The Twentieth Century17 September to 18 October 2008

The Fine Art SocietyDealers since 1876

148 New Bond Street, London w1s 2jt

Telephone +44 (0)20 7629 5116 Email alt@faslondon.com

www. faslondon.com

C20 text for DK.indd 1 18-08-2008 21:29:57

2

C20 text for DK.indd 2 18-08-2008 21:29:58

The Fine Art Society The Twentieth century 2008

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990sC20 text for DK.indd 3 18-08-2008 21:29:59

C20 text for DK.indd 4 18-08-2008 21:29:59

index of artists

Sybil Andrews 20

Peter Blake 46

F. C. B. Cadell 18

Keith Coventry 54

Terry Frost 36–8

Sir James Gunn 12

Alastair Morton 26

C. R. W. Nevinson 6

Ben Nicholson 40

Sir William Nicholson 14

Samuel Peploe 10

John Piper 30

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi 34–5, 48–53

Anne Redpath 32

Bridget Riley 42

William Scott 44

Graham Sutherland 8, 28

Julian Trevelyan 22

Christopher Wood 16

C20 text for DK.indd 5 18-08-2008 21:30:02

1910s

Nevinson was one of the greatest printmakers in the 20th century. Often subjects done previ-ously in paint become more powerful when he translated them into a print, reduced in scale and tone, distilled. He learned each technique thoroughly and was proud of the fact that he had sought an expert teacher for each one. It is not known who taught him the difficult and labour-intensive medium of mezzotint, but it was ideal for the subject he chose for Limehouse. The darks he achieved and the subtle grada-tions of lighter areas suggest shape rather than describe it. It is an image of intense poetry and melancholy.

At the end of the First World War Nevinson took the virtually obsolete medium of mezzo-tint and produced in it three powerful images, Limehouse, Wind and From an Office Window. For a modernist and a former disciple of Futurism, it was an unexpected departure to take up a printmaking technique associated with 18th-century portraiture and still life.

Limehouse is as intense as the first drypoints of war subjects Nevinson made in 1916. The som-bre air is enlivened by the decorative devices he used for the sail on the barge and the clouds. London and the Thames became the source of many of Nevinson’s subjects in the period after the First World War, and this view of ware-houses on the north bank of the Thames is one of the first. There is a related oil Thameside in the collection of Nottingham, Castle Museum and Art Gallery which Nevinson mentions in correspondence in 1942 as one of his favourites, based on a drawing related to the mezzotint.

Mezzotint, signed in pencil C.R.W. Nevinson 1918, lower right, printed on laid paper9 x 6 inches (22.6 x 15.1 cm) sheet 101/2 x 73/8 inches (26.7 x 18.8 cm)RefeRence: Richard Ingleby, Jonathan Black, David Cohen, Gordon Cooke, C.R.W.Nevinson: The Twentieth Century, London 1999 p.56, 128 no.71

c. r. W. nevinson 1889–1946

Limehouse 1918

6

C20 text for DK.indd 6 18-08-2008 21:30:02

C20 text for DK.indd 7 18-08-2008 21:30:03

1920s

A close study of an abandoned thatched cottage with half of its rafters exposed and its windows broken, in a neglected garden at 49 High Street, Clapham, a village between Angmering and Worthing, near Arundel in Sussex. Sutherland made a number of visits to the area, often with Paul Drury, a fellow student at Goldsmiths’ College, London. There is a small watercolour of Clapham Church, dated 11 August 1924 in the Hussey Bequest to the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.

The drawing is a preparatory study for the etching Number Forty-Nine, published in 1924, which shows the building in reverse. Sutherland generally made sketches in pencil or watercol-our before making a print, and this is one of the most finished examples. The etching follows the study closely: he altered only the tree and added a water butt and bucket by the front door.

Drawing in black, pencil and white ink on wove paper, signed and dated sUtHeRLAnD McMXXIV, lower left; preparatory drawing for the etching, inscribed with dates Aug. 18th 21st 27th 28th Sept 1 2 3, left margin, Sept 1–2 3 and Nettles?, lower margin 63/4 x 97/8 inches (17.1 x 25.1 cm) sheet 73/4 x 11 inches (19.6 x 28 cm)

Graham sutherland 1903–1980

Number Forty-Nine 1924

Sutherland achieved fame as an artist while still a student and his first success came when his etching Barn Interior was hung in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1923. He had his first exhibition the following year at the Twenty-One Gallery. The early watercolours of decaying barns by Samuel Palmer may have been an influence on Sutherland’s choice of subject, equally Whistler’s 1858 etching The Unsafe Tenement. Whistler, Dürer, Rembrandt, Meryon and Millet all provided inspiration to the students at Goldsmiths’ both as draughts-men and printmakers. This is one of the finest drawings from this early period in Sutherland’s career, demonstrating his romantic spirit, distinctive draughtsmanship and the precision of his line.

8

C20 text for DK.indd 8 18-08-2008 21:30:04

C20 text for DK.indd 9 18-08-2008 21:30:05

1920s samuel Peploe 1871–1935

White Lilies c.1926

Oil on canvas24 x 20 inches (61 x 51 cms)Signed S J Peploe lower right

Peploe was born in Edinburgh, and one of four artists that became known as the Scottish Colourists. He moved to Paris in 1894 where he studied at the Académie Julian under Bouguereau and later at the Académie Colarossi. It was in Paris that he met fellow Scottish Colourist J. D. Fergusson. Together they traveled and painted throughout France and the Western Isles of Scotland. The Scottish Colourists were influenced by the bright, sun-drenched colours and the immediate painting technique they had experienced in France, and Peploe incorporated these pure colours, thickly painted and unvarnished, into his own work.

