Modern British Art - A Century of Fame and Promise

MODERN BRITISH ART A Century of Fame and Promise

HARRY MOORE-GWYN BRITISH ART

MODERN BRITISH ART A Century of Fame and Promise

Catalogue to be held in conjunction with an exhibition at Ground Floor, 6 Mason’s Yard, Duke Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6BU

5th – 19th June 2025

Front cover:

Richard Eurich, RA (1903-1992) [Detail of cat.58] Rear cover:

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) [Cat.1] Opposite page:

Arthur Wragg (1903-1976) [Detail of cat.39]

HARRY MOORE-GWYN BRITISH ART

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Contents

Page

Glasgow to London 1890-1910

6

The Camden Town Group and Its Influence

12

British Realism the 1920’s onwards

22

The Bloomsbury Group and Its Circle

30

A Time of Crisis British Art from c.1930

40

The Sculptor as Carver

52

The War and After British Art from 1940

56

Robert Bevan (1865-1925) [Detail of cat.9] 3

Image:

Thomas Saunders Nash (1891-1968) [Detail of cat.22] 4

Foreword Provenance always casts an interesting light on the type and style of pictures that we handle as dealers. Alongside this is an increasing familiarity with certain labels that appear on the stretchers and backboards of paintings and drawings. One that seems to have made a regular appearance with us comes from pictures executed either side of the Second World War and exhibited by the Leicester Galleries (at the time one of London’s most respected and pioneering dealers). The title of these annual mixed exhibitions was the somewhat quaint “Artists of Fame and Promise”.

True to this phrase, the gallery’s catalogues for each show present an extraordinary record of artists famous and unknown, of reputations once great and now diminished and of painters hugely popular at the time who are now forgotten. In the 1948 edition (in which our Duncan Grant Street Scene in Venice (cat.30.) was exhibited) the now relatively unknown woman painter Ursula MacCannell was shown alongside none other than Edgar Degas, Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer and Maurice Utrillo. The aim of such shows was not merely to provide stepping stones to young artists, but to also make us ask important questions about quality and importance within the history of art and collecting.

In different ways many galleries of the mid twentieth century were attempting to do this via similar shows: Redfern Gallery and Arthur Tooth also amongst them.

But surely questions of fame and promise should not stop with contemporary art and could equally be be extended to artists that were forgotten generations back and whose reputations are only now being re-evalued. It seems to us a good way to look at and collect art of the twentieth century and so we have attempted to do just this here.

In this catalogue - alongside Paul Nash you will find the extraordinary black and white illustrator Arthur Wragg; the female War artist Dorothy Coke will share a double page spread with Augustus John, as well as the figurative painter William Thomson with the mid-century academician Richard Eurich. Such works deserve to be considered and hung together in context and hopefully challenge us to continue to ask questions about a painter’s significance long after their death.

Harry Moore-Gwyn

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Glasgow to London 1890-1910 CAT. 1

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) Winter, c.1895 Signed vertically lower right: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and inscribed Winter Watercolour over pencil on light brown tracing paper, 29.5 by 16 cm (11 ¾ by 6 ¼ ins) Provenance: deaccessioned from the collection of the Ralph T.Coe Center for the Visual Arts, Santa Fe

The present work is one of three closely related drawings on the subject of Winter executed by Mackintosh in around 1895. The design would go on to become one of his most celebrated contributions to a publication called The Magazine, a highly influential group project, put together at the Glasgow School of Art by the artist and several of his fellow students (his future wife Margaret McDonald and her sister Frances amongst them). The Magazine was of central importance in helping develop Mackintosh’s distinct style as an artist, architect and designer. Each of the three designs were executed on near-identically sized sheets of tracing paper: in addition to this version is one contained within the pages of the Spring 1896 edition of The Magazine itself (collection of Glasgow School of Art (ref.MC/G/10)) and another in the collection of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow (GLAHA:41033). The present work differs slightly to the other versions, losing the margin to the right of the two nude figures with the title and vertical signature contained in the lower part of the drawing and inscribed with the artist’s particular style of graphic lettering. His winter design acts as a pendant to a design of Spring from around the same date, both depicting similar primeval nude female figures.

Roger Billcliffe has described the image as follows: “Each of the figures is shown living below the ground, stretching as if awaking from a long sleep…the sun is just appearing above the horizon to welcome the first signs of the new year.”

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CAT. 2

Annie French (1872-1965) Illustration to “The Wish” by Abraham Cowley Signed l.r.: Annie French an inscribed with lines from the poem: O Yet, ere I descend into the Grave/May I a small house and a large garden have Pen and ink with wash, 25.5 by 32 cm (10 by 12 ½ ins)

French was a student at Glasgow School of Art from 1896 until 1902, studying under Jean Deauville and Fra Newbery. Her exquisitely crafted Art Nouveau illustrations are amongst the finest of any artist associated with that tradition and she was later a member of the influential group of artists and designers known as the Glasgow Girls. Her work is reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley as well as (perhaps unsurprisingly) showing the influence of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. This evocative pastoral drawing is an illustration to verses from a poem by the great seventeenth century poet Abraham Cowley.

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CAT. 3

Herbert Dalziel (1843-1941) Houses under Snow Oil on panel, 35.5 by 15 cm (14 by 6 ins) 8

CAT. 4

Herbert Dalziel (1843-1941) Nocturne: Winter Sea Signed and dated l.l.: Herbert Dalziel/1902 Oil on canvas, 35.5 by 45.5 cm (14 by 17 ¾ ins) Provenance: Sotheby’s Belgravia, The Dalziel family: engravers and illustrators, work from the Studio of Herbert Dalziel, 16th May, 1978, lot 82

In the catalogue for his landmark 1995 Barbican show Impressionism in Britain, Kenneth McKonkey wrote of Dalziel’s later work: “In an extraordinary departure, around 1910, Herbert Dalziel abandoned his conservative style and produced a number of jewel-like landscapes which adopt a sophisticated divisionism…the sense of atmosphere and weird luminosity draws comparisons with contemporary photography and the mystic landscapes of Khnopff.” Painted in 1902, Nocturne: Winter Sea is one of a number of works that suggests that Dalziel had adopted this more radical style well-before 1910 at a time where he was starting to exhibit at the New English Art Club (having recently been elected a member). It is likely that it was here that he came to know the American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler who remained a strong influence. Dalziel was the son of Thomas Dalziel, part of the important Victorian family wood-engraving business known as the Brothers Dalziel.

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CAT. 5

Sir William Reid Dick, RA (1878-1961) Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a Shawl Signed to reverse of bust: W.Reid Dick Bronzed plaster, approx. 25 cm (9 ¾ ins) (high) 10

The Scottish artist William Reid Dick trained at Glasgow School of Art later rising to become the best-known sculptor of his day, sculptor to George VI and creator of some of the best-known monumental public sculptures amongst them: the Kitchener Memorial Chapel in St Paul's, the Lion on the Menin Gate, Ypres, the stone equestrian group ‘Controlled Energy’ on Unilever House in London and Franklin D.Roosevelt in Grosvenor Square. His smaller portrait busts show a more intimate side to his art, this sensitive plaster sculpture showing his fine abilities as a modeller of remarkable detail.

CAT. 6

Walter Greaves, RI (1846-1930) Nocturne: Chelsea Reach Signed l.r.: W.Greaves Oil on canvas, 40 by 59.5 cm (15 ¾ by 22 ¼ ins)

In 1863, Walter Greaves, a Thames boatman and untrained artist met the great American painter, James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

He subsequently became his studio assistant, mixing his paints, preparing his canvases and taking him out at night on his river boat to observe parts of the London river Greaves knew so well. The result of these trips were Whistler’s great nocturnes, including Nocturne: Blue and Gold, Old Battersea Bridge (1871-77) and Nocturne in Blue and Silver (1872-78). Yet by the end of the century Whistler had dropped Greaves. When in 1911 William Marchant launched a major exhibition at the Goupil Gallery rediscovering Greaves and suggesting that there was a far more significant mutual influence between the two artists, Whistler’s biographer Joseph Pennells accused Greaves of plagiarism, condemning his art once again to obscurity. Despite widespread support from artists such as Augustus John, Walter Sickert and William Nicholson he was to die penniless in 1830. Today, although Greaves’s dating remains notoriously unreliable (he appears to have guessed when he painted many of his pictures), his reputation is being justly rebuilt. His own nocturnes, of which the present painting is a fine example, can at their best show an inspiration and originality that are close to those by his master and are a perfect portrayal of the tones and shades of a river that Greaves perhaps knew better than any other artist of his age.

