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Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912 - 2004)
Card for Sandra Blow's 75th birthday (1995)
Gouache and collage 34 x 21 cm Inscribed to reverse "For Sandra, Happy Birthday, with love Willie, 13/9/95". Barns-Graham's modern design features 70 vividly coloured circles; each one is different from the last, but all are geometrically aligned in neat rows and columns. Sandra Blow's initials appear separately as "S" and "B" in the design. Blow and Barns-Graham became friends in the 1950s; both spent lengthy periods of time in St Ives, and made major contributions to Britain's catalogue of post-war art. Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, known as Willie, was born in St Andrews, Fife, on 8 June 1912. Her parents were second cousins, and their respective families were well established representatives of minor Scottish gentry from both the east and west of the country. As a child, Barns-Graham showed very early signs of creative ability. It was at school that Wilhelmina decided that she wanted to be an artist, stating later in life that "painting chose me, not I it". After school she set her sights on Edinburgh College of Art where, after some dispute with her father (who was an emotional man prone to uncontrolled anger), she enrolled in 1931. During her time at Edinburgh College, Barns-Graham was taught by tutors including portrait painter David Alison and painter William MacTaggart. Her friends there included the influential Scottish painters Robert MacBryde, Robert Colquhoun, and William Gear. After her education, Barns-Graham made study trips to Paris, London, and St Tropez before moving to St Ives, Cornwall, in 1940 (at the suggestion of the Edinburgh College of Art's Principal Hubert Wellington). Barns-Graham moved near to where a group of modernist artists had settled, at Carbis Bay - this was a pivotal moment in her life. On one of her first evenings there she met the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, who made an immediate and lasting impression on her. She then went on to meet Borlase Smart, Alfred Wallis, and Bernard Leach, as well as the painter Ben Nicholson and the sculptors Naum Gabo and Margaret Mellis. After two weeks in St Ives, Barns-Graham acquired her first studio, directly below the Porthmeor Gallery which was the administrative headquarters of the St Ives Society of Artists. Her paintings at the time were heavily influenced by the Cornish landscapes and the St Ives harbour. During 1940 and 1941, Barns-Graham contributed to the war effort by volunteering in a factory making camouflage nets. In 1942 Barns-Graham became a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists, in which she exhibited with every year, and the St Ives Society of Artists. Whilst establishing herself in St Ives, Barns-Graham also continued to send work back to Scotland for major exhibitions held there such as the Royal Scottish Academy's 117th Exhibition in 1943. The 1940s were an active time for the St Ives Society of Artists who received a number of invitations to send exhibitions and groups of works to galleries in the UK and abroad, Barns-Graham's work was always included in these as the Society's secretary, Borlase Smart, thought highly of her work. Barns-Graham's first opportunity to exhibit in London came when her work was included in a group exhibition of six at the Redfern Gallery. This was due to the introduction and support of Patrick Heron, who had visited Barns-Graham's studio in St Ives and was excited by her work. Barns-Graham would later have her first one-person exhibition in London at Redfern in 1952. After a few years of tension, Barns-Graham eventually left the St Ives Society of Artists in 1949, becoming one of the founding members of a new breakaway group named Penwith Society of Arts. The first Penwith Society exhibition opened in June 1949 to huge success - 2755 paying visitors came to see it. Provenance: the Jonathan Grimble Estate; the Sandra Blow Estate. Condition: very good; in original frame. If you’d like to know more, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. -
Sir Terry Frost (1915-2003) Bottle and Statue Oil on board c. 1947 38 x 46cm A distinctive still life featuring bottle, statue, and drapery. Terry Frost was a prominent British abstract artist. Frost is most noted for his simplistic abstract forms and unusual colour; he worked alongside the St Ives group and as Barbara Hepworth's assistant for several years, his artistic style being heavily influenced by them. In 1992 he became a Royal Academician, and he was made Sir Terry Frost in 1998. Bottle and Statue highlights Frost's unique compositional skill. His brushwork makes the statue seem like a real nude, who, framed by turquoise and ochre draperies, examines the still life in the foreground. An early work, painted shortly after the War and prior to his adoption of abstraction. For other works by Frost and biographical details please click here. Condition: A little craquelure in the oil above the statue's head. -
Eva Lucy Harwood (1893 - 1972)
Still Life with Flowers and Glass
Oil on canvas 49 x 40 cm ( 67 x 57 cm framed) A mid-century still life typical of Harwood's impasto style. Lucy Harwood was a British artist who studied art at the Slade just before the outbreak of the First World War. She had initially intended to be a professional pianist, but turned her attentions to visual art after becoming partially paralysed. She was one of the first students to enrol at Cedric Morris' East Anglian School of Drawing and Painting, where she focused on painting Post-Impressionist landscapes, painting just with her left hand. She moved to Upper Layham in Suffolk and is known for her landscapes of the area. Condition: generally very good. Handsome hand-finished frame. Provenance: Louise Kosman, Edinburgh. If you’d like to know more, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. Click here to view our other still life pictures. -
