St Ives Exhibition 2020

St Ives 2020

St Ives Exhibition 2020 30 March – 20 April

Belgrave St Ives 22 Fore Street, St Ives Cornwall TR26 1HE

01736 794888

info@belgravestives.co.uk www.belgravestives.co.uk You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @belgravestives #artstives

St Ives Exhibition 2020 It is 22 years since the Belgrave Gallery (established London 1974) opened a second gallery in St Ives to specialize in showing the work of artists associated with Cornwall from 1930s to the present day. Following the inaugural exhibition in 1999 St Ives – The Modern Movement the gallery has presented an annual exhibition of accessible paintings, prints, drawings and sculpture by the leading artists of this period alongside less well known but interesting artists working at the same time.

St Ives Exhibition 2020 is the largest exhibition to date with over 100 works by 50 artists. The show brings together work by W Barns-Graham, Terry Frost, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon, Ben Nicholson, etc., with work by John Barnicoat, Bob Bourne, Jerey Harris, Inez Hoyton, etc., all of whom have made valuable contributions to the legacy of St Ives post-War art.

With thanks to Peter Davies for the use of his introduction to the 1999 catalogue published by Belgrave Gallery.

Michael Gaca Feb 2020

ISBN 978-1-9998524-2-9

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Introduction St. Ives position, as a once thriving fishing port on the westernmost tip of England, belies the central role its artists have played within the mainstream of British art. Leading artists in St Ives were always wellconnected in both a social and professional sense. As well as drawing down collectors and cognoscenti, modern Cornish artists exhibited in key London galleries like the Redfern, Gimpel, Waddington or Kalman.

From a time well inside the nineteenth century, artists of many nationalities congregated here because, rather than in spite of, its geographical remove from the urban hub of London. That they were drawn by the physical and climatic advantages, in particular by its light and mild weather, is well known. This was important since many inter-war artists there practiced a plein air impressionism and even a more studio based modernist like Barbara Hepworth, who came down with the first significant influx of modern artists in 1939, spoke of the advantages of clement all-year weather in which she could carve outdoors.

The existence, during the 1930s, of a few isolated modern artists notwithstanding, it was only after the 1939 influx that St. Ives truly became synonymous with advanced abstract art. In addition to Hepworth the pioneers who sought sanctuary from war-torn London were Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson. These figures, already established on the international stage, dominated the St. Ives art scene, defined its identity and provided the benchmark by which the younger generation, who sprang up after 1945, could measure themselves.

The rise of this post-war generation, announced in the Crypt exhibitions that led to the formation of the important Penwith Society of Arts in 1949, confirmed the ongoing relevance of abstract and constructivist styles tempered by landscape references and/or by romantic allusion to genius loci. The style used by Lanyon, Wynter, Barns-Graham, Wells and others

derived from two pre-war alternatives – surrealism and constructivism – alternatives that yielded a pronounced British flavour to movements derived from continental Europe. These polarities were often dynamically synthesised, in terms of subjecting the former’s loose, irrational modes and the latter’s ordered geometric language to the same chance effects in the unpredictable working process. The story by the mid-1950s was further complicated by the rise of the New American painting. For the first time Britain and her new European (Parisian) equivalents looked across the Atlantic. Heron, Wynter, Lanyon, Frost, Bell and many others produced work that appropriated the scale and ambition of handling characteristic of the abstract expressionism of the New York School.

The chief agent in importing the New York School was the Tate Gallery, London, who exhibited the Americans in 1956. Forty years later it is the same gallery, now in it’s regional branch in St. Ives, that is institutionalising the achievements of probably the only major modernist colony outside the metropolis that British art has ever produced. In the final analysis, the many artists that contributed to St. Ives modernism during it’s golden era between 1945 and 65, did so aware of the international currents while fulfilling the premises of a pastoral landscape tradition, indigenous to Britain for over two centuries. This factor gives validity to a modernity that, with the notable exception of Hepworth and Nicholson, relied on derivations of earlier modernist precedents. This cross-section of a great period contains many classic individual examples of art produced with a collective spirit of common adventure and exploratory endeavour.

