Anthony Eyton: A Centenary Exhibition

Anthony Eyton

Photo: Sarah Eyton

Anthony Eyton’s paintings will endure. For years now he has been painting the world around him, honing a sensibility that is rooted in a relationship, not only between the hand and the eye but between the brain and the heart. He is not distracted by fashion, instead he has managed to build an oeuvre rooted in that most difficult of things, plain speech. Painting is at heart a form of speech, a record and testament of being alive.

Nothing is too poor or insignificant to stand in as subject matter for him, be it a brick wall, an old fireplace or in this new exhibition some collapsed studio shelves. It is the quality of this ‘looking’ at simple things that distinguishes his work and connects him to many of the great artists in the western painting tradition.

Some years ago, when I was hanging a room at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, I went off in search of some ‘real’ paintings from the thousands stacked in the galleries. Amidst all that visual cacophony, Anthony’s works stood out in their quiet authority and poetry. Three paintings of humble subjects, a staircase, a chair and a fireplace, I arranged together in Room 10 and the paintings seemed to have a dialogue with each other as well as resonating with the theme of the room which I had taken from ‘La Bete Humaine’, Jean Renoir’s great film of 1938. Anthony’s three paintings reminded me of Van Gogh, both in terms of the simplicity of their subject matter but also literally of Van Gogh’s last bedroom/studio in the bare walled room above the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers Sur Oise, a place that I had recently visited. Anthony’s paintings prompted contemplation, memory and associations, something that art is supposed to do.

This seems to me to be at the core of Anthony’s practice, the realisation of an image through a slow buildup of brush strokes and colours in counterpoint to each other so that you (the viewer) are always aware that this is a painting as well as a picture - this is an artist giving form to what he sees, a hard won record of what has caught his eye.

Hughie O’Donoghue

July 2023

Anthony Eyton at 100

In his 101st year, Anthony Eyton is as productive as ever. Whether painting in oils, or engaged in drawing, especially pastels, he has in recent years turned his attention to subjects closer to home. At his house in Brixton, now also his studio, he continues to paint or draw views of his extensive and richly planted garden, some on a substantial scale. He has also been busily engaged in painting smaller, exquisite still-lifes: a few apples on a ledge or table alongside a jug, with powerful echoes of Cézanne, one of Eyton’s great artistic heroes; or else, perhaps, of a cluster of roses in a vase simply yet judiciously composed, their silvery tones and luscious brushstrokes reminiscent of Manet. Inside his Brixton home Eyton has also painted assemblages of his bookshelves, often seen collapsing under the weight of his art library and yet still for him an irresistible subject for his paintbrush. The titles of some of these – ‘Avalanche’ – no doubt reflect a sense of humour though they may also refer to his slight impatience with those aspects of his domestic life which eat into his precious time for painting.

Eyton has always had a prodigious energy for work and for travel, ever alive to the possibility of new ideas and themes for his art. His subject-matter is wide, over a lifetime of painting embracing landscapes, still-lifes, studies of the nude and – most especially - scenes of what one might loosely call everyday life. In earlier years, for example, when still under the influence of William Coldstream and the latter’s teaching at Camberwell School of Art, Eyton would often paint portraits or domestic and industrial interiors, generally executed in a somewhat subdued palette. A number of these would focus on people absorbed in their work, such as a picture he painted during a short spell teaching at Reading University, A Woman at the Sink,1941 (no.2); or, when later attracted to painting scenes associated with the north of England and its industrial activities, of factory workers packing tiles (no.6).

Then in later years, now using a brighter palette and adopting a looser handling, Eyton began to relish the challenge of painting larger groups in open landscapes, often showing people massing together in crowds or else pilgrims assembling for religious gatherings. He has also drawn or painted striking views of industrial architecture, such as of Bankside or Battersea Power stations (no.19), or of contemporary architectural structures such as those of the Eden Project in Cornwall (no.16). His endless curiosity, and the challenge of finding new subjects, has taken him, via Rome and the hill towns of Tuscany, as far as India, Brazil and Australia. Meanwhile, he has been equally attracted to recording local London scenes, painting the colourful covered market in Brixton or crowds of protestors sitting down in the streets near the public library. This wide-ranging interest in bustling crowds and far-flung places reminds one of his great predecessor in British art, J.M.W. Turner.

