Robert Colquhoun
Went to an excellent lecture last night at the Fleming Collection, given by Davy Brown. He is the source of a great deal of knowledge about Colquhoun and has a large collection of his work. The interesting thing was his emphasis of the monotypes.From the early 1950’s until his death in 1962 at the age of 47, Colquhoun painted few oils, except for a batch prepared for the Whitechapel retrospective at the behest of Bryan Robertson in 1958. But he was still working, when their often diffcult living conditions permitted. What he was working on were often monotypes and Davy explained what these were, technically, and also why they were important. Colquhoun’s reputation is usually focussed on the great oils of the 1940’s,shown at the Lefevre, but this is a new way of looking at the work in a more balanced fashion.
(On a personal note, I should say that Davy is one of the most helpful people around in the contemporary art world. When I was doing my piece on Colquhoun some years ago, he helped me unstintingly and was a delightful person to deal with.)