the First World War. While his interests ranged from Old Master paintings to porcelain and bronzes, he is best known for his support of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists such as Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth and of course Emile Claus. His family were the largest manufacturer of cable cars in the 19th and early 20th century, to the extent that by 1924 Bleichert & Co. had produced more than half of the world’s models. While he had spent most of his life in Leipzig, Von Bleichert would leave Germany in 1929 and settle in Zurich until his death in 1938.

Claus’s painting would subsequently pass to his daughter, Madeline Alice Paterson. By 1938, she was living in Kenya with her husband, Albert Paterson, the director of the country’s medical services. The work would remain in Kenya where it was passed down through a further two generations of Madeline’s family. Consequently, while this work had stayed in the same hands for over a century it has also journeyed across the world. From its inception in Claus’s Belgian studio, The Apple Orchard has travelled through Germany, Switzerland, and Kenya before arriving in Britain to be seen by the public for the first time.

Easily the most striking element of The Apple Orchard , which is almost unique amongst works by artists of Claus’s generation, is the forceful perspectival juxtaposition between the painting’s near and far elements. The viewer is immediately met the with brittle glossiness, three-dimensional quality of the apples, and only gradually does the farmstead behind them begin to emerge; a play of perspectives which lends the work an almost Cezannesque quality, a comparison only heightened by the ubiquity of apples in Cezanne’s experimental paintings. While scholars have often tended to point to the influence of Japanese woodcuts to explain flattened perspectives (the works of Van Gogh and Monet being notable examples), the background depth of the painting seems to belie this easy characterisation. Claus’s painting thus carries an air of art historical mystery to it, for while it features the artist’s typically rich and highly coloured divisionist brushwork and rural subjects, the vivid immediacy with which he presents the apples to the viewer and divides the special planes within the work stands largely alone within his corpus.

JEANNE SELMERSHEIM-DESGRANGE

French, (1877-1958)

Jeanne Selmersheim-Desgrange’s direct talent as an artist may be seen in the distinctive compositions of her brilliant still lifes and landscapes. Her watercolours and oil paintings are executed with a delicate palette of orange, yellow, rose, light blue and green pastel tones. But she also uses greys, which make for glistening opalescent nuances.

Selmersheim-Desgrange spent a great deal of time in the South of France, particularly around St. Tropez, where her lover, the post-impressionist artist Paul Signac, owned a house called “La Hune” with his wife. In 1913 Signac rented a charming house in Antibes, where he settled with Jeanne shortly before the birth of their daughter Ginette. The relaxed atmosphere, the intense light, the brilliant earthen colors, and azure seas all helped to form Selmersheim-Desgrange’s aesthetic. Life in the South of France was focused around the beautiful Mediterranean Sea, and SelmersheimDesgrange’s most spectacular works are those composed of view from a balcony looking onto the glistening Mediterranean beyond.

Despite being a skilled and successful artist in her own right, Selmersheim-Desgrange appeared to be contented to stay in the shadows of Signac. Her own work is filled with, and reflects a true feminine sensitivity, in both the colouring and subject matter. Following her death, her work was included in the exhibition entitled “NeoImpressionism” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1968, and today Selmersheim-Desgrange’s work is collected internationally.

Nature Morte Devant la Mer

Oil on Canvas

73 x 93 cms / 28¾” x 36½” £49,000

CARLOS NADAL Spanish, (1917-1998)

“Drawing shall be a prisoner of paint and not the other way around.”

- Carlos Nadal, 31 January 1943

Fenêtre Ouverte à Saint-Tropez

Painted in April 1976

Oil on Canvas

45 x 53 cms / 17½” x 21”

Price on Application

Provenance

Duncalfe Galleries, Harrogate.

Private British Collection; acquired from the above.

Gladwell & Patterson, London; acquired from the above in 2022.

CARLOS NADAL

Spanish, (1917-1998)

Nadal’s career is defined by his relationship not only with early twentieth century modernism, but crucially its leading artists. Despite a glittering formal education (he enrolled in the Barcelona Academy at only thirteen years old having lied about his age) it was the informal education he received at his father’s commercial design studio that would become the source for his unique style. In this studio setting the young artist would regularly meet Raoul Dufy, Maurice Utrillo and crucially, Henri Matisse. Encounters with the latter would convince Nadal to adopt the style of the Fauvists, continuing their legacy well into the twentieth century.