Peploe moved back to Edinburgh in 1912, and his brilliant palette was well suited to painting still life and the Atlantic light of the coastline of western Scotland. This vase of lilies provided Peploe with an ideal motif to show off his compositional skills and also contrast the subtle shading of white flowers with the colourful flashes of the spiky leaves.

10

C20 text for DK.indd 10 18-08-2008 21:30:05

C20 text for DK.indd 11 18-08-2008 21:30:07

Oil on canvas, 80 x 45 inches (203.2 x 114.3 cm)Signed H. J. Gunn, inscribed W O HutchisonPRoVenAnce: The Artist’s FamilyeXHIbIteD: Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1927 (no.303); Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 3 December 1994 to 26 February 1995, The FineArt Society, London, 13 March to 21 April 1995, and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, 15 May to 1 July 1995, Sir James Gunn, cat. 41 (illustrated).

Sir William Oliphant Hutchison (1889–1970) was born in Kirkcaldy and in 1918 married Margery Walton, the daughter of Scottish artist, E.A. Walton, who was an early influence on Hutchison’s work.

He moved to London in 1921, where he was near neighbours with James Pryde another Scottish artist in exile. He was made Director of Glasgow School of Art 1933–1943 and among many other honours was President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1950 to 1959.

He was a well-known portrait painter whose sitters included HM The Queen. Perhaps his finest male portrait is of Sir Herbert James Gunn, his diploma picture for the Royal Scottish Academy, which was gifted by Lady Hutchison to the National Gallery of Scotland in 1977. Hutchison and Gunn met in Edinburgh College of Art in 1910. They remained close friends for the rest of their lives. Gunn exhibited a second portrait of him, wearing the robes and chains of that office, at the Royal Academy, London in 1952.

sir Herbert James Gunn 1893–1964

Portrait of Sir William Oliphant Hutchison

c.1926

12

C20 text for DK.indd 12 18-08-2008 21:30:09

C20 text for DK.indd 13 18-08-2008 21:30:11

1920s sir William nicholson 1872–1949

Winter Anemones 1927

Oil on panel, 10 x 12 inches (25.5 x 30.5 cm) Signed Nicholson bottom rightPRoVenAnce: Beaux Arts Gallery, London; Sir Hugh Walpole; Anthony Bushell, 1956; Thomas Agnew and Sons, London; Sale, Phillips London, 28 June 1982, lot 21; Browse and Darby, London; Somerville & Simpson Ltd, sold 5 October 1983; Catherine Gamble CurraneXHIbIteD: London, Beaux Arts Gallery, Pictures and Drawings by William Nicholson, 30 June–30 July 1927, no.67; Glasgow, Alex Reid & Lefevre Ltd., Exhibition of Paintings by William Nicholson, April 1928, no.17; London, Beaux Arts Gallery, Exhibition of Recent Paintings by William Nicholson, 24 April–31May 1929, no.34; London, Beaux Arts Gallery, Summer Exhibition, 1932, catalogue untraced; Nottingham, Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by William Nicholson, 10 March–24 April 1933, no.27; London, Beaux Arts Gallery, Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by William Nicholson, 1 May–2 June 1933, no.14; London, Leicester Galleries, The Art Collection of the late Hugh Walpole, 11 April–8 May 1945, no.71; London, Browse and Darby, William Nicholson & Ben Nicholson: Paintings and Drawings 1919–1945, 29 June–30 July 1983, no.6, illustrated in the catalogue.LIteRAtURe: Creative Art, vol. 4, New York, June 1929, illustrated p.440; Lillian Browse, William Nicholson, Hart-Davies, London 1956, no.383.

The qualities of William Nicholson’s paintings escaped the attention of many in the art world through most of the second half of the twentieth century. The reputation of the father declined as that of his son Ben grew. Recent publications and the William Nicholson exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, which opened in the autumn of 2004, have demonstrated the simple beauty of his painting and his mastery of tech-nique, composition, and choice of subject. As Richard Dorment commented in his exhibition review, ‘Nicholson was wholly original by being wholly himself. Though it is hard to put your finger on the reason why, you would never mis-take one of his paintings for a work by any other artist. It is, I suppose, Nicholson’s unique way of looking at the world, his ability to stand amazed at the beauty of the most ordinary things in life.’

14

C20 text for DK.indd 14 18-08-2008 21:30:11

C20 text for DK.indd 15 18-08-2008 21:30:13

1920s

Oil on prepared board, 13¼ x 16 inches (53.5 x 40.5 cms)PRoVenAnce: Mr & Mrs H. Dalziel Smith; Mr & Mrs Peto, purchased from the Redfern Gallery in 1947; Private CollectioneXHIbIteD: London, Redfern Gallery, Christopher Wood, The Complete Works, March–April 1938 (no.221); Redfern Gallery, Christopher Wood, May 1947 (no.62); Redfern Gallery, Christopher Wood, 1959 (no.74); Plymouth City Art Gallery, French Impressionists and English Painting and Sculpture from the Peto Collection, 1960–61 (no.102)LIteRAtURe: E. Newton, Christopher Wood 1901–1930, London,1938 (no.430)

christopher Wood 1901–1930

Spring Flowers in a White Jar c.1928

Christopher Wood painted a number of small still lives in the course of his tragically short career, usually favouring an informal arrangement of flowers dropped haphazardly into a little jug. Its date is probably after the spring of 1928 and Wood’s visit to Bankshead, the Cumbrian home of his friends Ben and Winifred Nicholson.