11

The Camden Town Group and Its Influence

CAT. 7

John Wheatley, ARA (1892-1955) The Rock Pool, c.1915 Oil on panel, 28 by 43 cm (11 by 17 ins) Provenance: Michael Whitehall; with Liss Fine Art

Wheatley was a student at the Slade during its golden age under Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer. Like many other students he was influenced by the work being painted by Augustus John and his circle in the early part of the 1910s. This resonates strongly in this fine plein-air study.

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CAT. 8

Walter Bayes, RWS (1869-1956) White Summer Signed with monogram l.l.: WB Oil on panel, 47 by 80 cm (18 ½ by 31 ½ ins) Exhibited: London, New English Art Club, 1911, no.65

White Summer was probably painted on a visit to the sands at Saint Valery sur Somme. It is one of Bayes’s most impressive and ambitious beach scenes of the 1910s which (typically as here) have the artist’s own family as the central subject. The two figures depicted are most likely to be the painter’s wife Kitty Bayes and the children’s domestic nurse Jenny Millar, who was aged 21 years at the time of the 1911 Census.

Walter and Kitty’s son, Alfred, who turned three in 1911 is shown at his mother’s feet. Bayes’s exhibits at the first Camden Town Group exhibitions in the same year as the present work received significant critical attention, The Daily Telegraph critic noting in December of that year “There is something satisfying in the austere modernity of Mr Walter Bayes…. He is able to suggest beneath the aerial envelope, beneath the perpetually changing vesture of the earth, something of architectural structure, of permanence” (The Daily Telegraph, 14 December 1911, quoted in Wendy Baron, The Camden Town Group, Scolar Press, 1979, p.214). Critics went on to label Bayes as both a “Modernist” for the simplification of form (something in evidence in this painting) and a “Classicist” in respect of his concern for rhythm and design.

The latter of these would ultimately set him apart from some other members of the Camden Town Group. I am grateful to Grant Waters for his assistance in cataloguing this work.

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CAT. 9

Robert Bevan (1865-1925) Return to the Village, c.1901-3 Signed l.r.: Robert Bevan oil on canvas, 64.5 by 81.5cm (25 ¼ by 32 ins) Provenance: Sir Siegmund and Lady Eva Warburg, by 1961, and thence by descent to the present owner Literature: R.A.Bevan, Robert Bevan, A Memoir by His Son, Studio Vista, London, illustrated no. 16 Exhibited: London, Colnaghi Gallery, Paintings of Robert Bevan, 1961 (as Return to the Village, Poland)

The two Bevan paintings offered here chart the artist’s journey as a painter from either end of a career that places him amongst the most notable British landscape artists of his era. Bevan was well over a decade older than many of his fellow founder Camden Town Group members (Harold Gilman, Spencer Gore and Charles Ginner amongst them) and his own mature artistic journey was already well under way having met Gauguin in Pont Aven right back in the 1890s. Few British artists were painting with such radical use of colour at the turn-of-the-twentieth century, fully justifying Sir Philip Hendy’s, then Director of the National Gallery, description of Bevan (in his preface to the 1961 Bevan retrospective exhibition at Colnaghi’s) as “perhaps the first Englishman to use pure colour in the twentieth Century.” Return to the Village, a major early Bevan landscape, is characterised by just that daring use of colour (here with the vivid purple permeating the scene). The subject is Polish, dating from one of many trips Bevan made to the home of his wife Stanislawa de Karlowska.

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CAT. 10

Robert Bevan (1865-1925) Horse and Cart at the Gates of Stoneacre Farm, 1924 Signed l.l.: Robert Bevan Oil on canvas, 51 by 61 cm (20 by 24 ins) Provenance: R.A.Bevan (the artist’s son) Exhibited: From Sickert to Gertler: Modern British Art from Boxted House, National Galleries of Scotland, 2008, no.17

Many of Bevan’s later landscapes focus on the countryside of the Devon/Somerset border near Luppitt where he had taken a cottage in his final years. The buildings at Stoneacre Farm provided such a strong inspiration that he made two major paintings of the subject, the present work being one. A related study to this work in watercolour and charcoal is in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (acc.1993.10) (see fig 1. left). The present work remained in the artist’s possession at his death in the following year and formed part of the remarkable collection that his son R.A.Bevan established at Boxted House in Suffolk.

Fig.1 15

CAT. 11

Muriel Hare (1890-1964) Evening in a London Square With the artist's address label (affixed to stretcher) Oil on canvas, 66 by 43 cm (26 by 17 cm) 16

Hare was a London based painter who lived in Chelsea before settling in Holland Park and Notting Hill. Her evocative landscapes and still lifes reflect the influence of the Camden Town Group (under whom she may have studied). She exhibited extensively at the Royal Academy, the Society of Woman Artists and in Ireland at the Royal Hibernian Academy. She had Irish roots and appears to have been the niece of the well-known historical genre painter St George Hare who painted her as a child.

CAT. 12

Charles Ginner, ARA (1878-1952) A View Down a Country Lane, Shipley, Sussex Signed l.r.: C.Ginner Oil on canvas, 46 by 61 cm (18 by 24 ins) Provenance: T.W. Spurr Esq.; Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 28 November 1984; from whom purchased by Sir Richard Attenborough; Sotheby’s, London, 23 November 2016, lot 119 Exhibited: London, Wildenstein & Co Ltd, Cross Section of English Painting, March-April 1938, no.27

In 1914 Ginner founded an artistic movement with his Camden Town Group colleague, Harold Gilman, called Neo-Realism that essentially came to an end following the latter’s death in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919. Despite this, that movement’s style of decorative realism remained central to Ginner’s artistic vision. His style of painting is instantly recognisable, a technique of employing thick (almost three dimensional) impasto to the canvas. His fellow painter Hubert Wellington wrote in the introduction to his memorial show with the Art’s Council in 1953: “Ginner became almost exclusively a painter of landscapes expansive, worked from corner to corner in mosaic-like touches, always with the accentuation of pattern in mind. I do not think he ever deliberately composed a picture, but he found subjects everywhere…”. Shipley in Sussex also provided the location for one of the artist’s best-known later paintings Through a Cottage Window, Shipley, Sussex now in the Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle (acc.1946.23.3).

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CAT. 13

Walter Sickert, RA (1860-1942) Landscape with Distant Hills, Dieppe, c.1919 Oil on canvas, 32 by 45 cm (12 ½ by 17 ¾ ins) Provenance: Christine Sickert (Mrs Walter Sickert); thence by descent; Christie’s, 12 November 1982, lot 46 Literature: Wendy Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings, New Haven and London, 2006, no.520, p.464 (illustrated)

Wendy Baron (op cit) cites the present picture as one of a small of group landscape scenes Sickert painted near Dieppe “with planar compositions and low horizons characteristic of the Hague School of landscape painters”. This painting with its palette of subdued colours conveying the subject primarily through tone is not only typical of Hague painters (particularly Jacob Maris) but also slightly recalls the style of Sickert’s earlier mentor James Abbott McNeil Whistler. A similar treatment of landscape and sky is evident in the painting Dieppe Races of c.1920-26 now in Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (acc.1945).