When Nadal’s training was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War, the young artist would sign up and fight for the Republican cause. Captured and imprisoned in a Nationalist concentration camp, Nadal would eventually manage a daring escape on his second attempt. Returning to Barcelona after the conclusion of the Civil War, Nadal would spend time decorating churches in a variety of media (his frescoes in the mediaeval church of Saint Anna can still be seen today). Continuing his studies under figures such as Luis Muntané Muns, he continued to hone his craft before leaving for Paris in 1946. It was around this transition that Nadal began to decisively adopt the Fauvist style, noting in his diary that “drawing shall be a prisoner of paint and not the other way around”. Nadal himself felt that while he wished to capture the colours of the Mediterranean, its bright light was actually far too strong to truly differentiate colour; thus it was in France and the Low Countries that he discovered the true range of colour.

After living and working in Belgium, where he would establish a close relationship with his neighbour, Rene Magritte, the artist would return to Southern Europe. He would first locate himself on the Cote d’Azur where he would regularly meet his compatriot Picasso and a now-ailing Matisse, producing a corpus of Mediterranean works in this period, before returning to Barcelona to enjoy his international renown. Nadal passed away in 1998, the last exponent of the Fauvist project who could claim a direct link to its founders.

MONTAGUE DAWSON

British, (1890-1973)

One of the greatest marine artists of all time, Montague Dawson was drawn to the lure of the open sea and was enchanted by the romantic history and the graceful design of sleek clipper ships. During his time as a young naval officer in the First World War, Dawson combined his passion with his natural talent for drawing, and would spend the remainder of his life as a professional painter and illustrator. Dawson enjoyed painting these magnificent clipper ships in battle scenes, in races and often silhouetted alone against the horizon, almost as if he was painting a portrait of an old friend.

In Daswon’s majestic depiction of the City of Adelaide he captures the clipper speeding through the waves. While most clippers began their lives as commercial vessels, this clipper was one of the rare purpose-built ships designed for long passenger journeys. In fact, City of Adelaide would bring more immigrants to South Australia than any other vessel in the nineteenth century, making the dangerous passage from Britain twice a year. To this day, many Australian families can trace their descent from the ship’s passenger lists. City of Adelaide is thus widely seen as an important piece of tangible heritage from Australia’s colonial period.

On account of this historical importance, it was decided in 2017 that her largely intact hull, slowly decaying on the Ayrshire coast, would be transported to Australia to become a museum ship. City of Adelaide is thus the world’s oldest surviving composite clipper, beating the Cutty Sark , who’s design she helped influence, by five years. The ship stands today as a convergent point for three important narratives: her ground-breaking design, her role in the birth of the Australian nation, and her unprecedented age. It is fitting that her final journey, from Britain to Australia, would ply the same routes she sailed over 150 years ago.

Flying Spume, The Adelaide

Oil on Canvas

81 x 107 cms / 32” x 42”

Price on Application

PETER

BREDA

PETER SYMONDS

EDWARD SEAGO

British, (1910-1974)

Edward Seago was born in Norwich in 1910. At the age of eight, Seago was diagnosed with a chronic heart condition and much of his childhood was spent confined to bed. Despite his health issues, Seago was determined to become an artist, and over the entirety of his adult life he would embark on a journey that saw him develop from sickly child into one of Britain’s leading painters. From joining a European circus in the 1930s, to sailing the Channel and the Norfolk Broads in search of subjects, Seago’s brilliantly observed works are testament to his ever exploring nature.

A Norfolk Farm Oil on Canvas

46 x 61 cms / 18” x 24” £45,000

EDWARD HENRY HOLDER

British, (1847-1922)

Sheep Grazing on the South Downs Oil on Canvas 33 x 86 cms / 13” x 34”

ALFRED DE BREANSKI SNR. British, (1852-1928)

DONALD HAMILTON FRASER

British, (1929-2009)

“The West Coast of Scotland and the Highlands are the last wilderness in Britain, the last place where you feel alone with the landscape around you. You have a sense of being the only person alive on the planet; it awakens emotions that one didn’t know were there. I like that feeling because there is nothing to impede your reaction, it’s just you and the sand, you and the tide.”