Nevertheless, by temperament and inspiration, Eyton regards himself as much closer to Turner’s contemporary, John Constable. Eyton’s first painting made at the age of 15 at Canford School, under the tuition of art master (and Constable specialist), Ian Fleming-Williams, was a Constable-like subject of a watermill seen across a river. Constable is of course well known today for his avowed dedication to sketching in oils in the open air and for attempting to achieve (in the context of early nineteenth-century British art) a more ‘naturalistic’ form of landscape painting. Eyton has similarly attempted to work in the open air for as long as practicalities have allowed him to do so (using pastels in later years), and like Constable has been especially attentive towards changing light conditions. Eyton has stated, in words which might almost have been spoken by Constable himself, that ‘the world observed has always been of prime importance to me. When I am painting direct from the subject the answers can only come from my reactions to it, spontaneous impressions that have to be marshalled into a whole. The answer must be authentic and can only come out of truthful scrutiny’. He once declared that ‘like Constable I rely on response, to make the experience real’.

In describing his painting process, Eyton has also spoken of how he attempts ‘to combine simultaneity with forays into particularity, near and far, calling and answering’. Indeed, he relishes the idea of trying to achieve two apparently opposite aims at one and the same time, aims which intuitively he appreciates are not strictly speaking contradictory but in fact two sides of the same coin. He has spoken about the need to combine complex detail with breadth of finish; and, especially, about the difference between the initial spontaneous response to a subject and the longer term careful, logically thought-out construction of a painting in the studio.

Eyton is also especially interested in the interplay between the inner and the outer view - something he addresses in his pictures which incorporate views through windows, sometimes including figures, sometimes not. He sees this interplay as an interesting dialogue between constraint and containment on the one hand and infinity on the other. Indeed, after a lifetime of painting he continues to question, to consider afresh, the many challenges posed by transcribing a threedimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface. As recently as 2019 Eyton gave the title to an exhibition of his work at Browse & Darby ‘Dilemmas and Solutions’. He continues to savour the dilemmas as much as he tries to find solutions to them - if indeed such ‘solutions’ are ever to be found. As he once explained in an interview with Andrew Lambirth, he often recalls the famous proverb that ‘it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive’. It is, then, the journey which matters most to Eyton, and one looks forward to his further travels to come.

Anne Lyles

1. Self Portrait, 1941, oil on canvas 18 1/4 x 14 3/8 in. / 46.5 x 36.5 cm.

6. Packing Tiles, Factory Cat, 1955, oil on board 9 1/4 x 7 1/2 in. / 23.5 x 19 cm.

2. Woman at the Sink, 1948, oil on canvas 20 7/8 x 16 in. / 53 x 40.5 cm.

3. Salvation Army, 1950, oil on canvas

24 5/8 x 20 7/8 in. / 62.5 x 53 cm.

5. High Level Bridge, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1953, oil on board

9 5/8 x 12 in. / 24.5 x 30.5 cm.

8. Vitorchiano, Italy, 1974, oil on canvas

39 3/8 x 47 1/4 in. / 100 x 120 cm.

9. Crinum, 1990, oil on canvas 22 1/2 x 19 1/4 in. / 57 x 49 cm.

7. Hanbury Street Window, 1974, oil on canvas

57 5/8 x 46 in. / 146.5 x 117 cm.

10. Nude in the Bedroom, 1991, pastel on paper 43 7/8 x 28 in. / 111.5 x 71 cm.

11. Indian Ghats, 1992, oil on board

36 3/8 x 47 5/8 in. / 92.5 x 121 cm.

12. Scotland, 1993, watercolour on paper

30 1/8 x 22 1/4 in. / 76.5 x 56.5 cm.

18. Nude By The Window, 2001, oil on canvas 41 x 31 1/2 in. / 104 x 80 cm.

17. Brixton Garden, 2000, pastel on paper

40 3/8 x 33 5/8 in. / 102.5 x 85.5 cm.