Brendan Neiland (b.1941)
Original Designs for Intercity Posters - Edinburgh and York
Collage, spraypaint and cut out 91x58cm (36×23 inches) each 1991 Click here for biographical details and other works by the artist. If you are interested email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. -
Mary Fedden (1915-2012) Moonlight at Cappadocia (1970)
Watercolour 18 x 13 cm Signed and dated lower left Lonely Planet says of Cappadocia, "As if plucked from a whimsical fairytale and set down upon the stark Anatolian plains, Cappadocia is a geological oddity of honeycombed hills and towering boulders of otherworldly beauty." Here Fedden presents an almost surreal landscape, where the forms of rocks, sky, and moonlight swim out of a subtle palette. If you are interested, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. Condition: Excellent. In original frame with replacement mount in the style of the original. -
Paul Ayshford Methuen (1886 - 1974)
Barrage Balloons, Regents Park, 9 March 1940
Oil on board 36 x 52 cm Signed lower left and titled and dated lower centre. Lord Methuen's oil painting of Regent's Park on a winter's day, with barrage balloons above. Barrage balloons were set up - stationed at an altitude of around 4,000 ft - as a barrier to enemy aircraft. The steel cables used to tether the balloons would take an enemy aeroplane out of the sky if it were to hit the cable. The UK had thousands of them, filled partly with hydrogen and operated largely by women, to protect significant towns, cities, and military installations. These strange blobs floated over the country, just asking to be captured by artists. Methuen had rejoined his regiment (serving as a Captain) in 1939 but was likely stationed in London for a while, when he might have had the opportunity to capture this scene. When Methuen painted the scene in 1940, Britain was still in the stage of the phoney war. The Battle of Britain did not commence until 10 July, and the Blitz not until 7 September - but Britain's defences were ready. Barrage balloons were important all the way through the War: they defended London against the V2 missiles; they defended the D-Day invasion fleet; and they protected the invasion army for months. Indeed, it was said that the vast amount of material brought into the UK from the States prior to D-Day would have caused Britain to sink under the sea, were it not for the huge number of barrage balloons holding the country up... Condition: excellent. Recently revarnished. If you’d like to know more, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. -
Gwyneth Johnstone (1915 - 2010)
The Railway Bridge
Mixed media 64 x 83 cm Signed lower left in paint, and monogrammed lower left in pencil. Provenance: the estate of the artist. Johnstone explores the possibilities of abstraction in this semi-delirious depiction of a railway bridge. Painted in tones of burnt umber, orange, grey, and black, the picture is populated by warped railings, bending trees, and staring onlookers, all of which centre around a railway line and bridge. Tanya Harrod described Johnstone's painting style a 'a hallucinogenic, haunting pastoral', and that is immensely evident in this picture. Johnstone was an English painter who worked mostly in oils and often depicted poignant modern landscapes. Her parents were the musician Nora Brownsford and the artist Augustus John. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she established lifelong friendships with fellow artists Mary Fedden and Virginia Parsons. After the Slade, Johnstone was taught academicised cubism by the painter André Lhote at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. For a brief period in the early 1950s she took life classes with the surrealist artist Cecil Collins at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. -
Kenneth Rowntree
Abstract Australian Landscape
Watercolour 27.5 x 33cm Signed (top left) and dated 'Kenneth Rowntree '85' Provenance: Anderson & Garland Studio sale of Kenneth Rowntree lot 263 Tuesday 8 September 2009 For biographical details and other works by Rowntree click here. Rowntree visited Australia in 1984/85. In this painting he picks up various vignettes from the Australian landscape in six separate blocks. Two relate to the sky, with almost-unbroken blue skies stretching from horizon to horizon, three relate to desert areas, with a whole array of different textures, and one is a luscious green. In one of the desert scenes he has picked out two road signs, in typical Rowntree fashion, reducing them to their simplest form. In her essay Kenneth Rowntree: A Strange Simplicity (published in Kenneth Rowntree A Centenary Exhibition Published by Moore-Gwyn Fine Art and Liss Llewellyn Fine Art, on behalf of the artist’s estate, on the occasion of the centenary of Kenneth Rowntree’s birth) Alexandra Harris makes reference to this painting noting:Later, in 1986, just when the young David Hockney was collaging the signs and road-markings of Route 138 in Pearblossom Highway, Rowntree was in Australia painting yellow diamond-shaped road-signs as bright icons in open country. Wherever he went, Rowntree captured both the unfamiliarity of places and their relationship to things he knew. Heading into the Australian outback, he painted a road-sign as he would paint a rail signal at Clare in Suffolk or nautical markers at Swansea.