- Donald Hamilton Fraser

Faraid Head IV Oil on Paper 23 x 30 cms / 9” x 12” £11,500

April Haze, No. 3

Painted in 1957 Oil on Canvas 43 x 109 cms / 17” x 43” Price on Application

IVON HITCHENS CBE

British, (1893-1979)

Provenance

The artist’s studio.

Kenneth Webb, UK; acquired from the artist in the 1970s.

IVON HITCHENS CBE

British, (1893-1979)

Beyond his great importance to twentieth century British painting, Ivon Hitchens holds added significance for Gladwell & Patterson for the influence he would have on one our leading painters, Kenneth Webb. Webb has admired the work of Ivon Hitchens since the early years of his studies and his influence can be seen throughout the younger artist’s work, particularly his Field Poppies and Myths and Legends series. The two first met at Hitchens’ 80th birthday in 1973, where they formed an immediate friendship. Both artists would often meet and share their technical experience and insights. Thus, while Hitchens was a significant visual source of Webb’s aesthetics, it would be the younger artist who introduced Hitchens to the experimental effects which could be achieved through the use of acrylic paints.

Sitting in a liminal space between the binary of abstract and figurative painting, both artists applied elements of these two stylistic poles in their respective quests to capture their immediate surroundings and create a new form of expressive landscape. As the critic Patrick Heron put it in the mid-1950s ‘Hitchens in West Sussex provides the most distinguished example of profound personal identification of a painter with a special place or landscape’. While Hitchens may have moved close to abstraction, his immersion in his beloved West Sussex environment would always ground his work in a very real topography. The close perspectives and solid planes of colour found in his landscapes evoke the sense of an artist submerged in the woods and ponds around his Petworth home. It is this attachment to their surroundings that most clearly unites Kenneth and Ivon.

It is therefore of particular significance that both the present works, April Haze no. 3 and Wildflower Wood , have been a part of Kenneth Webb’s personal collection. As such they not only symbolise the shared artistic development of the two artists, but offer a physical reminder of how the journey of artworks between collections can serve to add greater meaning to the paintings themselves. That Kenneth Webb, one of Hitchens’ greatest admirers, choose these two examples of the older artist’s works is the clearest testimony as to their importance as paradigms of his style.

Wildflower Wood

Painted in 1975 Oil on Canvas

40.5 x 74 cms / 16” x 29”

Price on Application

IVON HITCHENS CBE

British, (1893-1979)

Provenance

The artist’s studio.

Waddington Galleries Ltd., London.

Kenneth Webb, UK; acquired from the above in the 1970s.

IVON HITCHENS CBE

British, (1893-1979)

Wildflower Wood was acquired soon after it left Hitchens’ studio in the mid 1970s. With its bold greens, pinks and blues, the work bears testament to its painter’s continual development well into his eighties and may well allude to the reciprocal influence that Kenneth Webb’s bright colouring had on the older artist. In contrast, April Haze no. 3 was created during Hitchens’ most celebrated phase as an artist, between representing Britain at the 1956 Venice Biennale alongside Lynn Chadwick and receiving his CBE in 1958. The doorway to Hitchen’s studio is depicted to the left, surrounded by trees, which emerge out of a panoramic sweep which at first glance appears abstract, an effect emblematic of Hitchens’ entire style. Ivon Hitchens would keep this painting in his studio for well over a decade, until Webb acquired it directly from him in the early 1970s. These two works, which have been in Webb’s collection for nearly fifty years, are thus brilliant examples of both artist’s shared goals in colouring and abstraction.

A final consequence of the journey from one artist’s studio to another is the often-forgotten element of a painting’s framing. Hitchens was famously specific about how his works should be framed, specifying that they should remain in the wide-bordered, pale wooden settings that he himself designed. Unfortunately, after his passing many galleries and owners sought to change these frames to fit ever-changing contemporary tastes, decisions which have resulted in the loss of a great number of these integral parts of the artwork. Yet, precisely because April Haze and Wildflower Wood passed directly from the artist to a close friend, both of their frames have remained in excellent condition. To this day, their survival helps to contextualise and inform the artworks they hold, just as Hitchens intended them to.