Peter Davies

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W. Barns-Graham CBE

1912–2004

After attending Edinburgh College of Art (1932 –37), Wilhelmina Barns-Graham moved to St. Ives in 1940. She quickly became part of the group that included Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. Like the revered Nicholson, Barns-Graham alternated between abstraction and representational drawing, the latter executed outdoors. Such exercises sharpened her eye for studio experiments into the nonfigurative world of geometry. At the same time a pronounced feeling for the hidden symmetry and order at the heart of nature lent inherent structure and meaning to the myriad impressions of observed reality.

A founding member of the Penwith Society in 1949, she travelled regularly over the next twenty years to Switzerland, Italy, Paris, and Spain. With the exception of a short teaching term at Leeds School of Art (1956–57), and three years in London (1960–63), she lived and worked in St Ives with regular stays in St Andrews where, in 1992, she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University. In 1999, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was elected an honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) and the Royal Scottish Watercolourists (RSW). She also received Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter and held a solo exhibition at Tate St. Ives, 2005.

W. BARNS-GRAHAm Underwater movement / 1988 Pen, ink and wash / 19.5 x 26.5 cm Signed and dated on backing board Also signed, titled and dated on reverse Provenance: The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust

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W. BARNS-GRAHAm View of St Ives / 1942 Pen and ink on paper / 24 x 28.5 cm Signed and dated Provenance: The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust

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W. BARNS-GRAHAm moon Landscape / 1952 Gouache on paper / 25 x 35 cm Signed and dated Provenance: The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust

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W. BARNS-GRAHAm Grey Form on Blue / 1954 Gouache on paper / 32 x 52 cm Provenance: The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust

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John Barnicoat

1924–2013

John Barnicoat spent his childhood in Cornwall before attending the Ruskin School of Drawing and then the Royal College of Art, where he studied painting from 1952 to 1955. He was Head of Falmouth School of Art, 1972–76, then becoming Senior Tutor at the RCA Painting School, 1976–80. From 1980 he took a position as Head of Chelsea School of Art for nine years. His first one-man exhibition was at Colette Allendy Galerie, Paris, 1959, and he then showed continuously with exhibitions at molton Gallery, London (later Annely Juda Fine Art), 1962, Taranman Gallery, 1977–83, and others. He also exhibited with the London Group from 1955 to 1996.

John Barnicoat was described in Exhibition Road. Painters at the Royal College of Art, edited by Paul Huxley, 1988, as a ‘gifted painter and highly esteemed teacher and administrator, and widely regarded as one of the most thoughtful and influential voices in art education’.

His work is represented in both government and private collections.

JoHN BARNICoAT Untitled (Cornish Landscape) / 1958 oil on canvas / 54 x 64 cm Provenance: The Artist’s Estate

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Max Barrett

1937–1997

max Barrett was born in Penzance, the son of a champion Cornish boxer. He was an unorthodox, gypsy-like individual who worked without formal training. Although he spoke of ‘whittling away at wood’ as a youth, it wasn’t until he was in his late 30s, with a long string of jobs behind him, including National Service with the Navy, that he found himself in a gallery in St Ives, inspired enough by what he saw to resolve to take carving seriously.

Barrett worked in a variety of media, including granite, alabaster, slate, wood and coal, and his work ranged from the small to the monumental. His sculpture Meeting Place was carved from a 10 tonne granite block and sited outside a branch of Sainsbury’s in Truro, and he carved a 6 hundredweight block of alabaster to make Five Semiquavers, inspired by Papageno in mozart’s The Magic Flute.

In the words of his obituarist, Annie Gurton: ‘…he carved dolphins and cellos out of encrusted blocks of coal hauled up from the seabed where they had fallen from passing ships, and he cast bronze figures of sleeping cats and stretching nudes at the local foundry at Hayle. His scope ranged from giant outdoor pieces to small pieces that sit in the palm of your hand. His work is mainly of simple shapes and outlines and fits comfortably with the modernist school of west Cornwall, although Barrett would have hated to be pigeonholed into any particular movement.’

Greta Berlin, the daughter of sculptor Sven Berlin, recalls: ‘Then I met max Barrett.