Wood’s friendship with the Nicholsons is at the heart of English painting between the wars. The weeks that they spent together at Bankshead in April and then at St Ives later in the summer had a powerful effect on all three of their careers. The Nicholsons presented Wood with an idealised image of English crea-tive life – the truth of their relationship was of course more complex, but what Wood saw was a matched and mutually supportive partnership that seemed in sharp contrast to his own lonely isolation. He longed for something similar for himself, but despite his search for this sort of happiness Wood had neither the character nor lifestyle to make such a relationship stick and he was always drawn back to a life of opium-fuelled bisexuality in Bohemian Paris. His friendship with the Nicholsons though was one of the few certainties of his short life.

Artistically as well as emotionally Wood and the Nicholsons found much to share in 1928, both in their choice of subject and in their methods. It was Wood who came up with the technique, evident in this painting, of coating the canvas or board with a thick layer of cover-ine or rippolin, a white house paint that dried fast and gave a rich and varied texture, as well as an implied sense of history. This emphasis on the character of the picture surface underscored a sense of the painting as an object and led to Ben building up and scoring back the surface in such a way that prefigures the first white reliefs of the early 1930s.

16

C20 text for DK.indd 16 18-08-2008 21:30:14

C20 text for DK.indd 17 18-08-2008 21:30:15

1930s

Still Life with a Lacquer Screen was painted in the early 1930s when Cadell painted a series of striking still life’s and interiors at his Edinburgh studio. In these pictures the art-ist uses colour at its full strength and make the case for Cadell being the artist who most convincingly justifies the description Scottish Colourist.

Here are objects recognizable from other compositions, such as the blue jug, Chinese bowl, and lacquer screen. The red chair, one of several in his flat that he painted that colour, draped with a printed scarf, became a favourite abstracted motif in Cadell’s paintings of this period.

Oil on canvas, 231/2 x 191/2 inches (59.5 x 49.5 cm)Signed lower left F. C. B. CadellPRoVenAnce: Sotheby’s, Gleneagles, 29 August 1975, lot 362a; Private collection

Francis campbell Boileau cadell 1883–1937

Still Life with a Lacquer Screen c.1930

18

C20 text for DK.indd 18 18-08-2008 21:30:15

C20 text for DK.indd 19 18-08-2008 21:30:17

1930s

and emigrated to Canada in 1947. She settled in a remote logging township on Vancouver Island, Campbell River where she spent the rest of her life.

The dynamic mix of colour and form in the linocuts of Sybil Andrews connect her to the Art Deco movement which flourished at the same time. Her skills as designer, printmaker and printer produced a series of vibrant images which reflect aspects of their period and are now highly prized.

The visual possibilities offered by sporting events appealed to Sybil Andrews. The col-ours and rhythms inherent in the action were particularly appropriate for the simplification required for the medium of linocut. Stephen Coppel notes that Andrews and Cyril Power designed a poster in the 1930s for the London Transport Passenger Board advertising the Epsom Derby which shows a strong resem-blance to Racing.

Sybil Andrews produced her best work dur-ing the period when she shared her studio with Power in Brook Green, Hammersmith from 1930 to 1938. Linocut was her principal medium and sport inspired her most successful subjects, such as In Full Cry, Speedway, Bringing in the Boat, Racing, Football and Skaters. In 1938 she moved out of London to the New Forest

Linocut, signed in pencil Sybil Andrews, titled Racing and numbered 59 from the edition of 60, printed in colours on japan paper113/4 x 15 inches (26 x 34.3 cm)RefeRence: Stephen Coppel, Linocuts of the Machine Age: Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School, Aldershot 1995 p.114 no.sA 32

sybil andrews 1898–1992

Racing 1934

20

C20 text for DK.indd 20 18-08-2008 21:30:17

C20 text for DK.indd 21 18-08-2008 21:30:18

1930s

Oil on Canvas, signed and dated Trevelyan 35 lower right, , and inscribed with title on stretcher253/4 x 32 inches (65 x 81.4 cm)

Julian Trevelyan 1910–1988

London Scene 1935

In 1935 Trevelyan joined the English Surrealist Group, and showed his work in the important International Surrealist Exhibition in London the following year. He had lived in Paris from 1931 to 1934, studying under the influential S. W. Hayter, and travelled widely in Europe during this period. In 1935 he returned to London, where his home at Durham Wharf in Hammersmith became a lively social and artistic centre.

Trevelyan’s main concern in his Surrealist work was the construction of a new collective myth of the city, a theme that had fascinated him from childhood. He described how he ‘had invented a sort of mythology of cities, of fragile structures carrying here and there a few waif-like inhabitants’. Trevelyan was engaged by his old student friend Humphrey Jennings to contribute to Mass Observation (1937–8), and the urban images which resulted, utilised col-lage and torn shreds of newspaper, an attempt to express his personal myth of the gritty urban working-class environment.

22

C20 text for DK.indd 22 18-08-2008 21:30:18

C20 text for DK.indd 23 18-08-2008 21:30:20

1930s

the series of simplified and stylised machine paintings, of which Painting I is a fine example. The hard, mechanical forms in these paintings are refined and pared away to their constitu-ent parts. The arrival of Ben Nicholson in the adjacent studio at this time was particularly fortuitous; they had each separately started blurring the boundary between figuration and abstraction, and were now engaged on explor-ing the potential of pure form free of reference to the tangible world. In Stephenson’s work, it is tempting to see the first evidence of a neigh-bourly exchange of views and cross-fertilisation of ideas. The shapes are no longer either refer-ential or structural but float freely in space.