These paintings are therefore wonderful examples of the importance that the provenance and journey can have on how we see artworks. Taken independently of their history, these paintings are rich evocations of the power of Hitchens’ craft from his mature to his late phase. Yet it is the addition of their journeys that serves to magnify and enrich their importance and meaning. Not only do both paintings testify to the symbiotic relationship shared by Hitchens and his most important follower, Kenneth Webb, but their direct passing between these artists serves to illustrate important themes of preservation and the common goals of both figures.

Les Roses Blanches

Oil on Panel 34.5 x 26.5 cms / 13½” x 10½” £5,950

CHARLES PERRON

French, (1893-1958)

La Niche

Oil on Board 37 x 29 cms / 14½” x 11½” £8,500

STEWART LEES

British, (Contemporary)

“As I observe a still life grouping with ever deepening intensity, the objects, and the space they occupy, become a landscape with depth and atmosphere revealed through the play of light across forms, all firmly rooted within a plane. And by adhering to strict accuracy in drawing and modelling, and by my pursuit of meticulous fidelity to form, texture and colour, I come up against all the challenges of a portrait painter, concerned with surface but trying all the time to say something deeper about the subject before me, to turn the familiar into something extraordinary.”

– Stewart Lees

Provençal Basil

Oil on Gesso Panel 60 x 50 cms / 23½” x 19¾”

£15,000

A true Classical Realist, Paul upholds rigorous standards and holds firm to principles of artistic integrity, emulating the techniques and materials of the Old Masters. Such care is taken in every minute detail of Paul’s creative journey. He prepares his own paints by hand, carefully selecting pigments and oils to his precise requirements. Paul’s subjects are intimately selected, plucked from the larder (much to his wife Serena’s despair), foraged from his vegetable garden or local market and, above all, chosen for their natural beauty or symbolic significance. Here a simple clove of garlic inspired Paul to create this masterful series of paintings.

Fresh Garlic

Oil on Panel

16 x 16 cms / 6½” x 6½” £2,950

Wet Garlic with Pots

Oil on Panel 18 x 28 cms / 7” x 11” £3,500

WILLEM DOLPHYN

Belgian, (1935-2016)

The artist’s studio is a hallowed place, a temple to the arts in which the painter seeks to capture his individual vision of the world. Yet as with most features of Willem Dolphyn’s career, his studio attained a larger-than-life, almost legendary character. In his historic studio of Venustraat, Willem would create nearly 2500 paintings over half a century, a monumental journey for a single artist.

The rooms of Willem’s studio were crowded with historic furniture, the shelves were loaded with treasures, fabrics, glassware and ceramics which spanned the centuries, gleaming and glinting in the Northern light, each piece collected with pride and all contributing to his incredible compositions. To call this setting a studio would almost seem to undervalue its importance, which approached that of a museum. After years of travelling the world and collecting its most beautiful objects, his house provided a physical manifestation of a lifetime’s work. Surrounded by these treasures, the ideas for his compositions came to Willem during the night. Even in his dreams he worked, seeing Roman glass, Delft tiles, Flemish tapestry, fine fruits and expensive china drawn from across the continent and coming all together in his mind. Willem Dolphyn travelled the world, turning his studio and his paintings into a microcosm for these journeys and experiences.

A Succulent Crop

Oil on Panel

60 x 50 cms / 24” x 20” £17,500

GEORGES BAUQUIER

French, (1910-1997)

Georges Bauquier’s career is defined by his intimate personal and professional relationship with the great Cubist master, Fernand Léger. For twenty years the two painters would work closely together, and after Léger’s death Bauquier would be instrumental in both founding a museum dedicated to the artist and writing his eight volume Catalogue Raisonné. Crucially, despite effectively remaining in Léger’s shadow until the older painter’s passing in 1955, Bauquier was able to create his own synthesis of Cubism, creating a personal style that combined Léger, Braque and Cézanne for which he is increasingly lauded.

