Results for search of category: 20th century British art

Women artists/Alan Davie

Went to the Imperial War Museum,where they have a small show of women war artists .Interestingly,the first thing one sees is a short video of a Wartime news item from when Laura Knight painted Ruby Loftus in her munitions factory.This is a very famous image and the video shows artist and subject attending the RA to see the picture hanging [Read More…]

And more City Art

St Vedast in Foster Lane suffered badly in the War,as did much of the area North of St Paul’s.Many Church fragments attest to this destruction.There are photos in the Church showing that in 1947,when a new vicar was installed,the building was still without a roof.But now it is a splendid place,with very much the feel of an Oxbridge college chapel.For [Read More…]

More City Art

On London Wall, outside the Brewers’ Hall, I came across today a sculpture of a gardener by Karin Jonzen. It dates from 1971 and a plaque says it was commissioned by the Trees, Gardens and City Open Spaces Committee of the Corporation of London. The gardener, presumably in bronze, bends down to tend to his garden. The angular form gets [Read More…]

Watercolour at Tate Britain

Went to this yesterday.Apart from single pictures by Ravilious and Bawden,the most dominant 20th C British work on show is by Edward Burra.He has a number of large and characteristic watercolours on display. In the rearranged displays in Tate Britain it is well worth catching a rarely seen exceptional example of Eileen Agar’s work (Autobiography of an Embryo,1933/4).After her recent [Read More…]

Mid 20th C British art in the City

It used to be possible to walk into a City boardroom and have some chance of seeing an interesting piece by one of the artists covered here. I recall Ivon Hitchens in UBS, all sorts of good things in Barings and Robert Fleming, a varied  collection in Simmons and Simmons (courtesy of their noted art collector partner, Stuart Evans) and [Read More…]

Alfred Wallis/Ben Nicholson at Compton Verney

Went to the great Adam house at Compton Verney in Warwickshire yesterday to see the above.This was another very interesting small show at this stylish cultural centre.They often do good shows and it makes for a nice day out from London up the M40.I strongly recommend that people interested in this period join the mailing list.I see,for example,that Stanley Spencer is coming [Read More…]

Wilfrid Evill

I have just been to breakfast at Sotheby’s,who will be selling the amazing collection of British 20th C art put together by Wilfrid Evill and subsequently inherited by Honor Frost,who died recently.He is covered to some extent in my book as  one of the most celebrated collectors of the 20th C.This will be an extremely important sale.A particular feature will [Read More…]

Artists of Primrose Hill

Those who organise London walks might like to consider some trails around North London for students of 20th Century British (and even Irish) art.Yesterday,in the Spring sunshine,a short walk took me past Fitzroy Road,where Jack Yeats was born;past St Mark’s Crescent,where William Roberts lived for a long time (and also Rodrigo Moynihan and his wife,Eleanor Bellingham-Smith for a while);and on [Read More…]

Stanley Spencer

I,together with about 200 other people, went to a Gresham Lecture earlier in the week at the Museum of London given by Lord Harries,formerly Bishop of Oxford.It was called “Understanding Faith through the eyes of Stanley Spencer”.The quality of the lecture isn’t what makes me write about it.The thought it triggers relates to the challenge for the commentator on 20th C [Read More…]

Book Review: Edward Burra: Twentieth-Century Eye

Burra was, in many ways, a typical artist of mid-20th century England, in the sense that his style was personal to him. It is difficult to categorise his work and he seems to have worked largely independently of the mainstream of 20th century art. The work also went through quite a range of styles during his surprisingly (in view of [Read More…]