JOA N T H E
WA RBU RTO N & B E NTO N E ND E FFE CT
M E D I C I G A L L E RY I N A S S O C I AT I O N W I T H
S A L LY H U N T E R F I N E A RT
COVER NO. 1 (DETAIL)
JOA N T H E
WA RBU RTO N & B E NTON E ND E FFE CT
M E D I C I G A L L E RY 5 Cork Street London W1S 3LQ
in association with S A L LY H U NT E R F I N E A RT 11 - 29 March 2014 Private view T u e s d a y 11 M a r c h 2 p m - 8 p m thereafter Monday - Friday 10am - 6pm Saturday 11am - 4pm 020 7495 2565 www.medicigallery.co.uk
I NT R O D U CT I O N
Benton End which Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett Haines took over in 1940 was a large and rambling sixteenth-century house overlooking the River Brett on the outskirts of Hadleigh, Suffolk. The three acre walled-garden had become a wilderness during the 15 years that the house had stood unoccupied. Cedric and Lett were both established artists who had become disillusioned with the commercial art world and given up their London house, taking a lease on Pound Farm, four miles away some years previously. Their school, the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, had been started in 1937 as an “oasis of decency for artists outside the system� and was situated at Dedham. When the building was destroyed by fire in 1939, it was to 3
Benton End that they brought their home, school and garden. Cedric Morris, who was the subject of a major Tate Gallery exhibition in 1984, was the
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principal of the school but left the organization of it to his partner. The school was much more than a mere education system and the character of the place was informed by the pre-occupations of the proprietors. Cedric was a passionate gardener and nurseryman (for much of his life he was better known in horticultural than in artistic circles) and the garden was a marvelous setting and subject for the students. The kitchen was
Lett’s domaine. Although it fizzed with microbial activity, the meals he produced were famously delicious. Ronald Blythe has described it as “ a cool ochre room crammed with bold oils of seabirds, and an overall feeling of spartan grandeur. The atmosphere as “robust and coarse and exquisite and tentative, all at once. Rough and ready and fine mannered. Also faintly dangerous”. 5
What these two men created here was a paradise, cut off from the metropolitan world but also isolated from the local community where “the Artists’ house” was regarded with suspicion. Nonetheless it was a mecca for visitors as disparate as Beth Chatto, Francis Bacon, Elizabeth David, Benjamin Britten, Randolph Churchill, Edward Bawden, John Banting and Allan Walton. It was full of life and it was very different. It was also a place which changed
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the lives of the students who entered its doors. Joan Warburton was one of these.
She had been born in 1920. Her father retired from the army in 1921 to the outskirts of Colchester, moving further into the countryside in 1925 to a sixteenth century farmhouse. Hunt balls, sherry parties, a finishing school in Belgium and presentation at Court were supposed to set Joan Warburton firmly on the road to an uppermiddle class conventional future. She had been introduced to the atelier of Oswald Poreau at finishing school and decided that painting was something she wanted to take seriously. The family doctor effected an introduction to Cedric Morris and
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ambulance corps) she remained a committed visitor to Benton End. While working for the Red Cross she met Peter O’Malley who had been invalided out of the Army to a hospital in Wales. They married in 1945.
Joan Warburton and Peter O’Malley started their married life in a bed-sitter in Harcourt Terrace, London. Their years living in London were happy ones. Peter taught ceramics at The Royal College of Art for 19 years and
she started as a student in 1937. She, like many of the students, become a confirmed horticultural enthusiast. Her skills in this area provided her with much of her future subject matter. The school was a setting in which she flourished, finding the company at the school congenial and the frequent lively parties a revelation. Although she signed up for war work in 1940 (WRENS, an arms factory and the Red Cross 8
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they had firm friends in the artistic community, such as Basil and Karin Jonzen, Kenneth Armitage and Jo Moore, Freddie Gore and Robert Buhler, spiced with the occasional, not always welcome visits from the Roberts Colquhoun and MacBryde. She exhibited in mixed
shows such as the Royal Academy, Leicester Galleries and Women’s International and had three solo exhibitions. In 1969 Peter decided to retire from the Royal College and, given a free hand as to where to settle, Joan Warburton decided to return to “Cedric country”. She bought a house, an old wig-maker’s shop, in Stoke by Nayland and filled the garden with plants and the shop-part of the house with succulents. Back problems had by this time caused her to give up painting in oil - standing to paint at an easel was impossible, but she worked with great energy in