The Circle exhibition was an important event in the development of British 20th-century art. Subtitled ‘an international survey of construc-tivist art’, it accompanied the manifesto co-edited by Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson.

Moving back to London after the First World War Stephenson installed himself at the end of March 1919 in no.6, The Mall, Parkhill Road, Hampstead, which was to remain his home for the rest of his life. Although during his early years in the Mall Studios his finances were dire and he was often lonely and despondent, as time went by it was to prove a particularly fortuitous choice.

In 1927, Barbara Hepworth and her then husband, John Skeaping, moved into no.7 and the following year Herbert Read joined them at no.3. Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson were also living nearby in Parkhill Road, and during the following decade this ‘gentle nest of artists’ as Read described it was joined by Naum Gabo, Mondrian, Hans Erni and Hélion. Also, by 1933 Nicholson had replaced Skeaping as Hepworth’s husband and was ensconced immediately next door at no.7. Stephenson’s finances had also improved slightly due to his appointment as Head of the Art Department in the School of Surveying and Building at the Northern Polytechnic in Holloway Road in 1922.

By 1933 Stephenson had already turned his back on the straightforward landscapes and portraits, which had attracted his early patrons from County Durham, and embarked on

Tempera on canvas on board21 x 17 inches (53.3 x 43.3 cm)Inscribed verso John Stephenson 1937eXHIbIteD: London Gallery, Circle exhibition, 1937; Fischer Fine Art; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, possibly 1959, no.51

John cecil stephenson 1889–1965

Painting I 1937

24

C20 text for DK.indd 24 18-08-2008 21:30:20

C20 text for DK.indd 25 18-08-2008 21:30:23

1930s

a Mondrian and a Léger as well as a number by Nicholson and Hepworth. A year or two later Circle began to issue black and white postcards illustrating the work of ‘approved’ artists: a gouache – Opus 14 – by Morton was included in the second series of cards, together with pictures by Lissitsky, Malevich, Moholy-Nagy, Van Doesburg and the British abstract painters Arthur Jackson and John Cecil Stephenson.

The achievements of Edinburgh Weavers, the family firm of which he became artistic director and ultimately chairman, have ensured Alastair Morton a permanent place in the history of 20th-century British design; Morton’s activ-ity as an abstract artist, however, has received comparatively little attention.

Morton started painting in 1936. For a short time he alternated between abstract and social realist work, the latter motivated by his radical social and political views and his sympathy for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War; his first exhibited work was shown at the Spanish Medical Aid exhibition in 1937. This social realist tendency manifested itself again during the first months of the Second World War but it was suppressed largely on the advice of Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth who felt it inferior to Morton’s abstract work.

In 1936 Morton commissioned a new house, Brackenfell near Brampton, from Leslie Martin who was at that time gathering material for Circle, ‘the international survey of constructiv-ist art’, with his co-editors Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, first published in 1937. Morton was certainly in full sympathy with the new ideas in art, architecture and design expressed in this extensively illustrated compilation. He had begun buying modernist works in cluding

Oil on canvas26¼ x 351/2 inches (67 x 90 cm)Signed with initials and dated on the reverse A.J.F.M. / Jun–Feb ’40

alastair Morton 1910–1963

Abstract 1940

26

C20 text for DK.indd 26 18-08-2008 21:30:23

C20 text for DK.indd 27 18-08-2008 21:30:25

1930s

it still refers back to the intensity of his earlier etchings.

Milner Gray, who owned this painting, left Goldsmiths’ College at the end of 1921, the year Graham Sutherland started. They shared digs in Blackheath while Sutherland was still at the College: Gray had set up a design consul-tancy, Bassett Gray. When Sutherland married Kathleen Barry and moved out of their digs, he wrote a letter:

My dear Milner, I called this afternoon to turn out my ‘things’ upstairs and most reluctantly (from some points of view!) to fetch my Palmers and the brass rubbing. I hope in a week or two to be able to let you have the duplicate of the one we took at Fordwich. Also the three proofs of my own I promised you (if you could put up with them!). I put Bouverie’s Hedging and Ditching up again, but the cord requires lengthening. My acids and dishes, as well as the drawing boards etc., I will call for next week. I do hope you will get your plate done – do not hesitate to use my press or any acids, etc. that you require …*

Milner Gray showed Sutherland’s work to Jack Beddington, who conceived the Shell advertising campaign, commissioning work from many of the best contemporary artists. Gray later lodged with Graham and Kathleen and in 1980, he sat for one of the last portraits Sutherland painted.

The period between the Wall Street Crash and the outbreak of the Second World War, the 1930s, was the most important of Sutherland’s career. It saw a precocious student etcher mature into the greatest British landscape painter of the 20th century. This small panel, which belonged to a close lifelong friend, Milner Gray, illustrates the transition. Its scale is similar to that of his earlier etchings and it relates closely to Clegyr-Boia, the etching and aquatint published as frontispiece to Signature no.9 in July 1938. The back of the panel is its own commentary on the artist’s journey from printmaker to painter. It was cut from a rejected oil painting which still reveals enough of its subject to connect it to such works as Tree Forms in Estuary 1939, a watercolour in the collection of Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council, included in the recent Sutherland show at Dulwich Picture Gallery (no.22).