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CAT. 14

Walter Sickert, RA (1860-1942) Clarence Gardens, Camden Town, c.1920 Signed l.r.: Sickert Oil on canvas, 39.5 by 55.5 cm (15 ½ by 21 ¾ ins) Provenance: Savile Gallery, Paintings by Walter Sickert, May 1926, no.20; Marlborough Gallery, London; Anthony D'Offay in 1980; from whom acquired for the Reader’s Digest art collection; the Fine Art Society, London Exhibited: London, Fine Art Society, Camden Town Group Centenary Exhibition, 2011, no.6 (illustrated) Literature: Wendy Baron, Sickert Paintings and Drawings, New Haven and London, 2006, no.528, p.466 (illustrated)

Despite Sickert’s central position in the London art scene of the earlier twentieth century (particularly as the leading force in the Camden Town and Fitzroy Groups), his topographical views of the city’s streets and squares are relatively rare. Many of these date from the 1920s and include the painting Hanging Gardens of Islington of c.1924-6 (Baron, op.cit., p.467, no.530) and The Garden of Love or Lainey’s Garden from 1927-28 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (acc.2726)). This substantial London street scene can be firmly placed alongside these works as a significant Sickert London subject of the early 1920s.

Clarence Gardens was in the heart of old Camden Town and was a residential square planned by John Nash to be the vegetable market for the area. It had previously been painted by a number of fellow artists in the Camden Town Group, including both Harold Gilman and William Ratcliffe, in around 1912. Sickert himself had a studio in Robert Street in the 1890s - a road that ran between Cumberland Market and Clarence Gardens. Although the square survives today, the housing around it was destroyed during World War Two. 19

CAT. 15

Augustus John, OM, RA (1878-1961) Study of a Canadian Soldier Signed l.l.: John Pen and sepia ink, 24 by 13.5 cm (9 ½ by 5 ¼ ins)

During the First World War, Lord Beaverbrook gave Augustus John the honorary rank of major with the intention that he should paint a monumental canvas showing Canadian soldiers at war. In the event John never completed the commission and the result is the huge (12 metre long) unfinished canvas The Canadians Opposite Lens in the Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum, Ottawa. To prepare for this project, John spent three months in France from December 1917 during which works like this were executed - intimate even touching portrait sketches of the Canadian troops stationed there.

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CAT. 16

Dorothy Coke, RWS, NEAC (1897-1979) Figures in a Street, Leytonstone, c.1918 Signed l.r.: Dorothy J.Coke Watercolour over ink and pencil, 36 by 46.5 cm (14 by 18 ¼ ins) Provenance: bequeathed by the painter to fellow artist Norman Clark, RWS (1913-1992); thence by descent

Dorothy Coke was barely out of the Slade School of Art when she was approached by the War Memorials Committee at the end of the First World War. Recognised by Sir Muirhead Bone as a painter of particular promise, she was the first woman artist to be considered for war art in an official capacity. Although the commission was not fulfilled, Bone acquired two of her watercolours from the time which are now in the Imperial War Museum. She was subsequently elected a member of the New English Art Club in 1919 aged only twenty-two. Figures in a Street, Leytonstone is an extremely rare example of her wartime figure work and bears strong comparison with her watercolour War Allotments in a London Suburb in the Imperial War Museum (acc.ART 2366). As such it can be considered as part of her small body of work from the period that focused on the more everyday aspects of life at home during the War. Coke subsequently executed a number of notable works for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee during World War Two. She was based in Brighton where she taught for most of her life at the town’s art college.

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British Realism - the 1920’s onwards

CAT. 17

Henry Lamb, RA (1883-1960) A View Down a Lane, Durweston, Dorset, c.1921 Oil on board, 24 by 33 cm (9 ½ by 13 ins) Provenance: Carl Eric Bechhofer Roberts

In the summer of 1920 Stanley Spencer and his brother Gilbert visited Henry Lamb at the studio he was renting in Stourpaine in Dorset. A subsequent painting expedition to nearby Durweston resulted in some of Spencer’s finest mature landscape paintings. Lamb’s work at this date was at times strikingly similar to Spencer’s, both artists having recently completed their large scale War paintings for the British War Memorials Committee. The artists painted side by side in these trips – without the label and provenance from Lamb’s patron Carl Eric Bechofer Roberts it would be hard to distinguish this fine landscape painting from similar works by Stanley Spencer.

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CAT. 18

Richard Carline (1896-1980) Cattle Grazing in Parkland Signed and dated (to reverse of panel): Richard Carline/1921 Oil on panel, 26.5 by 37 cm (10 ¼ by 14 ½ ins)

Richard Carline was strongly linked to the artistic circle around Stanley Spencer and Henry Lamb in the 1920s, his family home in Hampstead being a magnet for like-minded painters of the era. He was elected to the London Group in 1920 having achieved notable success as a War artist, which, alongside his older brother Sydney, is notable for compositions that are executed from an aerial viewpoint. This attractive landscape dates from his most productive period, its palette and composition particularly reminiscent of the work Henry Lamb created around the same time.

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CAT. 19

Archibald Sanderson (1901-1972) A Derbyshire Farmyard Signed l.r.: A.Sanderson Oil on canvas, 39.5 by 50 cm (15 ½ by 19 ¾ ins)

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CAT. 20

Ethelbert White, RWS (1891-1972) The Timber Yard Signed l.l.: Ethelbert White Oil on canvas, 50 by 60 cm (19 ¾ by 23 ½ ins)

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CAT. 21

Gilbert Spencer, RA (1892-1979) Farm Labourers Resting in a Field Signed l.l.: Gilbert Spencer Oil on canvas, 31 by 45 cm (12 ¼ by 17 ¾ ins)

In a preface to Gilbert’s Spencer’s 1974 Fine Art Society retrospective, Lady Ilford, his neighbour from his days in Hampstead, wrote: “Gilbert Spencer is essentially a painter of the English countryside… and amongst English landscape painters his work is outstanding…Gilbert and his brother Stanley, were remarkable painters – two real painters. Painters naturally and by force of instinct not merely by training and profession”.

For most of the past century Gilbert Spencer has lived in the shadow of his brother, Stanley, one of the most significant forces in British art of the past one hundred years. Only recently has he gained just recognition in his own right as a distinct figure in the English school of painting and one of the notable lyrical landscape artists of his era. Sidney Hutchinson, at one point secretary of the Royal Academy, perceptively declared that Spencer “might well be called the John Constable of the Twentieth Century.”

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CAT. 22

Thomas Saunders Nash (1891-1968) In the Park Signed and dated l.r.: Tom Nash/35 and inscribed and signed (verso) In the Park/Tom Nash Gouache, 37 by 55 cm (14 ½ by 21 ¾ ins) Provenance: Mr John Sassoon Exhibited: Reading Museum and Art Gallery, Paintings and Drawings Tom Nash (1891-1968), December 1979-January 1980, no.30

Nash’s style is closely associated with his exact Slade contemporary and hero Stanley Spencer. Like the work of both Spencer (particularly his early work) and his brother Gilbert (with whom Nash briefly shared lodgings) his primary influences were the Italian primitives, particularly Giotto. Something of Giotto’s purity is evident in Nash’s work - always inventive in composition and executed in a distinctive style that puts form and colour above detail. Nash exhibited widely particularly at the New English Art Club and was represented by the Redfern Gallery, who gave him his first one-man show in 1926 and exhibited over 150 of his pictures. The Contemporary Art Society acquired two of his works in the early 1930s for the collections of the Harrogate Art Gallery and the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-uponTyne. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Reading Museum and Art Gallery in 1980. Much of Nash’s work is strongly religious in theme, but perhaps his more successful paintings are his modern pastoral subjects (such as the present work), which perfectly convey the late Romantic world of the rural idyll.

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CAT. 23

Sir Thomas Monnington, PRA (1902-1976) Seascape of the North Norfolk Coast Oil on panel, 24 by 35 cm (9 ½ by 13 ¾ ins) Provenance: Evelyn Monnington

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CAT. 24

Reginald Brill (1902-1974) Young woman in Rome Signed l.r.: Reginald Brill and with a label in the artist’s hand (verso) Tempera on panel, 12 by 18 ins (30.5 by 46 cm) Provenance: acquired by the previous owner from the Phoenix Gallery, Lavenham Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1931, no.895 There is a label on the back of the present painting in Brill’s hand: “Painted in Rome in 1929. The building in the background is the Villa Guilia as seen from the British School at Rome. On the right are two Italian Army officers in the uniform then worn.”