Born in 1910 in Nîmes, Bauquier would decide to become an artist in his early twenties, enrolling the School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1934 he would receive a first-rate classical education in draughtsmanship. However, after becoming increasingly dissatisfied at the constraints of academic painting, Bauquier would join the School of Contemporary Art in 1936, and immediately begin to work closely under its then director, Fernand Léger. After a fraught period during the Second World War, where the young artist would join the Communist Party and French Resistance (culminating in a period imprisoned by Nazi occupiers) he would immediately reunite with his teacher. In the next decade the two artists would work together daily; so close was Bauquier’s relationship with Léger that after the latter’s death in 1955 he would marry his wife, Nadia. Alongside his new wife, Bauquier immediately set about creating a museum to celebrate Léger’s life, which they opened in 1960 and would subsequently furnish with 348 works by Léger.

Bauquier’s own art would develop quickly, and while he often declined to publicise his output, his exhibitions in the early 1950s were prefaced by Léger and saw great success in Paris. His works are usually predicated on a balance between great colouristic freedom and maintaining rigid compositional principles which he had learned from his teacher. Bauquier’s best known pieces are his still lifes, which occupy bold, often Cubist-inspired interiors, and frequently feature the artist’s favoured motif, a single piece of vegetation.

Nature Morte aux Deux Pommes, No. 5 Oil on Canvas 92 x 73 cms / 36” x 29”

BIANCA SMITH

Australian, (Contemporary)

Henry Woods British, (1846-1921)

An Alpine Village

Oil on Board 28 x 17 cms / 11” x 6¾”

£3,250

John A. Lomax British, (1857-1923)

The Treasurer Oil on Board 20 x 24 cms / 8” x 9½” £2,500

Frank Moss Bennet British, (1874-1952)

The Violinist

Oil on Canvas 34 x 24 cms / 13½” x 9½” £4,950

CORNELIUS BOUTER

Dutch, (1888-1966)

Feeding the children

BERNARD POTHAST

Dutch, (1882-1966)

A Huntsman and Hounds

SIR ALFRED JAMES MUNNINGS

British, (1878-1959)

Painted in 1906 Oil on Canvas

55 x 57 cms / 21½” x 22½” Price on Application Provenance

Sale; Sotheby’s, London, 2 May 1990.

Colin Popham, Hampshire; acquired at the above sale.

Sale; Wooley & Wallis, UK, 4 June 2014.

Private Collection, USA; acquired at the above sale.

SIR ALFRED JAMES MUNNINGS

British, (1878-1959)

Sir Alfred James Munnings is acclaimed as the greatest equestrian artist of the twentieth century, being recognized specifically for his energetic hunting and sporting scenes. He is equally celebrated for his very personal interpretations of the English landscape and as an exquisite portrait painter. A figurative painter who outwardly rejected Modernism, Munnings’ style and brushstrokes were influenced by Impressionism, using naturalistic colours to depict the English countryside and surrounding areas.

A Huntsman and Hounds was painted in 1906, when Munnings was 28, and depicts a huntsman surrounded by his scampering, eager hounds as they travel down a path in the Norfolk countryside. This work is one of only a handful of known works depicting the horse and rider ‘head on’ in Munnings’ oeuvre. Munnings may well have experimented with this more complex compositional approach in response to seeing Lucy Kemp Welch’s masterpiece Colt Hunting in the New Forest , which was painted and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1897, nine years before the present work was painted. The forward movement of the horse and rider greatly animates the scene and brings the viewer into the very midst of the chase.

A Huntsman and his Hounds exudes energy with the lively foxhounds and their patchwork variety of brown, white and black markings scampering at the feet of the red coated rider as they all move through a loosely depicted woodlands. The low sun filters through the branches of the trees overhead, the light catching the whites of the hounds’ coats. Munnings was an entrenched traditionalist that later would take a strong stand against ‘Modern Art’ but here his style is clearly influenced by the Impressionists with its flickering light and quick, expressive brushstrokes. This indicates clear influences from a previous visit to Paris in 1902 when he saw and admired the work of Degas, Fantin-Latour and Sorolla, who, like Munnings, was an avid open-air painter.