The landscape of Wales was the inspiration for Sutherland to become a painter. It was a struggle to suppress his natural gifts for draughtsmanship and to adopt the brush. The muted colours and twisted shapes he found in Pembrokeshire provided the visual stimulus which culminated in his masterpiece, Entrance to a Lane 1939 (Tate). Marsh below Hills shares many characteristics with Entrance to a Lane, but

Ink and wash on gesso primed panel, signed and dated with initials Gs 39, lower right: part of another subject painted in oil verso, signed, dated and inscribed Marsh below Hills 1939 Graham Sutherland81/2 x 57/8 inches (21.2 x 15 cm)PRoVenAnce: Milner Gray and by descenteXHIbIteD: London, The Leicester Galleries

Graham sutherland 1903–1980

Marsh below Hills 1939

* Quoted in Roger Berthoud Graham Sutherland: A Biography London 1982, p.60

28

C20 text for DK.indd 28 18-08-2008 21:30:25

C20 text for DK.indd 29 18-08-2008 21:30:27

1940s John Piper 1903–1992

Cotterstock Church c.1940

Ink, pen, watercolour and bodycolour 291/2 x 39 inches (75 x 99 cm)Signed and inscribed on a card attached to the backboard This is to certify that the bigwatercolour of Cotterstock Church is by me, John Piper. 29 9 68

Piper trained at the Royal College of Art, and during the war supplemented his income from paintings by writing art reviews and magazine columns. He would later found the art maga-zine Axis with his wife Myfanwy.

Piper had been asked to join a group of artists that called themselves The Seven and Five and to exhibit with them. Included in the group were Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Ivon Hitchens, Frances Hodgkins, Barbara Hepworth, and Winifred Nicholson, plac-ing Piper at the heart of the English modern movement of painting. This was to change with the outbreak of the Second World War, when Piper was selected, together with artists such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and Stanley Spencer, for the War Artists Scheme. The scheme was initiated by Sir Kenneth Clark in the early days of the war, and encouraged the depiction of all aspects of the war both at home and abroad. Rather than in foreign theatres of war, Piper discovered his own dramas as he recorded derelict buildings or those that were in danger of being bombed. Piper would continue his interest in the English landscape and archi-tecture throughout his career, using texture and perspective to heighten dramatic effect.

The church of St Andrew stands on a tranquil spot by the river Nene in Cotterstock, a mile north of Oundle, Northamptonshire. Ancient monuments such as this held particular signifi-cance to the national psyche during the war. Piper places the church – resolute and seem-ingly unshakeable – against a characteristically dark dramatic sky.

30

C20 text for DK.indd 30 18-08-2008 21:30:28

C20 text for DK.indd 31 18-08-2008 21:30:30

1940s

Oil on board, 25 x 30 inches (64.5 x 78 cm)Signed lower left Anne RedpathPRoVenAnce: Aitken Dott & Son, Edinburgh; Mrs David McC. Hunter, Edinburgh; Private CollectioneXHIbIteD: Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1949, no. 173; Edinburgh, Aitken Dott & Son, Anne Redpath Exhibition, October 1950, no. 25 Edinburgh, The Arts Council of Great Britain–Scottish Committee, Anne Redpath Memorial Exhibition, no. 34

anne redpath 1895–1965

Greys c.1949

Redpath’s still lifes of the late 1940s represent some of her best work. They have balance, authority and inventiveness.

She titled this painting Greys, and it is a natural extension of her studies in painting various shades of white. In an interview with the poet George Bruce for a bbc film in 1961 Redpath comments on ‘this love of whites, and greys, and as far back as I can remember I have loved painting white … you use black because it makes the white more intensified, or gives it more quality’.

Redpath’s love of the manipulation of sur-face texture is also demonstrated in this painting. This she had developed from her Mediterranean trips, starting with her stay on her travelling scholarship in 1919 in Siena, where she had so admired the Italian Primitives. The old plastered walls that she had seen there also fascinated her and she devel-oped a modern approach to achieving different textures in her surfaces - even scraping the canvas with a small piece of chain-mail that she kept in her studio.

This is one of the best examples of her vision of still life, with its white on white aesthetic and superbly subtle paint surface.

32

C20 text for DK.indd 32 18-08-2008 21:30:30

C20 text for DK.indd 33 18-08-2008 21:30:32

1940s

Gouache, pastel and charcoal 71/2 x 111/2 inches (19 x 28 cm)Signed Eduardo Paolozzi Paris 1948 upper right and inscribed For George Melly my dear friend upper left

1948 was in important year for Paolozzi, and was at the heart of his embracing of the Surrealist movement. Nigel Henderson was a fellow student at the Slade School of Art, and through him he met a number of people central to Surrealism in Britain, including E.L.T. Mesens, who ran the London Gallery, the only gallery dealing in Surrealism. George Melly’s first job after leaving the navy was to work as an assist-ant to Mesens at the London Gallery, and this is surely how Paolozzi and Melly came to know each other – both fascinated by Surrealism. His first one-man exhibition was held at the Mayor Gallery in 1947, and with the proceeds he left to live and work in Paris. It was a rich period of production for Paolozzi, his output included some of his best known bronzes and a stunning body of Surrealist inspired collage work. This humorous sketch is a fascinating snap-shot of camaraderie at a fiercely creative time in Paolozzi’s life.

sir eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005

‘For George Melly my dear friend’ 1948

34

C20 text for DK.indd 34 18-08-2008 21:30:33

sir eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005

Aquarium 19531950s

Coloured crayons, pastels, gouache and black ink, 18.9 x 23 inches (48 x 58.4 cm)

Paolozzi took up a post teaching textile design at at Central School of Art and Design from 1949 until 1955, and other members of staff at the time included, Nigel Henderson, Richard Hamilton, William Turnbull, Alan Davie and Victor Pasmore. He made many drawings there destined to be made into screenprints, and he would later found the firm Hammer Prints with Henderson for the manufac-ture of textiles, wallpaper, tapestries and ceramics. This painting is an incredibly rare, and excellent example of the motifs and style that inform many aspects of his work from this period. The Gallery of Modern Art Edinburgh has a compa-rable ink and watercolour drawing in its permanent collection titled London Zoo Aquarium, and dated 1951 which was made into a screen print. However Paolozzi after reviewing the Venice Biennale of 1952 went to Naples where the aquarium there was a highlight of his visit, and this paint-ing may be inspired by this trip.