Young Woman in Rome is one of Brill’s very few surviving works painted during his time as a Rome Scholar in the late 1920s, having re-surfaced from a private collection nearly a decade ago. The sitter is probably Brill’s wife Rosalie who was also an artist and came out to Italy with him. The portrait is an extraordinary testament to Brill’s precocious talent as an artist and to the very particular style of winners of the Prix de Rome in the 1920s. Typical of works in this tradition, this portrait takes elements of fifteenth century Italian portraiture (particularly the work of Piero Della Francesca) and transforms it into a work that nevertheless could only have been painted in the early part of the twentieth century. The painting was the first work that Brill exhibited at the Royal Academy, two years later in 1931.

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The Bloomsbury Group and Its Circle

CAT. 25

Charles Maresco Pearce (1874-1964) Paris Window With the artist’s original labels (reverse of board) Oil on board, 74 by 38 cm (29 by 15 ins) Provenance: acquired directly by the previous owner from the artist’s daughter, Rebecca Mirkin, in 2008 Exhibited: probably New English Art Club, 1928

Pearce trained at Augustus John and William Orpen’s art school in Chelsea before falling under the strong influence of the Camden Town Group. He received further training under Walter Sickert, leading to him becoming part of Sickert’s close circle in Dieppe just before the First World War. A strong colourist, his work reflects the style of painters from this circle, amongst them Spencer Gore and Harold Gilman. He was considered as an early candidate for the London Group, eventually joining in the 1930s. As well as a painter, he was a man of some means and put-together a remarkable art collection in his own right. He divided his time between England (living in Old Chelsea) and France where he painted fine, colourful landscapes and cityscapes, particularly of Paris and of Menton on the Southern French coast.

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CAT. 26

Roger Fry (1866-1934) Baylham Mill, Suffolk Numbered and dated: 105/1930 with further signature and inscription: Roger Fry/The Mill/Baylham, Suffolk/Anrep, 5 Oil on panel, 25.5 by 32.5 cm (10 by 12 ¾ ins) Provenance: Helen Anrep

Roger Fry and his lover Helen Anrep bought Rodwell House, near the village of Baylham just north of Ipswich in 1928. Baylham Mill was nearby on the River Gipping and was painted by a number of artists as well as Fry himself (most notably

by Duncan Grant on a visit to Fry and Anrep in 1930 (sold Christie’s, 29 September 2020, lot 179)) as well as several of the Euston Road Group of artists, including Graham Bell, Claude Rogers and William Coldstream, all whilst guests of Helen Anrep during the 1930s.

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CAT. 27

Roger Fry (1866-1934) Mountainous Landscape near St Remy With faint signature in pencil (to reverse) and inscribed and numbered: St Remy/40 and inscribed Anrep/3 Oil on board, 28 by 36 cm (11 by 14 ins) Provenance: Helen Anrep

Fry was a regular visitor to southern France for much of his life and in 1931 he acquired Mas d’Angirany, a farmhouse on the Route d’Antiques leading out of St Remy-de-Provence, a house he shared with Charles and Marie Mauron. Frances Spalding has written: “it is not surprising that some of Fry’s most lyrical late landscapes, with their observation of flickering light and intense responsiveness to “the spirit of the place”, were painted in the area in and around St Remy.” (Frances Spalding, Roger Fry - Art and Life, Black Dog Books, 1999, p.254) 32

CAT. 28

Roger Fry (1866-1934) Mount Ventoux, Provence With signature in pencil (to reverse) and inscription: Roger Fry/Mt Ventoux and with further inscription Anrep/6 Oil on board, 28 by 33 cm (11 by 13 ins) Provenance: Helen Anrep

Fry painted a further, larger view of Mount Ventoux in 1930 which was presented by the Contemporary Art Society to the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario in 1970 (acc.70.61.I).

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CAT. 29

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) Study of an Elegant Venetian Woman, 1926 (a) Venetian Man in a Hat, 1926 (b) The Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore, Venice, 1926 (c) Pencil, each approx.16.5 by 19.5 cm (6 ½ by 7 ¾ ins) Provenance: originally pages from a sketchbook by the artist executed in Venice in May-June 1926; the artist’s daughter, Angelica Garnett, from whom gifted to the previous owner

These three charming on-the-spot sketches were executed on a trip that Vanessa Bell made to Venice with Duncan Grant in the early summer of 1926. They were originally from a sketchbook containing numerous character studies of men and women apparently seated in cafés. Many of these appear to have been taken at the end of the day whilst Bell sat in the famous Caffe Florian on St Mark’s Square, as hinted at in a letter from Bell to John Maynard Keynes on 30th May 1926: “we have heavenly ices at Florian’s most evenings & draw the company until they get too restive and suspicious.” (autograph letter from Vanessa Bell to J.M.Keynes May 30, 1926 (collection of Morgan Library & Museum, New York (acc: MA 3448.77)).

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CAT. 30

Duncan Grant (1885-1978) A Street in Venice Signed, dated and inscribed l.l.: D.Grant/Venice/1948 Oil on canvas laid to board, 55.5 by 37.5 cm (21 ¾ by 14 ¾ ins) Exhibited: The Leicester Galleries, London, Artists of Fame and Promise, 1948, no.72

Grant’s visit to Venice with Vanessa Bell in late 1948 was his first following the end of the Second World War. His paintings from the trip explore the more oblique angles of the city’s canals and side streets and are notable for being suffused with the more autumnal light of the time of year. He made a lithograph from the same trip and another oil of a Venetian canal is in the Government Art Collection (GAC.no.1192) and as of 2025 hung in the British Embassy in Washington DC.

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CAT. 31

Duncan Grant (1885-1978) Circular Abstract, c.1950 Signed with initials and inscribed u.r.: DG/done Coloured crayon with ink and pencil, 24 by 17.5 cm (9 ½ by 7 ins) Provenance: the artist to Paul Roche; by descent to his son Martin from whom acquired by the previous owners in 1992

Richard Shone has dated the present drawing to c.1950 and the design was subsequently used in a chest of drawers decorated by Shone that now forms part of the collection at Charleston. Grant, as with other Bloomsbury artists, would add the word “done” to the signature on a work to indicate that the design was used – a practice that originated in the work created for the Omega Workshops in the 1910s.

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CAT. 32

Edward Wolfe, RA (1897-1982) Design for a Screen for the Omega Workshops, 1919 Signed l.r.: Wolfe Black crayon, 22 by 25 cm (8 ½ by 9 ¾ ins)

Wolfe was only twenty-one when Nina Hamnett and Roger Fry invited him to join the Omega Workshops in 1918. There he designed candle shades and trays and decorated furniture. His work from his time at Omega is extremely rare and this abstract design for a screen from 1919 is one of only a very few known designs from his time there.

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CAT. 33

Anthony Devas, ARA (1911-1958) Interior at Burvale House Signed l.r.: Devas Oil on canvas, 53 by 71 cm (20 ¾ by 28 ins) Provenance: Augustus John

The present work appears to have once belonged to the painter Augustus John who Devas first met through Nicolette Macnamara, his fellow student at the Slade School of Art who he married in 1931. This unusual early conversation piece shows the strong influence of art of the period, particularly the Bloomsbury Group who were particularly prominent by the 1930s, and is quite distinct from the portrait work that Devas executed from the late 1930s and which is more closely associated with the Euston Road School. Burvale House was Devas’s family home in Walton-onThames in Surrey. The sitters in this group portrait are not identified although could include the painter’s sisters.

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CAT. 34

Anthony Devas, ARA (1911-1958) Seated Female Nude (Mary) Signed l.l.: Devas Oil on canvas, 45.6 by 36 cm (17 ¾ by 14 ins) Provenance: the artist’s family 39

A Time of Crisis - British Art from c.1930

CAT. 35

Albert Edward Halliwell (1905-1987) Pots and Pictures, 1928 Inscribed on old margin: Pots and Pictures/Poster Design signed and dated A.E.Halliwell/May 1928 Gouache, 35.5 by 26 cm (14 by 10 ¼ ins)

Halliwell, who studied at Stockport School of Art and the Royal College of Art is at his best in the commercial artwork he created in the 1920s which is amongst the best of the English Art Deco. As well as posters for London Transport, Southern Electric and Imperial and International Communications he made packaging design for firms such as Bird's Custard and Melias Coffee. Latterly he was an influential teacher in the field of commercial design at both Camberwell and Central School of Arts and Crafts.