A Cornish sculptor and poet-wild-man. He’d invite artists to sit round his camp-fire, he encouraged me to try stone carving. We went together to Polyphant to collect random shapes of stone and max would drag my chosen rocks up to my site using a strap around his forehead. And I worked only in stone for two years.’

Barrett exhibited locally at Salt House Gallery (St Ives), Sims Gallery (marazion), Wills Lane Gallery (St Ives), and his work was included in the Royal West of England Academy’s exhibition Artists from Cornwall in 1992. The Cornwall Geological museum held a solo exhibition Inspirations in Stone in 1996, and the artist also curated his own exhibition Final Show of Work at the Acorn Theatre, Penzance in 1996, shortly before he died in 1997.

mAx BARRETT Untitled (Female Torso) / c1980s Stone / 32 cm (H) Artist’s mark under base

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Trevor Bell

1930–2017

Born in Leeds, Trevor Bell studied at Leeds College of Art, 1947–1952, before moving to Cornwall in 1955 with the encouragement of Terry Frost, who had received the two-year Gregory Fellowship in Painting scholarship at Leeds in 1954. Bell became something of a protégé to artists like Hilton, Frost and Heron, all of whom admired his work. Encouraged to exhibit in London by Ben Nicholson, Waddington Galleries gave Bell his first solo exhibition in 1958. Patrick Heron wrote the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, stating that Bell was ‘the best non-figurative painter under thirty’. In 1959 Bell was awarded the Paris Biennale International Painting Prize, and in 1960, he himself became a Gregory Fellow in painting at Leeds University, during which time he developed the shaped canvases that set his work apart from other abstract artists of his generation.

In the 1960s Bell showed work in exhibitions in the UK and USA, including a major touring exhibition covering the period 1966 to 1970, organised by the Richard Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh. During this time his work was bought for the Tate collection. After a major one-man show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1973, Bell was invited to become Professor for master (Graduate) Painting at the Florida State University in Tallahassee. There he developed the large-scale, intensely coloured paintings for which he is best known. In 1985 Bell was included in the London Tate Gallery’s St Ives 1939–64 exhibition, and in 1993 he was part of the inaugural show of Tate St Ives. Bell returned to live and work in Cornwall in 1999, continuing to exhibit locally and nationally. In 2005, Tate St. Ives held a solo exhibition of the artist’s work.

TREVoR BELL Untitled V / c.1980s mixed media collage on paper 22 x 17.5 cm (irreg.)

Signed Provenance: Private Collection 10

TREVoR BELL Black across Brown across White / 1959 Ink and gouache on paper / 70.5 x 73.5 cm Signed Signed, titled and dated on reverse Provenance: Waddington Galleries 11

TREVoR BELL In and Around / 1959 oil on board / 29 x 23 cm Signed, titled and dated on reverse

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Anthony Benjamin

1931–2002

Born in Hampshire, Benjamin had an itinerant childhood; he had been a semi-professional flyweight boxer prior to becoming a full-time artist.

He studied with Leger in Paris 1951 and at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London. He moved to St Ives in 1955, a small inheritance allowing him to buy a cottage that belonged to Sven Berlin. Here he divided his time between flower growing (as a source of income) and painting, initially fairly representational, gestural landscape paintings. He had previously shown at Helen Lessore’s Beaux Arts Gallery in London where the ‘house style’ was expressive figurative painting by the likes of John Bratby, Frank Auerbach etc. In Cornwall his work attracted Peter Lanyon and Karl Weschke and he became particularly close to Trevor Bell and Brian Wall.

In this environment Benjamin’s work became more lyrical and abstracted, the painting Clodgy Point in this exhibition is a good example of a late ‘50s Cornwall painting. In 1957 Benjamin was awarded a Painting Fellowship by the French Government allowing him to study printmaking with W S Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris. 1960/61 he travelled to Italy on an Italian Government Fellowship and did not return to Cornwall to live.

Between 1961 and 1973 he taught in the UK, USA and Canada.

Benjamin’s work evolved in a different direction after he left Cornwall and he developed a personal approach in both printmaking and painting.

His colour palette became richly chromatic, especially following trips to North Africa, and his masterful draughtsmanship was realized through large-scale graphite drawings and his skillful and important work as a contemporary printmaker.