C20 text for DK.indd 35 18-08-2008 21:30:35

1950s

Oil on canvas 153/4 x 20 inches (40 x 51 cm)PRoVenAnce: Peter Lanyon, private collection

Terry Frost 1915–2003

Black and White Sea Movement 1951

The years 1951–2 were important in the devel-opment of Frost’s work. For years he had been hitch-hiking back and forth between London and St Ives, and in 1950 on Ben Nicholson’s recommendation, he moved into one of the Arts Council supported studios in St Ives. He occupied the studio next to Nicholson. It was here that he began to develop the abstraction he had started with two series: the ‘Movement’ and ‘Walk along the Quay’ paintings. Paintings inspired by his experience of walking along the quay at St Ives Harbour and studying with pleasure the curved hulls, masts at angles and ropes – whether slack, looping or taut. Sometimes when the tide was in, ropes lay below the surface as well as above, and the reflections of the hulls made it difficult to discern what was above and below. The boats rocking at their moorings would disturb the water and send out shimmering ripples. This painting is an example of his response to this environment, and he gave it to his friend and fellow artist Peter Lanyon.

36

C20 text for DK.indd 36 18-08-2008 21:30:35

C20 text for DK.indd 37 18-08-2008 21:30:36

1950s

Terry Frost was the only artist then resident in St Ives to appear in the influential study Nine Abstract Artists by Laurence Alloway, published in 1954. This shows his significance in the new generation of young artists who had connec-tions in London, Corsham and St Ives.

This painting belonged to Roger Mayne, who photographed many St Ives artists in the early 1950s, including Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton and Peter Lanyon. He also taught at Corsham 1966–69.

Also known as Corsham Blue and Silver and Corsham Silver and White; this painting is recorded by the artist as being painted after a walk at night, ice crunching under foot, tall trees and a blue moon.

The strength and energy of Terry Frost’s paint-ings from this period quickly established him as a new talent with a distinctive voice. His work included recognisable elements which had their origins in what he saw and sensed. This he combined with his instinct for line, colour, shape and texture, and produced a series of important abstract paintings in the period 1950 to 1955, of which Corsham Black, Silver and White is a major example.

The Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, Witshire, provided Terry Frost with vital con-tacts at the start of his careers as a painter and it was his first teaching post. His appointment coincided with his first one-man show at the Leicester Galleries in 1952. He had been work-ing as Barbara Hepworth’s assistant in St Ives and had a studio next to Ben Nicholson, and produced much of his best work in Cornwall and Corsham during the early 1950s.

Oil in canvas, 433/4 x 30 inches (111 x 76.2 cm)Signed and dated Frost 53, lower rightPRoVenAnce: Roger Mayne; National Westminster Bank Plc; Private CollectioneXHIbIteD: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Laing Art Gallery (Arts Council of Great Britain touring exhibition), Terry Frost, 1964 (no.12); Bath Festival, (Arts Council of Great Britain touring exhibition), Corsham Painters & Sculptors, 1965 (no.54); London, New Art Centre, Cornwall 1945–55, 1977 (no.26); London, Michael Parkin Gallery, Bath, Victoria Art Gallery, Brighton Polytechnic Gallery, Corsham: A Celebration, The Bath Academy of Art 1946–72, 1988 (no.45)LIteRAtURe: David Brown (introduction) and Tamsyn Woollcombe, Corsham: A Cele-bration, The Bath Academy of Art 1946–72, 1988 no.45, illustrated; David Lewis and Elizabeth Knowles, Terry Frost, 1994 p.60–61, illustrated

Terry Frost 1915–2003

Corsham Black Silver and White 1953

38

C20 text for DK.indd 38 18-08-2008 21:30:36

C20 text for DK.indd 39 18-08-2008 21:30:37

1950s

In 1950 Nicholson began visiting Mediter–ranean countries where he drew landscapes, architecture and still lifes. Nicholson stayed at Torre del Grillo, Piazza del Grillo, Rome, on two occasions, in 1954 and 1955 as the guest of Jenny Nicholson, the eldest child of Robert Graves and Nancy Nicholson.

In this drawing the precision with which Nicholson transcribed his motifs is summed up: with the simple subjects of decanter and jug he expresses the elegance in his line.

Pencil drawing, signed in pencil Ben Nicholson and inscribed Still Life Torre del Grillo Rome Oct 55, verso, on Reeves Bristol Board; also signed and inscribed on backboard141/2 x 183/4 inches (37 x 47.5 cm)PRoVenAnce: Alan E. OlivereXHIbIteD: Sao Paulo, Fourth International Biennial Exhibition, 1957 (31)

Ben nicholson 1894–1982

Still Life 1955

40

C20 text for DK.indd 40 18-08-2008 21:30:37

C20 text for DK.indd 41 18-08-2008 21:30:39

1960s Bridget riley b.1931

Untitled (Circular Movement) 1962

Screenprint, signed and dated in pencil ’62 B. Riley, lower right, printed in black ink on wove paper, numbered 14 from the editionof 35, lower left6¼ x 6¼ inches (16 x 16 cm) sheet 105/8 x 105/8 inches (27.2 x 27.3 cm)LIteRAtURe: Karsten Schubert, Bridget Riley: Complete Prints, London 2002 no.2

In addition to her paintings, Riley is one of the most successful printmakers of her generation. She produced her first screenprint in 1961, and this was produced the following year.