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CAT. 36

Lill Tschudi (1911-2004) Pierrot, c.1934 Oil on card, 21.5 by 16.5 cm (8 ½ by 6 ½ ins) Provenance: acquired from Michael Parkin in August 1983 by John Hilton Exhibited: Michael Parkin Fine Art Ltd, Summer Exhibition of Modern British Art 1860-1950, June-August 1983

Tschudi was one of the most prominent women artists associated with Grosvenor School of Art having first studied there from 1929 to 1930 under Claude Flight. She subsequently lived and studied in France under Gino Severini and Fernand Léger. The present work relates to one of Tschudi’s most celebrated linocuts, an example of which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The idea for the subject came when Tschudi dressed up in a Pierrot costume for Ash Wednesday (Aschermittwoch). It is one of only very few known self portraits by the artist.

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CAT. 37

Paul Nash (1889-1946) Steps by a Villa, Cros-de-Cagnes, 1926 Signed with monogram l.l.: PN and inscribed under mount and dated Cagnes/1926 with further dedication (verso) Coloured crayon, 22 by 14 cm (8 ¾ by 5 ½ ins) Provenance: Oliver and Ruth Simon (a gift from the artist)

The present work comes from a group of drawings by Nash, all made using distinctive light coloured crayons and pencils during an extended period of time spent on the French Riviera in 1926.

The influence of Continental European Art is evident even in smaller works like this, particularly the work of Giorgio de Chirico (whose paintings would go on to inform Nash's own Surrealist art in the following decade). This drawing was given as a New Year gift to Oliver and Ruth Simon. Oliver Simon a close friend and correspondent of Nash was typographer at the Curwen Press and worked on some of the artist's greatest works as an illustrator.

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CAT. 38

Paul Nash (1889-1946) Fantasy, c.1932 Signed l.l.: Paul Nash Watercolour over pencil, 35.5 by 56 cm (14 by 22 ins) Provenance: Lady Herbert; her sale, Christie’s, 23 December 1953; Hamet Gallery; Christie’s, 13 July 1973 (lot 273) Exhibited: London, The Leicester Galleries, Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings by Paul Nash, November 1932, cat.no.2; Venice, XV Biennale, Exhibition of British Section, June 1938, no.18; Leeds, City Art Gallery and Temple Newsam, Exhibition of paintings, sculpture and drawings by Paul Nash and Barbara Hepworth, April - June 1943, cat. no.51; Redfern Gallery, 1963, no.325 Literature: Sir Thomas Browne, Urne Buriall and the Garden of Cyrus. With Thirty Drawings by Paul Nash, Curwen Press, London, 1932, p.112 (for the related work); John Armstrong, Watercolours by Paul Nash at the Leicester Galleries, The Week-end Review, 5 November 1932, p.542; Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980, p.422, no.752

Nash spent much of the year 1931 working on ideas and drawings to illustrate the work Urn Burial and the Garden of Cyrus by the great seventeenth century polymath and writer Sir Thomas Browne. The result would be the artist’s greatest achievement as an illustrator, the art historian Herbert Read subsequently referring to it as “one of the loveliest contributions to contemporary English art”. The Urn Burial had an influence on Nash that went far beyond its text, into his own personal artistic vision and on in his own highly individual take on surrealism. Out of his final illustrations for Urn Burial he developed five larger fullscale watercolours of which one, Mansions of the Dead (Tate Gallery, acc.3204), is perhaps one of his most celebrated pictures of the period. The present watercolour is another of these five works and like the Tate picture prefigured much of Nash’s later visionary work, even forming part of the artist’s submission to the Venice Biennale several years later in 1938. The related illustration to the present watercolour appears on p.112 in the 1932 edition of Urn Burial. Browne’s adjacent text reads: “Whereby whispering places are framed by/ Elliptical arches laid sideways.”

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CAT. 39

Arthur Wragg (1903-1976) “Crazy Non-Stop” – A Crowd Scene Inscribed l.l.: Ps.83 They Walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course’ Pen and ink, 25.5 by 38 cm (10 by 15 ins) Literature: Judy Brook, Arthur Wragg, Twentieth-Century Artist, Prophet and Jester, Sansom & Co, 2001, p.57 (illustrated)

Wragg’s masterpiece as an illustrator was his work The Psalms of Modern Life, first published in 1933. This uncompromising book ran to ten reprints within the first three years of its publication and was sold across the world. Each of Wragg’s illustrations to the Psalms are contemporary social comments on the contents of the Biblical texts. They promoted Wragg’s own strong radical agenda and his perception of the damage in society. This chimed remarkably well with the economically (and arguably spiritually) depressed world of the early 1930s. The present work, one of his most impactful, is the illustration for Psalm 83 for the book.

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CAT. 40

Arthur Wragg (1903-1976) Enchantment Pen with brush and Indian ink and blue gouache, 30 by 26 cm (12 by 10 ¼ ins)

In addition to illustrations for his own books, Wragg enjoyed a varied career as a commercial artist and magazine illustrator. The present work forms part of a storyboard that Wragg put together for Nash’s Magazine and was reproduced there in the edition for July 1934. In the story, Wragg narrates the tale of a lowly secretary who is seduced by an advertisement for a luxury cruise which she takes, subsequently embarking on an onboard romance. Nash’s Magazine was published monthly from 1909 until 1937 and was richly illustrated by many leading artists of the day including Eric Fraser, Rowland Hilder and Dean Cornwell.

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CAT. 41

Mark Gertler (1891-1939) The Benin Head Oil on canvas, 74.5 by 61.5 cm.

(29 ¼ by 24 ¼ ins) Provenance: Sir Michael Sadler in 1932; Christie’s, London, 16 June 1950, lot 6; Eric Estorick, London Exhibited: London, Leicester Galleries, Paintings by Mark Gertler, October 1932, no.10 Literature: John Woodeson, Mark Gertler, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1972, p.389; Sarah MacDougall, Mark Gertler, John Murray, London, 2002, p.308 46

Eclectic man-made objects are an occasional feature in Gertler’s many still lifes – a genre that is central to his work throughout his relatively short career. The Benin Head in the present work appears to have been in the artist’s possession as early as 1915 when he wrote to Dora Carrington: “The other day I picked up a piece of African sculpture wood, like they have in the B.M., for 10s.! It gives me great delight and is like my work”. As well as this earlier work, two from 1937 are recorded by John Woodeson (op cit) (one of which, Still Life with Fan and Benin Head was offered at Sotheby’s, 7th November 1990, lot 103). Later still lifes like these also show Gertler at his most experimental and semi-abstract, described by Sarah MacDougall as “a final clarification of colour and design…using a semi-cubist structure to balance complex combinations of curved and geometrical forms…Gertler breaks all the rules of colour...placing combinations such as blue against orange…ultimately reconciling the whole through an internal frame or the careful positioning of a black line.”

(MacDougall, op cit. p.308).

CAT. 42

Bernard Meninsky (1891-1950) Standing Female Nude, c.1940 Oil on canvas, 50 by 71 cm (19 ¾ by 28 ins) Provenance: the estate of Philip Meninsky (the artist's son) 47

CAT. 43

James Bateman, RA (1893-1959) The Bruce Woodstock Versus Freddie Mills Fight at the Local, June 1949 Signed l.r.: J.Bateman Oil on canvas, 38 by 60.5 cm (15 by 23 ¾ ins) Provenance: Sotheby’s London, Modern British Art, July 1990, lot 186 Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1950, no.44

The bout between the British boxers Freddie Mills and Bruce Woodcock was one of the most anticipated of the immediate post-war era. It was to be their second major meeting and saw Woodcock putting his Commonwealth, British and European light-heavyweight titles on the line. The event grew a remarkable crowd of 46,000 people at White City Stadium on 2nd June 1949 with Woodcock knocking out Mills in the Fourteenth Round.

It was widely listened to across the country on the radio.

