Inexpensive Progress

01/11/2024

A delightful trip to Hemingford Grey Manor. A wonderful day out if you like architecture and art. The home of Lucy M Boston and then Peter and Diana Boston it is a real treat. Many thanks to .m.e.williams for the motivation to finally go.

29/10/2024

The second edition of Great Bardfield Illustrated has sold out from my stockrooms. If you need a copy, have three and have two left 🙂. When it's gone, it's gone. There are no plans for a third edition and all eyes on the next book now.

22/10/2024

William) Bernard Adeney (1878-1966) – Scene in South of France, c1930, Watercolour and Pencil. Link in bio.

Born in London Bernard Adeney began his art training in St John’s Wood when only nine, then studied at the Royal Academy Schools, 1892–7, Académie Julian, in Paris, 1897, Slade School of Fine Art in 1912, and Central School of Arts and Crafts for a year.

He took part in Roger Fry’s Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912 and was a founder-member of London Group the following year (he was subsequently president for a time).

During World War I served in the Tank Corps painting camouflage, then became an official war artist.

He married the painter Thérèse Lessore (who later married Walter Scikert) in 1909, and they were divorced in 1921. He then married artist Noël Gilford, a fellow Slade pupil.

He was a founder member of the London Artists’ Association, 1925, having three years before held a joint exhibition with Keith Baynes at the Independent Gallery. From 1903, he taught at the Central School, where he was head of the textile school, 1930–47.

This picture was exhibited and sold at the Bloomsbury Workshop in the exhibition ‘Bernard & Noel Adeney’

Frame size: 41.5 x 36cm • Artwork size: 25 x 19cm

21/10/2024

For sale: Henry Holzer (1907-2007) – The Woodland Glade, 1977, Etching

This is an excellent example of Holzer’s painterly style of etching. With a beautiful definition of the tonal range. An artist’s proof, and it's unlikely it was ever editioned.

Henry Holzer’s artistic life started with evening classes, where he chalked up 1,000 hours of life drawing. He studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and the Regent Street Polytechnic before taking up a teaching career at Hornsey College of Art.

He served in India during World War II and a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery producing camouflage work and, in the weeks after VE Day, lithographs of anti-doodlebug defences on the Suffolk coast while stationed at Walberswick, Suffolk.

Holzer’s artistic skills had also been put to good use painting murals on the walls of the officers’ mess in nearby Southwold, offending local ladies who mistook his cavorting mermaids and naiads for po*******hy, and who refused to enter the room, in the end he was ordered to paint them out.

Back in London, he resumed his calling as a teacher, serving as head of printmaking at Hornsey College of Art until retirement in 1968.

In 1966, Holzer moved to an idyllic location in south Norfolk, with views over the Yare valley and was a member of the Great Yarmouth & District Society of Artists and was their president twice. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and with the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, as well as with the Roland Browse & Delbanco, Redfern Gallery, and Piccadilly Gallery also locally at the Yoxford Gallery.

Featuring in many mixed exhibitions, he was prominent in the 50-artist show to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Aldeburgh festival in 1997.

Frame size: 24.5 x 19cm • Artwork size 20 x 14.5cm

21/10/2024

Ann Winn (1930-2015) – Wind in the Olives, Ikaria, c1980, Acrylic & pastle

Ann Winn (1930–2015) was a British artist known for her vibrant use of color and her mastery of a variety of media, including oils, watercolours, gouache, pastels, and ink.

She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. Winn’s work has been described as Neo-romantic with touches of the Fauvist movement, drawing inspiration from artists like Matisse.

She travelled extensively, capturing scenes from Greece, Turkey, Nepal, India, Morocco, Wales, and Suffolk. Her art is celebrated for its abstract and colourful style.

She exhibited her works in several solo and group exhibitions across the UK and internationally. This picture has been unseen since it was bought at the 1982 exhibition of her work at the Christopher Hull Gallery. It was purchased by Samuel Palmer scholar and author, Griselda Barton.

During Winn’s lifetime, she exhibited in many solo shows in London and group exhibitions including Royal Academy, New English Art Club, London Group, Royal Society of British Artists, International Art Fair London, Chicago International Art Fair, Surrey University, Arts Council Travelling Fair, National Academy in Greece. Public collections include Paintings In Hospitals, County Councils collections via Pictures for Schools and the British Museum.

Now sold . The painting is in the original frame and the mounting, by Winn of a hole torn from paper with the painting underneath, making the artwork appear more lively than a standard mount. With exhibition lable to verso.