The part played by the printer made screen-print less dependent on the touch of the artist, which increased its appeal for the new genera-tion of artists in the 1960s, such as Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi. In Riley’s case, the participation of a printer brought the process closer to her experience as a painter. To realise her paintings she employs studio assistants to lay the flat areas of paint with a brush according to her models, just as the printer works with stencils and ink according to her painted study. In both cases it is the art-ist’s precisely calculated intentions that shape the work of art. (Craig Hartley, Screenprint and Painter, 2002)

42

C20 text for DK.indd 42 18-08-2008 21:30:39

C20 text for DK.indd 43 18-08-2008 21:30:40

1970s William scott 1913–1989

Blue and White 1971

Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches (101 x 101 cm)eXHIbIteD: Tate Gallery, 1972, William Scott (no.124)

From 1969 Scott developed his painting style from the luxurious and textured paint sur-faces of the 1950s to a new language in which individual objects were abstracted to their most pure flat silhouettes. Pots, pans and bowls were reduced to the simplest of lines, and contextual surfaces removed. The ‘objects’ seem weight-less, somehow rejecting references to their physicality, but still have a softly vibrating resonance. These paintings are never mechani-cal, but are sensual in atmosphere, and herald a simple and classical aesthetic.

In the run up to his 1972 Tate retrospective, this group of paintings, of which twenty were included in this show, aptly express his sub-tle and mature originality. This painting is a perfect example of the timelessness embodied in his late work.

44

C20 text for DK.indd 44 18-08-2008 21:30:40

C20 text for DK.indd 45 18-08-2008 21:30:42

1970s

Oil on board61/2 x 73/4 inches (16.5 x 19.7 cm)PRoVenAnce: Private collection, Paris; Private collection, London

Peter Blake b.1932

Two Girls c.1979

In 1969 Peter Blake and his young family moved to a small village near Bath. He left behind the Pop Art movement and in 1975 founded The Brotherhood of Ruralists with a group of locally based artists. Although indi-vidual in style, each artist desired to understand and paint elements of nature, combined with literary and musical influences. Summarising the Ruralist mission, Blake said:

Simply, our aims are the continuation of a certain kind of English painting; we admire Samuel Palmer, Stanley Spencer, Thomas Hardy, Elgar, cricket, English landscape, the Pre-Raphaelites, etc … Our aims are to paint about love, beauty, joy, sentiment and magic.

Blake’s Ruralist paintings are dominated by English literary subjects, often the works of William Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and images of Titania and Ophelia became some of his most famous. These fairies were not ethereal beings, but very real people based on contemporary figures. Blake, who later commented that ‘I didn’t ever stop being an Urbanist really,’ returned to London in 1979.

Portraiture, real or imaginary, is central to Blake’s work. In this series there is often an awkward, compelling directness in his images, the faces combining innocence and a certain knowingness. Blake in this painting combines consummate draughtsmanship and restrained painterly surfaces, to create an image that is entirely of its time.

46

C20 text for DK.indd 46 18-08-2008 21:30:42

C20 text for DK.indd 47 18-08-2008 21:30:44

1990s eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005

Newton after Blake 1993

BronzeHeight 17 inches (43.2cm); base 123/4 x 23 inches (32.4 x 58.4cm)Signed Newton After Blake and dated 1993, also impressed with founders stampLIteRAtURe: Fiona Pearson, Eduardo Paolozzi, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 1999, pp.72–3; Colin St John Wilson, ‘Paolozzi’s Monument to Isaac Newton (and Blake)’, Eduardo Paolozzi, Projects 1975–2000, exh.cat., Flowers East, London 2005, pp.36–9.

Conceived in 1987–8, Paolozzi’s Newton derives from William Blake’s iconic colour print of 1795, showing the scientist mapping out the universe with a pair of calipers (Tate, London). For a description of the theme, see Robin Spencer, Paolozzi Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, 1988). Paolozzi first adapted the theme for his Master of the Universe bronze in 1989 (National Galleries of Scotland), character-istically updating Blake’s image with various mechanised features. When, in 1993 Paolozzi was commissioned to make a public monument for the forecourt of the new British Library in London, he explored the theme further, making a number of variants of the subject in plaster and bronze, of which this is one. (The commis-sion is the subject of an essay by the architect of the British Library, Colin St John Wilson, in Eduardo Paolozzi Projects 1975–2000, London, Flowers, 2005).

Paolozzi’s versions of the theme are infused with a subtle irony. Well aware of Blake’s disap-proval of Newton and his fixation with order-ing the universe, Paolozzi champions the latter

as the ultimate human exponenent of scientific achievement. In keeping with Paolozzi’s ongo-ing accumulation and manipulation of sources and imagery, where Master of the Universe was blind, the present work and the final Newton (British Library, London) have appropriated the eyes of Michaelangelo’s David, the defini-tive Renaissance image of human perfection. Unveiled in September 1997, Paolozzi’s Newton at the British Library is fittingly ori-entated towards the wing housing its scientific collections.

We are grateful to Robin Spencer, author of the forthcoming Eduardo Paolozzi catalogue raisonné, for his assistance in cataloguing this work.