Bateman ingeniously captures the tension of the event, second hand, through a gathering of working men in a pub. The son of a Lake District blacksmith, closely observed, working class (usually rural) scenes like this were the primary subjects of much of Bateman’s most successful work. These included horse fairs, country markets and cattle auctions (including his Commotion in the Cattle Ring of 1935, now in the Tate collection).

Such records, amongst them this scene of everyday life in an English pub, are an important record of a traditional lifestyle that was in many respects in decline by the mid-1930s. Bateman taught at Cheltenham School of Art, also serving on the Advisory Council of the left leaning AIA (Artist's International Association) and was appointed a full member of the Royal Academy in 1942.

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CAT. 44

James Walker Tucker (1898-1972) Ploughing Signed and dated (indistinctly) l.r.: James Tucker/?34 Tempera on panel, 46 by 35 cm (14 by 13 ¾ ins)

Tucker studied at the Royal Academy Schools where he won a travelling scholarship and worked for two years as Sir William Rothenstein’s studio assistant. He moved to be head of painting and drawing at Gloucester School of Art in 1931 and established himself as a fine exponent of 1930s pastoral, rural painting, much of it based on the landscape of his nearby Cotswolds. His masterpiece Hiking (now in the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (acc.B6676)) was painted around the same date as the present work and is a near-perfect evocation of the innocence of country pursuits in the era before the outbreak of the Second World War. He was a particularly gifted painter in tempera as the present work also demonstrates.

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CAT. 45

Felix Kelly (1914-1994) An Alpine Tram Journey Signed l.r.: Felix Kelly Oil on panel, 29 by 39 cm (11 ½ by 15 ¼ ins) Provenance: with Arthur Jeffress from whom acquired by the Hon. Lady Lowson

The New Zealand born painter Felix Kelly settled in England in 1938 and soon became famous for his somewhat architectural, whimsical pictures that possess a faintly surrealistic air. His work is instantly recognisable and became highly collectable (particularly amongst the English aristocracy). He was a fine muralist too, his 1982 murals at Castle Howard being largely funded by the success of the TV series Brideshead Revisited. In his 1994 obituary in The Independent, Amanda Harling wrote: “he invested all his paintings with that ‘heartbreaking nostalgia’ without playing any fancy tricks with architectural verisimilitude. How he managed this puzzled and delighted his contemporaries and will doubtless intrigue generations to come. They are a unique memorial to the golden age of English domestic architecture and also to their perennially modest creator.”

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CAT. 46

John Aldridge, RA (1905-1983) A Welsh Farm Signed and inscribed (to reverse of panel): Welsh Farmyard/John Aldridge Oil on panel, 47.5 by 70 cm (18 ¾ by 27 ½ ins) Exhibited: The Leicester Galleries, London, Artists of Fame and Promise, 1940, no.129

The 1930s marked a notably successful decade in Aldridge’s development as an artist.

His friendship with Ben Nicholson lead him to exhibit with the influential Seven and Five Society in 1931 and in 1933 and 1934 he was chosen to exhibit at the British Pavillion at the Venice Biennale. In 1933 he moved to Great Bardfield in Essex where he established himself at the centre of the artistic community there alongside Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. The Leicester Galleries gave him one-man shows from 1933, as well as including him in group exhibitions such as their Artists of Fame and Promise series where the present work was shown in 1940. This Welsh landscape is a fine example of Aldridge’s work at its strongest and most distinct, by an artist now firmly established as a significant figure in mid-century British landscape painting.

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The Sculptor as Carver

CAT. 47

Mary Syme Boyd (1910-1997) Monkey Signed with initials on integrated octagonal base: MSB Carved oak, 29 cm (11 ½ ins) high 52

After studies at Edinburgh School of Art, Boyd was a pupil in Paris under the celebrated animalier sculptor Édouard Navellie. She later settled back in Edinburgh specialising in animalier sculpture as well as ecclesiastical commissions. The National Galleries of Scotland hold two examples of her animal sculpture Cat (conceived 1933-6) and Kestrel (c.1936) (acc.nos.GMA 2929/GMA 4145)). Similar animal subjects form a significant part of her exhibits at the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Glasgow Institute.

CAT. 48

Harold Brownsword, FRBS (1885-1961) A School of Carp Signed and dated: H.Brownsword/1954 Carved mahogany mounted on an ebonised base, 40 cm (15 ¾ ins) long Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1955, no.1431 Literature: Country Life, RBS Modern British Sculpture, c.1955, plate 12-13 for sculptures by Harold Brownsword

Brownsword was Royal Exhibitioner at the Royal College of Art before the First World War, later teaching modelling at Regent Street Polytechnic where he was principle from 1938 to 1951. He created many fine War Memorials in the inter-War years, including those at Eccleshill, Thornton, North Allerton, Hanley and Longton.

He also created highly collectable decorative work for Carter, Stabler and Adams at Poole Pottery and Harmon Pottery, his interest perhaps fostered by his early life around the Potteries in Staffordshire, where his father is thought to have worked as a bookkeeper for Wedgwood.

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CAT. 49

Peter Watts, FRBS (1916-2002) Mother and Child Signed with the initials and dated 49 on the back of the base Caen stone, 41.5 cm (16 ¼ ins) high

Watts, one of a long line of talented Roman Catholic artist-craftsman, was notable for his fine directcarving in English churches and cathedrals. This included work for Oban Cathedral in 1951, Bath Abbey between 1959–60 and Downside Abbey in 1974. He was associated with Bath in particular where he studied and where the Victoria Art Gallery gave him a retrospective in 1999. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1970. His moving, smaller scale devotional pieces like the present work are more rarely found in his oeuvre.

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CAT. 50

Alan Durst, ARA (1883-1970) The Annunciation Signed with initials (to the reverse): ALD and dated 1955 Cedar wood, 69 cm (27 ins) high Literature: Alan Durst, Wood Carving, Viking Press, New York, 1968 (4th edition) (detail illustrated on front cover of the book)

Durst was so captivated by the statuary at Chartres Cathedral that he changed from stained glass design to sculpture whilst a student at Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1914. He became one of the foremost exponents of direct carving in British art alongside contemporaries such as Eric Gill and Jacob Epstein, his extensive work including his statues for Peterborough Cathedral and the frieze above the entrance to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Reflecting his subject matter, Durst attributed a spiritual dimension to his art writing in 1959, in the preface to the third edition of his celebrated book Wood Carving: “For there is a mystical quality about the creative work of a man’s hands which defies analysis. Few artists know just how the thing happens…it is a matter of common experience…that he is a channel through which a mind outside of himself is finding expression.”

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The War and After - British Art from 1940

CAT. 51

Thomas Hennell (1903-1945) Stori Dimon, the South Coast of Iceland, September 1943 Watercolour, 30 by 47.5 cm (12 by 18 ¾ ins) Provenance: Neil Jennings

Hennell was appointed an official War Artist in 1943 and in July of that year was sent to Iceland to replace Eric Ravilious who had been reported missing there in September 1942. There he was charged with painting “the background of the War effort”, including shipping at the harbour at Rekjavik and the comings-and-goings of British and American troops. He also had the chance to record the extraordinary and desolate landscape, remarking on the strange colours that emerged early morning and at sunset “when the broad shadows greatly increase...the mountains and lava fields are inclined to tawny, black and russet tones.” (letter to David Farnell, 15 August 1943). Something of this colouring is evident in this view of Stori Dimon, a strange isolated mountain on the flat plains of southern Iceland. Hennell’s Icelandic watercolours were amongst his most admired. After the War Edward Bawden reflected on seeing them at the National Gallery and how “they had convinced me that Tom had reached the first rank among English watercolour draughtsmen.”

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CAT. 52

Thomas Hennell (1903-1945) Bombed Buildings near Caen, Normandy, 1944 Watercolour over pen and ink, 24 by 32 cm (9 ½ by 12 ½ ins) Provenance: Brian Foss, Canada

“WAAC minutes show that by 24 May 1944 arrangements had been made for Hennell (as well as artists Edward Ardizzone and Barnett Freedman) ‘to paint coming events’.”