Roman Horse Head

Bronze with Copper Base (Edition of 12)

60 x 25 x 60 cms / 23½” x 9¾” x 23½”

£9,500

EDWARD WAITES

British, (Contemporary)

NICK BIBBY British, (Contemporary)

Hedgehog

Bronze (Edition of 12)

11.5 x 24 x 15 cms / 4½” x 9½” x 6”

£6,380

Black Bear with Honeycomb

Bronze (Edition of 12) 23 x 20 x 18 cms / 9” x 8” x 7” £7,150

JAMES

SIMON GUDGEON British, (Contemporary)

DAVID SHEPHERD

British, (1931-2017)

“I find it hard to describe my feelings at that moment when I saw African elephants in the wild for the very first time. I had made childhood visits to zoos or circuses like other kids, but this was different. I was on my own two feet and there were two hundred elephants in front of me. Nevertheless, it was an exhilarating feeling. I don’t know whether I was afraid. I imagine not as it was all so new and exciting, and I wonder if even then I began to feel the affinity for these marvellous, gentle animals which was to develop so strongly. I know I will never forget the sight of those two hundred elephants browsing completely free and undisturbed. I felt so small, very small indeed. I was hooked forever.”

- David Shepherd

Elephants of Samburu

Oil on Canvas 71 x 112 cms / 28” x 44” £89,500

The Banana Salesman, Havana

Watercolour

21.5 x 33 cms / 8½” x 13” £3,600

Havana Colonnade

Watercolour

21.5 x 33 cms / 8½” x 13” £3,600

PAUL CZAINSKI

British, (Contemporary)

Shells

The Hunt Went Like Clockwork

Watercolour

19.5 x 26 cms / 7½” x 10¼” £2,950

Oil on Canvas

25.5 x 25.5 cms / 10” x 10” £2,950

The Eventer

Watercolour

65 x 32.5 cms / 25½” x 12¾” £2,250

The Keeper

Watercolour

40.5 x 25.5 cms / 16” x 10” £1,850

Celebrating

History

Gallery in the Garden

INDEX

Agapito Casas Abarca p 27,29

Edward Alfred de Breanski Snr. p 65

Louis Le Bail p 26,28

Georges Bauquier p 86-87

Frank Moss Bennet p 93

Nick Bibby p 102-103

Pierre Bittar p 42

Cornelius Bouter p 94

Auguste Bouvard p 34

Peter Van Breda p 52-55

Paul S. Brown p 82-83

Robert Chailloux p 79

Georges Charles Robin p 22-25

Emile Claus p 36-39

Édouard Cortès p 35

Paul Czainski p 120-121

Montague Dawson p 50-51

Walter Dolphyn p 118-119

Willem Dolphyn p 84-85

James Doran-Webb p 106-107

Paul Flaubert p 27,29

Donald Hamilton Fraser p 66-67

Simon Gudgeon p 108-109

Edward Henry Holder p 64

Ivon Hitchens CBE p 68-75

Alexandre Louis Jacob p 4-7

Clarissa James p 104-105

Jean Kevorkiant p 17

Stewart Lees p 80-81

Gustave Loiseau p 8-15

John A. Lomax p 93

C. Massin p 126

Ronny Moorgat p 48-49

Sir Alfred James Munnings p 96-99

Carlos Nadal p 44-47

Charles Perron p 78

Jonathan Pike p 116-117

Bernard Pothast p 94

Aris Raissis p 92

Georges Ricard-Cordingley p 21

Edward Seago p 62-63

Jeanne Selmersheim-Desgrange p 40-41

Stella Shawzin p 90-91

David Shepherd p 110-115

Henri Le Sidaner p 30-33

Bianca Smith p 88

Peter Symonds p 56-59

Martin Taylor p 60-61

Georges Terzian p 89

Raymond Thibésart p 18-20

Jacobus Van der Stok p 95

Laurent Vialet p 16

Edward Waites p 100-101

Jonathan Walker p 122-123

Kenneth Webb p 76-77,127

Raymond Wintz p 43

Henry Woods p 93