48

C20 text for DK.indd 48 18-08-2008 21:30:44

C20 text for DK.indd 49 18-08-2008 21:30:46

1990s

BronzeHeight 10 inches (25.4cm), base 24 x 11 inches (61 x 28cm)Signed Eduardo Paolozzi, 1993LIteRAtURe: Fiona Pearson, Eduardo Paolozzi, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 1999, pp.68–71

eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005

Wealth of Nations 1993

The Wealth of Nations was commissioned by the Royal Bank of Scotland for their former headquarters, Drummond House at the South Gyle, Edinburgh. Standing at 3.5 metres high and 5.5 metres wide it was probably the largest bronze sculpture to be commissioned in Britain since the Second World War. Cast by Morris Singer Art Foundry in London, it was unveiled by HM The Queen in June 1993. The title of the sculpture derives from the the Scottish econo-mist Adam Smith’s most influential book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations.

Paolozzi sought to express in sculpture inspira-tion he found in totemic signs, symbols and images; echoes of pre-history, and of a tech-nological world running amok. The Wealth of Nations suggests a reclining figure consisting of a number of separate body parts; two hands grasping rods which look back not only to the insignia for Hammer Prints but also to antique sculpture fragments in the Munich Glyptotek, a large cubist head on its side, and two realisti-cally modelled feet. The area where the main part of the body should be is taken up by

rectangular shapes linking the head and limbs together. The full scale sculpture is set on a plinth and carries a quote of Albert Einstein’s; ‘Knowledge is wonderful, but imagination is even better’.

This quotation expressed the artist’s perennial question as to whether man was the monster of science, or science was becoming the monster of man. The quotation of Albert Einstein sug-gests his answer. Paolozzi also wanted to pose the question against the backdrop of a major banking building demonstrating the contrast of the talents of men and the forces of money.

50

C20 text for DK.indd 50 18-08-2008 21:30:46

C20 text for DK.indd 51 18-08-2008 21:30:48

1990s

Bronze, unique, height 15 inches (38.1cm), base 73/4 x 8¼ inches (19.7 x 18.5cm)Signed and dated Eduardo Paolozzi 1992, inscribed 1/1

Paolozzi’s output was often monumental, ful-filling many public commissions in his lifetime, however another favourite theme was smaller heads, in bronze or plaster and often made for his own pleasure. They are often unique.

He had an obsession with metamorphosing the human figure, and by 1984 had created a series of fragmented heads, which blended geometry with nature. Robin Spencer notes ‘by using the surrealist technique of the “cut” he is able to explore expression beyond physiognomy’.

sir eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005

Head 1992

52

C20 text for DK.indd 52 18-08-2008 21:30:50

sir eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005

Head 1999

Bronze, probably unique, height 141/2 inches (36.8cm), base 7 x 10¼ inches (17.8 x 26cm)Signed Eduardo Paolozzi

Throughout Paolozzi’s life he was an avid col-lector of magazines, and as with his collages of the 1950s and throughout his career, he used these as inspiration to deconstruct and recon-struct the human head. Horizontal and vertical cuts were filled with geometrical fragments suggesting mechanisation. It has been suggest-ed that he never lost the child’s ability to play, with the result that a freshness of vision and spontaneity informs all of his work.

In the mid-1990s Paolozzi developed a cubist head. This new departure was inspired by a schematized head taken from computer graph-ics. The shape was paired down to a series of geometric facets. These were often then sawn through vertically and horizontally and pegs inserted.

C20 text for DK.indd 53 18-08-2008 21:30:51

1990s

Coventry studied at Chelsea School of Art, and has exhibited widely including the now famous Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1998. His work is included in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, British Council, Arts Council of England and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Matt Colllings, the artist and writer comments on this series of paintings:

The key to understanding everything Coventry does can be found in his Estate Paintings, which he embarked on in 1992. Geometric shapes in black or red within a white field (the paint surface neither heavy nor light, neither ‘hard won’ nor careless) turn out to be simplified replicas of the ground plan signs outside housing estates, which show how the buildings are arranged and named. He hand-makes angular, chunky frames for these paintings, possibly because that’s what artists like Mondrian and Malevich did, or alternatively because he wants to say that this isn’t just a painting, it’s a constructed thing – or maybe a bit of both. In any case the visual effect is that the work becomes very object-like.

Oil on canvas, wood and glass 33 x 29 inches (83.8 x 73.7 cm)

Keith coventry b.1958

Brockmoor Tower 1996

These paintings capture the moment when modernist Utopian dreams – the well-meant belief that peoples’ lives would be bettered by living in clean, modern, high rise buildings, with lifts, way up above the street with plenty of fresh air – evaporated. Because instead of being the touted New Jerusalem, homes for heroes, the estates spawned new problems, vandal-ism, violence, social isolation, drug dealing and addiction, prostitution and racism, recurring themes in Coventry’s work. He creates a visual analogy to connect these pariahs through clean, geometric forms. This convincing, seductive visual element is what distinguishes him from a lot of other artists – he isn’t just sampling an idea or assuming that ‘referring’ to an idea is actually an idea. Form and content are mutually complementary.

54

C20 text for DK.indd 54 18-08-2008 21:30:53

C20 text for DK.indd 55 18-08-2008 21:30:57

Published by The Fine Art Society for the exhibition The Twentieth Century, 17 September to 18 October 2008 © all rights reserved

Isbn 978 0 905062 53 5

Designed by Dalrymple Typeset in Helvetica and Indigo Photography by A. C. Cooper Printed in Belgium by Die Keure

Cover design: derived from Alastair Morton Abstract 1940

Frontispiece: Julian Trevelyan London Scene 1935

Page 4: Bridget Riley Untitled (Circular Movement) 1962

C20 text for DK.indd 56 18-08-2008 21:30:57