13. Coney Island, 1995, oil on canvas

25 1/4 x 37 3/8 in. / 64 x 95 cm.

20. Olgas, 2006, pastel on paper 15 x 21 5/8 in. / 38 x 55 cm.

15. Brixton Garden, 2000, oil on canvas

60 1/4 x 46 1/4 in. / 153 x 117.5 cm.

28. Apples and White Jug, 2020, oil on canvas 14 x 15 3/4 in. / 35.5 x 40 cm.

21. Apples, Evening Light 2014, oil on canvas 13 3/4 x 18 1/8 in. / 35 x 46 cm.

24. Brixton Garden, Early Summer, 2016, oil on canvas 49 5/8 x 41 3/8 in. / 126 x 105 cm.

23. Studio Shelves, as They Were, 2016, oil on canvas 30 1/8 x 39 3/8 in. / 76.5 x 100 cm.

22. St. Annes, 2014, pastel on paper

28 x 20 1/8 in. / 71 x 51 cm.

19. Battersea Blues, 2003, pastel on paper

42 1/2 x 34 1/2 in. / 108 x 87.5 cm.

30. White Roses in Vase, 2020, oil on canvas 18 1/8 x 13 3/4 in. / 46 x 35 cm.

31. Camellia and Roses, 2021, oil on canvas 25 1/4 x 17 3/8 in. / 64 x 44 cm.

ANTHONY EYTON R.A.

1923 Born

1941 Department of Fine Art, Reading University

1947 Camberwell School of Art

1951 Abbey Major Scholarship to work in Italy

1958 Elected member of the London Group

1969 Kingston Whig-Standard Award, Ontario

1972 John Moores Competition (Prize Winner)

1973 Grocer’s Company Fellowship to work in Italy

1975 2nd British International Drawing Biennale, Middlesborough (First Prize)