(Jessica Kilburn, Thomas Hennell, The Land and the Mind, Pimpernel Press, 2021, p.278). In this covert reference to D-Day, Hennell was to be one of only a handful of British artists to follow in the immediate footsteps of the Allied troops. Although setting off on 11th June 1944 (five days after the initial invasion) his vivid watercolours are a remarkable record of the wrecked landscape that awaited him there. Many of these watercolours were taken in and around the Norman city of Caen, where bombed buildings and villages like those here must have been the common motif on his route. Hennell was deeply aware of the honour of this appointment, writing to Kenneth Clark “I will try very hard not to disgrace the opportunity” (quoted ibid. p,278). The artistic results of this expedition suggest that he clearly did not.

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CAT. 53

Graham Sutherland, OM (1903-1980) Red Mountain, Pembrokeshire Signed with initials and dated u.r.: GS/45 With a related study (verso) Coloured crayon with gouache over ink and pencil, 22 by 17.5 cm (8 ½ by 7 ins) Provenance: with Bernard Jacobson Gallery Exhibited: London, Bernard Jacobson, Graham Sutherland, October 1993, no.10, illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue; Modern Art Oxford, Graham Sutherland: An Unfinished World, 2011 Literature: Rosalind Thullier, Graham Sutherland: Inspirations, Lutterworth Press, Cambridge, 1982, pl.49; George Shaw, Graham Sutherland: An Unfinished World, Modern Art Oxford, 2011, p.86 (illustrated in colour), p.109 58

CAT. 54

John Piper, CH (1903-1992) Moon Emerging from the Clouds, a Backdrop for ”Job”, 1948 Brush and ink with wax resist and watercolour 14 by 18 cm (5 ½ by 7 ins)

Piper’s 1948 designs for Job were closely based on William Blake’s 1825 Illustrations to the Book of Job. They are evidence of Piper’s own links with British NeoRomanticism, which was strongly influenced by the great Blake disciple Samuel Palmer as well as Blake himself. They were made for a theatrical work that was devised by Geoffrey Keynes (a Blake scholar) with music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and choreography by Ninette de Valois. The composer was adamant that the work should not be called a ballet and so it became known as a Masque for Dancing. This backdrop design represents Hell and relates to a similar work in the Victoria and Albert Museum (acc.S.1944-1986). It is based on Blake’s 11th engraving in the 1825 work (‘With Dreams upon my bed thou dearest and affrightest me with Visions’).

A reviewer for The Times later said of Piper’s designs for the production that “colours glow with Blake's inner fire.”

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CAT. 55

John Nash, RA (1893-1977) Oxypetalum Coeruleum Signed l.r.: John Nash and inscribed with title l.l.

Watercolour over pencil, 40 by 27 cm (15 ¾ by 10 ½ ins) Provenance: acquired from the Leicester Galleries by Louise Hutchinson in 1954; with Richard Nathanson in 1978 Exhibited: Leicester Galleries, London Exhibition of Works by John Nash, RA, March 1954, no.20; Royal Academy of Arts, London, John Nash Exhibition, 1967, no.233

Botanical drawings and watercolours form a significant part of John Nash’s work as an artist. He was a nearneighbour of fellow Suffolk artist Sir Cedric Morris and Ronald Blythe (who inherited Nash’s house Bottengoms) recalled a friendship between the two artists that centrered around an almost constant discussion of plants and flowers. Nash elsewhere referred to himself as an “artist plantsman”, his prime inspiration being the well-kept garden of his Suffolk home. His remarkable skills as a botanical draughtsman is also apparent in a number of fine works in the field of book illustration, amongst them Poisonous Plants (1927) and Wild Flowers in Britain (1938).

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CAT. 56

John Nash, RA (1893-1977) Harbour Buildings on an Essex Estuary Signed and dated l.l.: John Nash/1963 Watercolour over pencil, 41 by 47.5 cm (16 by 18 ¾ ins)

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CAT. 57

William Robinson Thomson, RBA (1926-1988) Female Nude on a Bed Signed and dated l.l.: W.Thomson/1970 Oil on canvas, 100 by 109.5 cm (39 ½ by 43 ins) Provenance: a gift from the artist to the previous owner

Thomson was a scholar at the Royal College of Art where he studied under Rodrigo Moynihan, Carel Weight and John Minton. Female nudes on this large scale are perhaps the types of work for which he is best known. Thomson’s work was acknowledged by the art critic, Clement Greenberg, who, when asked if he knew of “any figurative painting today which is large scale and which sustains itself?” responded, “Lucian Freud… Peter Blake and William Thomson - especially Thomson, who should be better known.”

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CAT. 58

Richard Eurich, RA (1903-1992) Cornwall Signed and dated l.l.: R.Eurich/58 Oil on board, 36 by 41 cm (14 by 16 ins) Provenance: commissioned by Shell-Mex and B.P. Ltd. in 1958 for their Shell Guides series; The Shell Collection of Modern British Paintings, Sotheby’s, Olympia, 4 July 2003, lot 118

The present work is one of the most celebrated pictorial contributions to the Shell Guides in the late 1950s, in which Shell commissioned notable artists of their day to create images to visually represent the distinct character of the counties of England.

The text in the Shell calendar accompanying a reproduction of this picture outlines in detail the many references to Cornwall hidden within the painting: “A rough triangle in the sea describes Cornwall, which is tilted from north to south so that the south coast is pierced by “pills”, which are sunken (and now tidal) river valleys.

Oak-woods (1) often grow along them, originally planted to provide charcoal for smelting and oak-bark for tanneries, and churches crouch in their shelter, dedicated to Celtic saints, each with a square, buttressed tower of the fifteenth century (2). Headlands jut to sea, hills are cut by hedges of earth and stone into small ancient fields. Sycamores surround squat farmsteads (3). Wheel-headed wayside crosses (4) of moor‐land granite are relics of Cornwall of the early Middle Ages, when Cornish was the common language.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Cornwall had its own industrial revolution based on tin and copper. Roofless engine-houses (5) of old mines are common; and it was a Cornish mine engineer, Richard Trevithick (6), who invented the first steam locomotive in 1801. Cornish minerals were due to the fiery upthrust of granite. Decayed granite has left deposits of china‐clay, now Cornwall’s chief export, the working of which produces “moon-mountains” of waste (7) which glitter on the skyline. Soft air makes Cornwall ideal for market-gardening ‐ vegetables such as Broccoli (8) and for growing such flowers as Anemones (9), Violets and Daffodils. Fuchsia (10) graces the hedges.

Lanes in this county, whose winters have been described as languid springs, are unusually thick with ferns and wild flowers.”

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CAT. 59

Keith Vaughan (1912-1977) Bandsmen 1952-53 Original lithograph in four colours (gold ochre, light oxide red, pale raw umber and black) Printed on white wove paper with margins, 496 by 352 mm

This is only one of a couple of known examples of this extremely rare Keith Vaughan lithograph. Vaughan made only a handful of lithographs in the late 1940s and early 1950s but none were editioned and all of them appear to be rare. The Bandsmen was published by the Royal College for part of their portfolio of forty Coronation Lithographs. It appears in little of the literature on the artist despite being one of the artist’s most striking and successful attempts at the medium.

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CAT. 60

John Minton (1917-1957) Portrait of a seated man, Eric Verrico Pencil, 35 by 20 cm (13 ¾ by 8 ins) Provenance: Jeffrey Bernard; Nicholas and Elisabeth Luard; John Constable Exhibited: John Minton: A Centenary, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, July - October 2017 (catalogue: Fig 75, Illustrated page 71)

Eric Verrico was a student of Minton at Camberwell School of Arts and was known for his astonishing good looks.

He features in several of the artist’s finest male portraits, including one formerly in the collection of Muriel Belcher from c.1947-48 (with the Fine Art Society in 2020) and a group portrait (Portrait Group, 1945, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel). The present work is a study for perhaps Minton’s finest portrait of Verrico, Boy in Landscape (Portrait of Eric Verrico), of 1948 now in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter (acc.144/1969).

Verrico eventually joined the RAF in the late 1940s when he appears to have drifted from Minton. Frances Spalding wrote of him: “Eric Verrico was the one who most frequently posed for, looking as if he had stepped out of a Caravaggio.