Frame 32.5 x 27.5cm • Artwork 19 x 14cm
Link bio.

19/10/2024

With some sorrow I announce the death of Erik Harrower Forrest (1925-2024)

He trained in Scotland at the Edinburgh College of Art under John Maxwell and Leonard Rosoman. He started the Diploma in Art in 1941 but the war paused his studies and he had three years out flying in the Fleet Air Arm Squadron. He continued his work in 1945 with a specialisation in Drawing and Painting. Then on to the University of Edinburgh. At this time he admired the works of John Piper, Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash and John Minton.

Forrest taught painting and lithography at Leeds College of Art in the late 1950s and later became the deputy head of the School of Art Education at Birmingham Polytechnic.

"My first job at the Leeds College was in Art and Design because I was in their Design department, and I taught Illustration as well as drawing and painting. About halfway through my time there, I moved to the Art Education department. I had found that I had almost as strong an interest in art education, especially at the tertiary level, as in painting and drawing. I had also been teaching lithography, so I was wandering away from the life of a ‘professional’ painter already."

He was commissioned to made a painting of Temple Newsam for the gallery booklet in 1951 and in the late 1960s he took the first year of a two-year degree in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, and left for the USA before he could complete it.

"That was in 1968. The doctorate I did between 1980 and 1983, finishing the dissertation when I was 58 years old".

He lived and worked in Califonia.

He has had one man shows of paintings, prints, and drawings in Britain, Canada, and USA, and articles by him have been published in British and American journals. His works are in the collections of Wakefield City Art Gallery, Nottingham City Gallery, the Scottish National.

18/10/2024

Now sold. Two original drawings by Harold Jones for Kathleen Lines book A Ring of Tales (1958) both framed. Prices sizes and links on the site. Link in bio.

11/10/2024

On my website I've a few works for sale by Jean Marchand. An artist with strong ties to Bloomsbury. Many via the Crane Kalman Gallery.

He was born in Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1902 through 1906. He had supported his artistic ambitions by designing fabrics and jewellery as well as opera sets and book illustrations.

Marchand had met Roger Fry in Paris. Fry had an active social life in the Parisian artistic sets through the friends he made there like Picasso and Andre Derain, the latter who with his wife Alice held court in the cafes with a group of artists known as la bande a Derain; These included George Braques, Andrew Salmon, Joan Oberle along with Jean Marchand, Moise Kisling and Louise Marcoussis.

Marchand’s style was plain air and naturalistic in the post-impressionistic circle of Cezanne. In Paris he came to the attention of Roger Fry who invited him to submit work to Fry’s now famous 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism and the Second show in 1912. He later had an exhibition at the Carfax Gallery in 1915.

Roger Fry and Clive Bells respect for his work also bought him to the attention of Samuel Courtauld who bought and collectors like Frank Hindley Smith, the mill owner who left a painting to the Tate, and prints and drawings to the British Museum.

04/10/2024

London's Liverpool Street Station to me has always been the Cathedral of Edward Bawden.

01/10/2024

Pinch, punch, first of the month.

29/09/2024

This week in my world. 1 is a Frances Hodgkins I bought. Thanks to the advice of two folks who look after her catalogue raisonné and said it is from around 1930-35.
2. The last of the wild flowers
3. Flooding in St Ives.
4 / 5 old scrap.
6. London station
7. Flawless in St Ives.
8. Soviet Cambridge students.
9 / 10 Me at Spitalfields market this Thursday 8am til 4pm.

24/09/2024

For Sale: Katharine “Kitty” Church (1910–1999) The chestnut tree by moonlight, 1955.
£350 UK shipping included. DM for purchase.

Kitty was associated with the Neo-Romantic movement but is another female artist who curators in the past ignored for her male counterparts.

Born in Highgate, London, Church studied at the Brighton School of Art, Royal Academy Schools (1930-33), and the Slade School of Fine Art (1933-34).

Church had a close friendship with Ivon Hitchens, and for a time was his model. While staying with him in June 1934, at his Suffolk cottage, Hitchens invited John Piper for the weekend. Kitty invited her friend Myfanwy Evans, an Oxford English graduate whom Hitchens also wished to sketch. Piper agreed to meet Myfanwy at Leiston station and was immediately infatuated with Evans, sparking a romance that became a lifelong marriage.