Selected one-person exhibitions include: Newlyn Art Gallery 1958, Grabowski Gallery 1962–64, ICA (where he exhibited his Perspex sculptures amongst other work) 1966, Gimpels (New York and London from 1969 to 1990s). Tate St Ives 1999, Belgrave St Ives 2002, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton 2018.

ANTHoNY BENJAmIN Untitled (Study of a Baby) / c1958 Pencil on paper / 24 x 32.5 cm Inscribed on the reverse

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ANTHoNY BENJAmIN Clodgy Point / 1959 oil on canvas / 61 x 99 cm Signed and dated Also signed, titled and dated on reverse Exhibited: Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris 1959 14

Sven Berlin

1911–1999

Born in London of an English mother and Swedish father, Berlin was apprenticed as a mechanical engineer, in 1928 enrolled at Beckenham School of Art, but decided instead to pursue a career as an Adagio dancer in musical halls.

Berlin moved to Cornwall in 1938 and pursued art studies at Camborne-Redruth School of Art, proceeding to cut a colourful, romantic and unorthodox figure in the St. Ives art scene of the 1940s and early 1950s. A founding member of the Crypt Group, which exhibited in the old mariner’s Chapel basement between 1946 and 1949, Berlin contributed to the burgeoning young generation in Post-war St. Ives.

This versatile, largely self-taught artist, however, whose work encompassed writing, drawing, book illustration as well as painting and sculpture, never blended in with the most formal and abstract inclinations of his contemporaries. This explained his relatively early removal from the celebrated art colony. In 1962, Berlin published his controversial novel The Dark Monarch (a lightly-veiled expose of the politics of St Ives in the early 1950s) he found himself in serious trouble with several of the artists depicted in the book; they sued him for libel and brought about his financial ruin. It is likely, however, that the gradual success of the abstract movement, coupled with his self-imposed exile was as much the cause of Sven’s lack of recognition as any long-standing grudges held by the artistic powers-that-be.

Berlin was one of the few Cornish based sculptors never to have worked under Barbara Hepworth. Interest in poetry inspired the slim upright carvings, of which this possibly autobiographical marble sculpture is a good example. Like Epstein and Gaudier-Brezska, to whose sculpture his own carvings relate, Berlin produced animals and symbolic figures in an accessible style which integrated neo-primitive and popular folk influences.

The author of Alfred Wallis Primitive (1948), Berlin championed independent forms of self-expression, which he did in a controversial and bohemian way. Disillusioned with the modernist ‘ironsides’ of St. Ives art, this founder member of the Penwith Society left in 1953 for the New Forest, Hampshire.

SVEN BERLIN Untitled (Female Figure) / 1994 oil on board / 46 x 10 cm Signed and dated Provenance: The Artist’s Estate

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SVEN BERLIN Goat Bronze / 12 cm (H) (incl. base) Provenance: The Artist’s Estate / Private Collection

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Sandra Blow RA

1925–2006

Born in London and painting from a young age, Blow went on to attend Saint martin’s School of Art between 1941–1946, and then the Royal Academy Schools, 1946–1947. She later enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where she met Alberto Burri, her partner of a few years. Blow and Burri travelled in Italy together before moving to and working in Paris, and Burri became a life long influence in her work.

During the 1950s, Sandra Blow was one of the pioneering abstract painters who introduced into British art a new expressive informality, using cheap, discarded materials such as sawdust, sackcloth and plaster alongside the more familiar material of paint. A tactile as well as visual emphasis on surface resulted in powerful and complex images, exuding a rooted earthiness, yet full of mysterious flux and ambiguity. Blow moved to Zennor in 1957 and continued to work there for the following two years. Later, in response to the optimistic climate of the 1960s, Blow’s palette lightened and for most of the rest of her career, easily manipulated collage materials, like torn paper or brightly coloured canvas cut-outs, littered her often large-scale pictures. Blow returned to Cornwall, moving to St. Ives in 1994. Her 80th birthday in 2005 was marked with exhibitions at Tate St. Ives and the launch of a new book about her life and work.

Selected bibliography: Sandra Blow, michael Bird, published by Lund Humphries, 2005.