watercolour and gouache. She mounted ten successful solo exhibitions over the following twenty years. Peter died in 1994 after a debilitating illness and she died of cancer in 1996. Unlike some of the students, such as Lucy Harwood, Joan Warburton did not become a permanent fixture at Benton End, but it was central to her life and way of looking at the world. This exhibition of her work, together with that of some of the other visitors and students, gives a flavour of that world and how it was. SALLY HUNTER
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CATA L O G U E
JOAN WARBURTON (1920-1996)
5 Cats with milk 1948 (illustrated) oil on canvas 30 x 35 cm
1 Still-life with Honesty 1966 (illustrated) oil on canvas 76 x 60 cm
6 Girl in a railway carriage 1939 (illustrated) pen and ink 49 x 40 cm £460
2 Suspect Shore gouache (illustrated) 31 x 53 cm 3 Benton End I pen and ink (illustrated) 39 x 38 cm 4 Cedric and Lett pen and ink (illustrated) 30 x 20 cm
£3200
£850
£400
£450
£680
7 Early Summer Flowers in white room 1995 (illustrated) gouache 57 x 49 cm
£700
8 R A Bevan 1944 pencil (illustrated) 18 x 25 cm
£320
2
12
9 Chelsea back yard 1960 (illustrated) oil on canvas 61 x 51 cm 10 Delia and Mary, Newlyn 1942 (illustrated) pen & ink & watercolour 26 x 35 cm 11 Tripoli, Libya 1966 pastel 35 x 39 cm
£1500
12 House designed by Fernand Pouillion, Aix-en-Provence 1956 (illustrated) oil on canvas 51 x 61 cm £1900
£480
13 Interior with blue chair pastel 40 x 51 cm
£420
£450
14 Pelargoniums c1955 pastel 40 x 50 cm
£480
15 Succulents in Flowerpot 1957 pastel 49 x 40 cm £480
17 Bamboo Grove 1959 oil on canvas 61 x 31 cm
£950
16 Interior, The White House 1993 (illustrated) pen & ink & pastel 41 x 45 cm £480
18 Pavilion, Isleworth 1955 pastel 38 x 35 cm
£420
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19 Head of a Woman c1939 pen and ink (illustrated) 49 x 40 cm
£480
20 Boats 1947 pastel 31.5 x 41.5 cm
£440
21 Studies of sleeping man c1940 pen and ink 32.5 x 45 cm
£380
22 The Oval Mirror pastel 40 x 48 cm
£460
23 Thistles 1960 pen and ink 50 x 40 cm
£450
24 Slag heaps at Merthyr Tydfil 1938 gouache (illustrated) 43 x 55 cm £780 25 Autumn 1963 oil on board 61 x 51 cm
£1500
26 The Vicarage Garden 1950 (illustrated) oil on canvas 51 x 77 cm
£1800 24
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27 Nine London Pigeons 1957 (illustrated) oil on canvas 51 x 61 cm 28 Self portrait oil on canvas 30 x 25 cm 29 Driver 1939 pen and ink 40.5 x 25 cm 30 Solva II pastel, pen & ink 39 x 36 cm
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£1800
31 Running Leopard 1972 watercolour 53.5 x 74 cm
£680
£580
32 Sisyrinchium Bermudiana c 1960 pastel 40 x 50 cm £400
£350
33 Mediterranean Village pastel 40 x 49 cm
£450
£480
34 Barbara Gilligan 1940 pen and ink 31 x 24 cm
£390
35 Hen on button back chair 1939 pen and ink 40 x 41 cm £420
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36 Blue and White china 1991 pastel 37 x 57 cm
£420
37 Roses on mantelpiece pastel 34 x 36 cm
£400
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38 Liam with Kitten 1948 oil on canvas (illustrated) 61 x 51 cm 39 Still-life with shells pen & ink & pastel 42 x 27 cm 40 Fish Pond pastel 20 x 17 cm 41 Bowl of Eggs 1986 watercolour 33 x 51 cm 42 Iris pastel 49 x 40 cm
£1500
43 Seedlings in Terracotta Pot 1963 pastel 35 x 31 cm £400
£390
44 Finch and Watcher 1991 gouache 54 x 36 cm £520
£290
45 Blackbird Spring 1979 gouache 74 x 52 cm
£750
£520
46 Olive Tree 1956 pastel 39 x 45 cm
£450
£450
47 White Chair 1990 watercolour 54 x 36 cm
£460
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48 Still-life in patterned Jug 1968 (illustrated) watercolour 55 x 53 cm £650
50 The Algarve (illustrated) pastel and watercolour 36.5 x 54 cm
£500
49 Tomatoes on the Vine c1960 pen and ink 25 x 30 cm
51 Benton End II c1940 (illustrated) pen and ink 30 x 30 cm
£400
£360
EDWARD BAWDEN (1903-1989)
BARBARA GILLIGAN (1913-1995)
52 Kew Palace (illustrated) lithograph 47.5 x 61.5 cm
54 Lydia (illustrated) oil on canvas 15.5 x 24 cm
DAVID CARR (1915 - 1968)
53 The Machine (illustrated) oil on canvas 51 x 61 cm
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£920
£450
55 Padererewski, his father, sister and music teacher oil on canvas 61 x 51 cm £620 £2800
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LUCY HARWOOD (1893-1972) 56 Capercaillie (illustrated) oil on canvas 51 x 61 cm
£920
57 Still-life with Spring Flowers oil on canvas 51 x 31.5 cm £680 58 Landscape with Chimney oil on canvas 51 x 41 cm £850 59 Still-life with Hellebores oil on canvas 63 x 50 cm £1000
60 Still-life with souvenir of Portugal (illustrated) oil on canvas 66 x 46 cm
£850
61 Steeples near Hadleigh oil on canvas 41 x 51 cm
£650
62 Still-life 1952 oil on board 41 x 47.5 cm
£900
GLYN MORGAN (1926 - )
63 The Offering 1978 oil on board 63 x 76 cm
£1200 50
64 Landscape with an Owl 1989 (illustrated) mixed media 72 x 85 cm £1500 ELVIC STEELE (1920-1997)
65 Morning Lilies (illustrated) oil on board 76 x 61 cm 66 Grasses near the Pools oil on board 41 x 61 cm
£1200
£980
67 Iris Danfordil oil on board 43 x 61 cm
£980
68 Evening Quiet oil on board 61 x 46 cm
£980
69 Hoarding Insects oil on board 45 x 60 cm
£980
70 Cabbage White oil on board 45 x 60 cm
£980 64
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ALLAN WALTON (1892-1948) 71 Suffolk Landscape oil on canvas laid down on board (illustrated) 62 x 41 cm 72 Suffolk Church (illustrated) oil on canvas 40 x 33 cm
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£1800
£950
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WORK MAY BE PURCHASED ON RECEIPT OF CATALOGUE IMAGES OF ALL WORK AT www.medicigallery.co.uk
11-29 MARCH 2014