Hockney's 1986 Pearblossom Highway may be seen here in the Getty and it is worth noting that Rowntree was in fact painting the yellow sign in 1985, so a year before Hockney. If you are interested email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. -
James Gowan (1923, Glasgow - 2015, London) The Blue Mill at Backbarrow
62x52cm Oil on Canvas For biographical details and other paintings by Gowan click here. The present work exhibits many of the characteristics obvious in his architectural works. There is a very strong architectural composition. The landscape and sky are approached in almost cubist fashion, reminiscent of the Toblerone-shaped roof of the Leicester Building, whilst the figures have a carefree feel to them. Backbarrow was the place where the blue pigment ultramarine (or dolly blue - used to return brilliant whiteness to yellowed fabrics) was produced in an old mill building by the Lancashire Ultramarine Company. Dust from the production gave the entire village a blue tint until production ceased in 1981. The factory is now a hotel and it maintains a display of machinery used in the factory. If you are interested email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. -
James Gowan (1923, Glasgow - 2015, London) Fountains Abbey (1973)
52x62cm Oil on Canvas Signed 'James Gowan' lower left Inscribed to reverse 'Fountains Abbey 1973 James Gowan No 199' For biographical details and other paintings by Gowan click here. The present work exhibits many of the characteristics obvious in his architectural works. There is a very strong architectural composition. The landscape and sky are approached in almost cubist fashion, reminiscent of the Toblerone-shaped roof of the Leicester Building, whilst the figures have a carefree feel to them. And here indeed are the gothic towers and flying butresses that we know inspired Gowan when designing the Leicester Engineering Building, being captured by the brightly-dressed members of an art class, splashes of primary colour in an already colourful landscape. If you are interested email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. -
Trevor Bell (1930 - 2017)
Way Out Blue (1961)
Acrylic on paper 35 x 43 cm Signed and dated lower right. Bell's rosy-hued abstract composition is perhaps evoking an interior with window and curtains. The deep azure blue of the picture's title appears at the top right of the composition, curving away from the rest of the image. A sunny golden yellow drips in through the window panes, imbuing the scene with a hot, heady romanticism. Bell's idiosyncratic pictorial language allows us to experience the scene's hazy summer heat via the forms of sun, window, and wall. Bell was born in Leeds in 1930 and attended Leeds College of Art from 1947 to 1952 in a scholarship. The artist Terry Frost encouraged him to move to Cornwall, where he soon became a leading figure in the younger generation of the St Ives school. His first solo exhibition came in 1958, and the year after he was awarded the Paris Biennale International Painting Prize. The Tate began collecting his work in the 1960s, and Bell spent more time working and teaching in America. The Tate's 1985 St Ives exhibition featured Bell's work, and he was also included in the Tate St Ives' inaugural show. He returned from America in 1996 and settled down in isolated barn- and farmhouse-conversion studios near Penzance in Cornwall. He exhibited across England and America for the rest of his life, notably with his major solo exhibition at the Tate St Ives in 2004. Much of his work considers form and landscape via a dramatic use of colour and often on unusually-shaped (and sometimes multi-part) canvases. Condition: very good. If you’d like to know more, please email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. -
Lionel Bulmer (1919-1992) 'The Edge of the Field' (c. 1950s)
Oil on board 43 x 51 cm Signed lower right. Lionel Bulmer (1919-1992) attended Clapham art school before war intervened; after the war he started again at the Royal College of Art which had been relocated during the conflict to Ambleside in the Lake District. Here he met his lifelong partner Margaret Green who provided the model for many of his works. They returned to London where they studied under painters such as Ruskin Spear and Carel Weight, successors to the Camden Town and Euston Road schools. In the 1950s they moved to West Suffolk and much of Bulmer's work from this point on documents the Suffolk landscape and the coast at Aldeburgh and Walberswick. If you are interested email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. Condition: Excellent. -
Robert MacDonald Fraser (1870-1947) 'Landscape with Footbridge'
Oil on canvas Signed 20" x 24" (50.5 x 61cm) Though of Scottish descent, an Englishman who was born, lived and died in and around Liverpool. He is believed to have become interested in painting during his secondary school years at the Liverpool Institute and Art School (where the principal was the distinguished landscape artist John Finnie), however his early career was in commerce. By the age of thirty he was well established in Liverpool's art circles but it was to be another decade before he took to painting full time. Between 1910 and 1938 he showed approximately fifty paintings at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, also having seven paintings accepted for the Royal Academy's summer exhibitions. He additionally exhibited at the Manchester Art Gallery, Liverpool Bluecoat and Royal Cambrian Academy, becoming - in 1929 - Vice President of the Liverpool 'Artists' Club.' He mostly painted the landscapes of North Wales and the North West of England. His family owned holiday cottages in North Wales, and Snowdonia provided him with much inspiration, it is believed that this painting is of a Snowdonia scene. If you are interested email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. Condition: Excellent. -
Alfred Daniels RBA RWS (1924-2015)
Christ’s College, Cambridge
Gouache, watercolour and ink on board 40x56cm (15.7×22 inches). In a hand-finished cream frame. Click here for biographical details and other works by the artist. If you are interested email info@manningfineart.co.uk or call us on 07929 749056. -
J Phillip Davies (British, 20th Century)
Selwyn College Cambridge
Oil on board c. 1970 60x89cm A rare view of Selwyn College Cambridge, captured here in all the glory of its Victorian red brick.