1984 Member of the Royal West of England Academy

1986 Elected Royal Academician

1988 Member of the Royal Waterolour Society

1989 Charles Wollaston Award, Royal Academy of Arts, London

1993 Member of the Royal Cambrian Academy

1999-2010 Resident Artist, Eden Project, Cornwall

2011 Awarded Honorary Fellowship from the University of the Arts, London

2015-ongoing Resident Artist, Stowe School, Buckinghamshire

Selected Public Collections

Arts Council of Great Britain, London

British Museum, London

British School, Rome

Carlisle Art Gallery

Contemporary Arts Society, London

Guildhall Art Gallery, London

Imperial War Museum, London

Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester

London Transport Museum, London

Stowe School, Buckinghamshire

Tate Britain and Modern, London

The Eden Project, Cornwall

The Queens Collection, London

Selected Exhibitions

1952–77 British Painting, Royal Academy of Arts, London

1959, ‘61, ‘68 New Art Centre, London

1971 Boswells Gallery, Kingston, Ontario

1972 Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

1973 New Grafton Gallery, London

1975 William Darby Gallery, London

1976 Drawings of People, Serpentine Gallery, London

1978-2023 Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London

1979 British Art Show, Arts Council of Great Britain, London

1980 Retrospective, Towner & Plymouth Art Galleries, London, with tour

1980-2023 Browse & Darby, London

1982 Hayward Annual 1982: British Drawing, Hayward Gallery, London

1983 Hong Kong and the New Territories, Imperial War Museum, London

1984 The Hard Won Image, Tate Gallery, London

1986 Royal Leicester Infirmary, Surrey University, touring exhibition

1997 Explorations, A T Kearney, London

1998 Artists in National Parks – Exmoor, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

2006 Drawing Inspiration, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal,

2007 The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London (Prize Winner)

2009-10 Evolutions of a Cornish clay pit, Eden Project, Cornwall

2011 Spitalfields Paintings: 1968-1984. Revisited 2011, Eleven Spitalfields, London

2014-15 Drawing on Hawksmoor, Eleven Spitalfields, London

2021 London Group, Cello Factory, London

2021 Invited Guests, David Mach, London

2022 London Group at Bankside, Bankside Gallery, London

1. Self Portrait, 1941, oil on canvas, 18 1/4 x 14 3/8 in. / 46.5 x 36.5 cm.

2. Woman at the Sink, 1948, oil on canvas, 20 7/8 x 16 in. / 53 x 40.5 cm.

3. Salvation Army, 1950, oil on canvas, 24 5/8 x 20 7/8 in. / 62.5 x 53 cm.

4. The Forum, 1951, 1951, oil on canvas, 26 3/8 x 28 3/4 in. / 67 x 73 cm.

5. High Level Bridge, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1953, oil on board, 9 5/8 x 12 in. / 24.5 x 30.5 cm.

6. Packing Tiles, Factory Cat, 1955, oil on board, 9 1/4 x 7 1/2 in. / 23.5 x 19 cm.

7. Hanbury Street Window, 1974, oil on canvas, 57 5/8 x 46 in. / 146.5 x 117 cm.

8. Vitorchiano, Italy, 1974, oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 47 1/4 in. / 100 x 120 cm.

9. Crinum, 1990, oil on canvas, 22 1/2 x 19 1/4 in. / 57 x 49 cm.

10. Nude in the Bedroom, 1991, pastel on paper, 43 7/8 x 28 in. / 111.5 x 71 cm.

11. Indian Ghats, 1992, oil on board, 36 3/8 x 47 5/8 in. / 92.5 x 121 cm.

12. Scotland, 1993, watercolour on paper, 30 1/8 x 22 1/4 in. / 76.5 x 56.5 cm.

13. Coney Island, 1995, oil on canvas, 25 1/4 x 37 3/8 in. / 64 x 95 cm.

14. Rio, 1998, pastel on paper, 12 3/4 x 21 in. / 32.5 x 53.5 cm.

15. Brixton Garden, 2000, oil on canvas, 60 1/4 x 46 1/4 in. / 153 x 117.5 cm.

16. Eden Project, 2000, pastel on paper, 18 7/8 x 23 7/8 in. / 48 x 60.5 cm.

17. Brixton Garden, 2000, pastel on paper, 40 3/8 x 33 5/8 in. / 102.5 x 85.5 cm.

18. Nude By The Window, 2001, oil on canvas, 41 x 31 1/2 in. / 104 x 80 cm.

19. Battersea Blues, 2003, pastel on paper, 42 1/2 x 34 1/2 in. / 108 x 87.5 cm.

20. Olgas, 2006, pastel on paper, 15 x 21 5/8 in. / 38 x 55 cm.

21. Apples, Evening Light, 2014, oil on canvas, 13 3/4 x 18 1/8 in. / 35 x 46 cm.

22. St. Annes, 2014, pastel, 28 x 20 1/8 in. / 71 x 51 cm.

23. Studio Shelves, as They Were, 2016, oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 39 3/8 in. / 76.5 x 100 cm.

24. Brixton Garden, Early Summer, 2016, oil on canvas, 49 5/8 x 41 3/8 in. / 126 x 105 cm.

25. Apples and Vase, Noon, 2018, oil on paint box lid, 10 1/4 x 13 3/4 in. / 26 x 35 cm.

26. Avalanche, Collapsed Shelf, 2018, oil on canvas, 39 x 39 3/8 in. / 99 x 100 cm.

27. Avalanche, Fallen Shelf, 2018, pastel on board, 11 3/4 x 14 1/8 in. / 30 x 36 cm.

28. Apples and White Jug, 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 15 3/4 in. / 35.5 x 40 cm.

29. Small White Rose, 2020, oil on board, 10 x 10 in. / 25.5 x 25.5 cm.

30. White Roses in Vase, 2020, oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 13 3/4 in. / 46 x 35 cm.

31. Camellia and Roses, 2021, oil on canvas, 25 1/4 x 17 3/8 in. / 64 x 44 cm.

32. White and Red Roses, Garage Studio, 2022, oil on canvas, 18 1/2 x 15 3/8 in. / 47 x 39 cm.

33. Irises against Yellow, 2023, oil on canvas, 22 x 15 in. / 56 x 38 cm.