From Kitty, Ivon cribbed her style of painting trees with sweeps of paint and over time he would extend this into his pictures of paintbrush motions of the landscapes. Kittys work had the feel of calligraphy in this way, with confident lines of black making up pictures of the landscape.

During the early phase of her career, Kitty exhibited regularly with the Royal Academy. In 1933, she had her first solo exhibition at the Wertheim Gallery run by Lucy Carrington Wertheim, patron of Christopher Wood and Frances Hodgkins.

Hodgkins painted a portrait of Kitty, Portrait of Kitty West, in 1939, which is now held by the Tate.

Frances Hodgkins – Portrait of Kitty West, 1939
Church exhibited with the New English Art Club and showed regularly with The London Group. From 1937 to 1947, she exhibited her work at the Lefevre Gallery. In 1954, she was invited to take part in the exhibition Figures in their Setting at the Tate Gallery. She was invited to exhibit at the National Museum of Wales in 1982. In 1988, a retrospective of her work was held at the Duncalfe Galleries.

Frances Hodgkins – Portrait of Kitty and Anthony West, 1937-9
Church married Anthony West (son of writer Rebecca West & H. G. Wells) in 1937; the couple had one son (Edmund West) and one daughter (Caroline Frances West).

24/09/2024

For Sale: The Bathers by Nicolette Macnamara (1911–1987). Watercolour and pencil. £450 with uk shipping.

The sister of Catlin Thomas (Dylan Thomas's wife) Nicolette was a British artist and author.

Born on February 1, 1911, Nicolette was the eldest of four children of Francis Macnamara, a free-spirited Irish poet, and Mary Yvonne Majolier, who had Anglo-Irish and French roots.

Her early life was marked by upheaval after her father left the family in 1916, pursuing various political and cultural endeavors. The family faced financial struggles and moved frequently, spending time in France before settling in the New Forest in 1923.

Despite little formal education and only learning to read at twelve, Nicolette gained an early appreciation for art and nature, largely influenced by the bohemian community around artist Augustus John, who taught her to paint.

She enrolled in the Slade School of Fine Art at sixteen. She flourished at the Slade, where she met artists such as William Coldstream, Rodrigo Moynihan, and Anthony Devas, whom she married in 1931.

Throughout the 1930s, Macnamara exhibited her art at the New English Art Club and the Royal Academy.

As an author her first novel, Bonfire, was published in 1958 to positive reviews, and her autobiographical work, Two Flamboyant Fathers, became her most successful book.

In 1958, after the death of Anthony Devas, Nicolette remarried artist Rupert Shephard. Their home in Chelsea became a lively meeting place for artists.

Nicolette remained active in the arts and was a prominent member of English PEN and PEN International. She died in 1987, leaving behind a legacy of creativity and literary achievement.

In 1987 Macnamara's artwork featured in an exhibition of works by former Slade students held at Sally Hunter Fine Art.

19/09/2024

Little bit of Fedden

19/09/2024

An interesting little documentary of what might be then called 'permissive society', featuring an interview with Royston Ellis.

Famous TV programme, focusing on Brighton, Northampton and London teenage life in 1960.

18/09/2024

F.H.K. Henrions poster for Visitors London and then the book and a page from my new Bardfield Illustrated book.

15/09/2024

Two bits of sculpture by Mary Millar Watt. Reminded me of the works of Gauguin.

Born in Essex, Watt was the daughter of artists John Millar Watt and Amy Maultby Watt née Biggs. She attended the St Ives School of Art but relocated to Bath during the Second World War where she worked for the Charts Department of the Admiralty. She subsequently moved to London where she studied at the Royal Academy Schools 1947-1952, earning silver medals for painting and drawing and a scholarship for landscape.

Millar Watt is mainly known for her portraits. A member and exhibitor of the Society of Women Artists, she also exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere.

12/09/2024

Another week in my world gone by. Late flowers and graffiti, the long driveway and while selling studio pottery at Newrmarket antiques fair I spotted the beautiful dog in a picture dealers van. Yesterday, I was delighted to have given a talk on Edward Bawden's Life in Great Bardfield at the David Parr House. Now, to write another book.

04/09/2024

Here are a series of photos I have, mostly from the archives of Picture Post.

28/08/2024

26/08/2024

26/08/2024

New neighbours

25/08/2024

A rather relaxing Edwin Smith drawing. Woman. Bird. Flowers.

22/08/2024

A new blog Jean Hippolyte Marchand