He was the most beautiful of ‘Johnny’s Circus’.” (Frances Spalding, John Minton: Dance Till the Stars Come Down, Lund Humphries, London. p.88). This fine drawing was once in the collection of the famous hard-drinking journalist Jeffery Bernard. Nicolas Luard acquired the work from Bernard where it later hung at Brynmeheryn, Ystrad Meurig in Wales, the house he shared with his wife Elisabeth, the celebrated cookery writer.

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CAT. 61

Claude Rogers (1907-1979) Essex Landscape Signed l.l.: C.Rogers Oil on canvas, 62 by 75.5 cm (24 ½ by 29 ¾ ins) Provenance: collection of the artist’s family Exhibited: Leicester Galleries, c.early 1950s

The countryside around Somerton in Suffolk features prominently in Rogers’s PostWar work. The artist and his wife Elsie Few stayed there regularly, eventually buying a house in Somerton in 1956. Such paintings focus on the patterns of the sometimes expansive and empty landscape and on the rich, golden colour of the harvest which had a strong bearing on the palette of paintings such the present two works which have come diretly from the artist’s estate. Several comparable works are now in public collections including Cornfields at Somerton, 1961 (Tate (acc.TO3848) and Harvest Cornfield (Government Art Collection (acc.7371). The period coincided with Rogers’s ever growing reputation as a major force in British art – both as artist and teacher.

He served as president of the London Group from 1952 to 1955 and taught at the Slade School of Art from 1950 to 1963. In 1963 he was appointed professor of fine art at Reading University.

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CAT. 62

Claude Rogers (1907-1979) Pond at Somerton, Suffolk Oil on canvas, 55.5 by 46.5 cm (21 ¾ by 18 ¼ ins) Provenance: the collection of the artist’s family 67

CAT. 63

John Piper, CH (1903-1992) Abstract in Green - Cartoon for Coventry Cathedral, c.1958-61 Signed with initials l.l.: JP and numbered ll. B130 Watercolour with brush and black ink, 132 by 80 cm (52 by 31 ½ ins)

The Baptistery window for the newly rebuilt Cathedral in Coventry is John Piper’s pre-eminent work as a designer of stained glass and perhaps his most significant artistic project from the later part of his career. Alongside the glassmaker Patrick Reyntiens, Piper was commissioned by the Coventry Cathedral Reconstruction Committee to produce the Baptistery window in 1955. The window is 85 foot high and is constructed of 198 individual windows. This abstract watercolour is a design for one such light and is painted to the same scale as the final window (to allow Reyntiens to copy it as precisely as possible) (see F. Spalding, John and Myfanwy Piper, Lives in Art, Oxford, 2009, p. 369). The effect of the entire window is spectacular – a huge abstract conception of a central burst of light intended to represent the Holy Spirit.

The Rev Stephen Laird has also pointed out that the window can be read as a huge abstract landscape “the lower levels having the colours of earth and vegetation with bluer tones in the upper part indicating sky and surrounding a central sunburst.” Coventry Cathedral was consecrated in 1962 and the window is one of the central features in an extraordinary artistic collaboration which included contributions from Graham Sutherland, Jacob Epstein and Geoffrey Clarke, as well as Piper himself.

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CAT. 64

John Piper, CH (1903-1992) Botolph Claydon, Buckinghamshire, 1964 Inscribed and dated l.l.: Botolph Claydon/10/ix/1964 and with the artist’s studio stamp (verso) Watercolour with gouache and indian ink, 53 by 35.5 cm (20 ¾ by 14 ins) Provenance: property of the artist’s family

Botolph Claydon is situated in northern Buckinghamshire some nine miles from Bicester. Its ancient name Botyl Claydon is Anglo-Saxon in origin, “Botyl” meaning “house” and Claydon meaning “clay hill”. The present watercolour is typical of Piper’s effervescent abstract landscape work from the early 1960s.

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CAT. 65

Sir Peter Blake, RA (born 1932) Side Show, c.1968-69 With extensive inscriptions and notes Watercolour, crayon and pencil 49.5 by 39.5 cm (19 ½ by 15 ½ ins) Provenance: given by the artist to Francis Greenacre (curator of the first retrospective exhibition of Peter Blake’s work held at the City Art Gallery, Bristol) in 1970. He later assisted in retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1973, travelling to Hamburg, Brussels and Arnhem 70

In this monumental sheet Blake has worked out his initial ideas for a set of prints called Side Show which recall the popular entertainers, wrestlers and circus performers he remembered from his youth. Amongst the vignettes recorded on this sheet are Tattooed Lady, the Strongest Man in the World, Bearded Lady, Smallest Man in the World, Fat Lady and Thin Man. These ideas would culminate in the artist’s set of wood-engravings created in the period 1974-78 also called Side Show. This is considered to be one his most important works of graphic art with sets being held by the Metropolitan Museum of Fine and Art and MOMA in New York and the British Museum in London. Blake has written of these prints: “There’s a whole background to it, but really it’s a class thing, a working class thing. When I was a kid these were my interests – the fairgrounds, circuses, rock’n’roll. So, at a certain point in making art, when I had to make a decision about what to do, I thought, “be autobiographical”.

MODERN BRITISH ART A Century of Fame and Promise

Index A

Cat No.

H

Cat No.

S

Cat No.

Aldridge, John RA (1905-1983)

46

Halliwell, Albert Edward (1905-1987)

35

Sanderson, Archibald (1901-1972)

19

Hare, Muriel (1890-1964)

11

Sickert, Walter RA (1860-1942)

13, 14

Hennell, Thomas (1903-1945)

51, 52

Spencer, Gilbert RA (1892-1979) 21

B Bateman, James RA (1893-1959)

43

Bayes, Walter RWS (1869-1956)

8

Bell, Vanessa (1879-1961)

29

J

Bevan, Robert (1865-1925)

9, 10

John, Augustus OM, RA (1878-1961)

Blake, Sir Peter RA (born 1932) 65 Boyd, Mary Syme (1910-1997)

47

Brill, Reginald (1902-1974)

24

Brownsword, Harold FRBS (1885-1961)

48

C 18

Coke, Dorothy RWS, NEAC (1897-1979)

16

H Dalziel, Herbert (1843-1941)

3, 4

Devas, Anthony ARA (1911-1958) 33, 34 Dick, Sir William Reid RA (1878-1961)

5

Durst, Alan ARA (1883-1970)

50

15

K Kelly, Felix (1914-1994)

45

L Lamb, Henry RA (1883-1960)

Carline, Richard (1896-1980)

Sutherland, Graham OM (1903-1980)

17

M Mackintosh, Charles Rennie (1868-1928)

Ginner, Charles ARA (1878-1952) 12 Grant, Duncan (1885-1978)

59

W White, Ethelbert RWS (1891-1972)

20

Wolfe, Edward RA (1897-1982)

32

Wragg, Arthur (1903-1976) 3

9, 40

N

22

41

V

23

Nash, Thomas Saunders (1891-1968)

Gertler, Mark (1891-1939)

44

Monnington, Sir Thomas PRA (1902-1976)

Eurich, Richard RA (1903-1992) 58

G

Tucker, James Walker (1898-1972)

Wheatley, John ARA (1892-1955) 7

37, 38

26, 27, 28

36

Watts, Peter FRBS (1916-2002)

Nash, Paul (1889-1946)

Fry, Roger (1866-1934)

Tschudi, Lill (1911-2004)

60

E

2

57

Minton, John (1917-1957)

55, 56

French, Annie (1872-1965)

Thomson, William Robinson RBA (1926-1988)

Meninsky, Bernard (1891-1950) 42

Nash, John RA (1893-1977)

F

T

Vaughan, Keith (1912-1977) 1

53

49

P Pearce, Charles Maresco (1874-1964)

25

Piper, John CH (1903-1992)

54, 63, 64

R Rogers, Claude (1907-1979)

61, 62

30, 31

Greaves, Walter RI (1846-1930) 6 71

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72

Opposite page:

Paul Nash (1889-1946) [Detail of cat.38]

HARRY MOORE-GWYN BRITISH ART