Sandra Blow / c late 1940s, early 1950s Photographic print / 23 x 27 cm Photograph by Rose Ross

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Untitled 1975 colour etching Image for reference only

SANDRA BLoW Untitled Drawing / c1970s Pencil on paper / 81.5 x 81.5 cm Signed on backing board Provenance: The Artist’s Studio

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SANDRA BLoW Intersection / c1978 mixed media on board / 122 x 122 cm Signed and titled on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Studio

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Bob Bourne

b.1931

In 1960, aged 28, with a turbulent early life in wartime Britain, Canada and Bermuda behind him, including a short disillusioning spell at the West of England College of Art, Bob Bourne arrived in Cornwall armed with little but a clear ambition to paint pictures. Living at first at Castlean-Dinas, Trink and Trencrom, Bourne formed artistically formative and influential friendships with both Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton, which gave him the confidence to establish his painting practice.

He became a member of the Penwith Society of Arts and the Newlyn Society of Artists in the early 1960s, and exhibited regularly in mixed exhibitions at both before scoring an early success with a one-person exhibition at Arthur Tooth & Sons, London (1973). He lived in London and then Australia for five years from 1971 before returning to Cornwall permanently in 1976, holding solo exhibitions at The Salthouse Gallery, St Ives (1981), Cobra & Bellamy, London (2001), The Rainyday Gallery, Penzance (biannually from 2002 to 2008), maltby Gallery, Winchester (2003), Penhaven Gallery, St Ives (2008), and others.

Bourne has exhibited widely in mixed exhibitions in the UK and Europe and also presented a solo exhibition in Australia (1974). His work is in a number of public collections, including the Arts Council, and in 2011, Belgrave St Ives presented Bourne at 80, a major exhibition of works by the artist spanning the period 1965–2011.

BoB BoURNE Thru the Window / 1975 oil on canvas / 62.5 x 74 cm Signed, titled and dated on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Studio

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BoB BoURNE Studio Sunlight / 1978 oil on canvas laid on board / 76 x 90 cm Titled and dated on artist’s label on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Studio 21

Charles Breaker

1906–1985

Charles Breaker was born at Bowness on Lake Windermere and worked as a boat builder with his father before travelling widely in Spain, madeira, South Africa, morocco, Capri and France during the 1930s. With the outbreak of World War II, he returned to England, moving to Newlyn, Cornwall in 1947. He later moved to Penzance.

Breaker was active in arts social activities on both sides of the peninsula, maintaining memberships in both the St Ives Society of Artists and the Newlyn Society of Artists, the latter of which he served as Chairman between 1957–58 and 1961–63.

He worked mainly in watercolour and exhibitions included Chapel House Hotel, Penzance, (1948), STISA Touring Shows (1949), Festival of Britain (1951), Framer’s Gallery, Penzance (1974), Newlyn Art Gallery Newlyn in Pont Aven (1978), Brunswick Gallery, London and others.

A memorial exhibition of the artist’s work was mounted by his family in 1986, and a studio sale was held in 1992.

Note: Charles Breaker is especially remembered for the exciting knitted jerkins and sweaters he made for himself and for friends, and occasionally made available for sale. He introduced a wild array of colours in intricate design, often made with yarns reclaimed from jumble sale knitwear, and designed to suit the personality of the wearer.

CHARLES BREAKER Fishing Nets, St Ives / 1939 Watercolour / 38 x 50 cm Signed

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Michael Canney

1923–1999

Born in Falmouth, Canney pursued an early interest in art, studying at Redruth and Penzance Schools of Art and St Ives School of Painting under Leonard Fuller. He encountered the primitive painter Alfred Wallis and the generation of modern artists working in St Ives including Barbara Hepworth (with whom he later worked in 1959) Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo and Bernard Leach. WWII interrupted his career but after war service he completed his art training at Goldsmiths College, London (1947–51).

Canney moved back permanently to Cornwall as curator of Newlyn Art Gallery (1956–64) where he collaborated with many of the major artists working in Cornwall especially Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron. In 1965 he moved to the USA to teach for one year at the University of California and on his return he was invited by Paul Feiler to become a lecturer at the Royal West of England College of Art in Bristol where he taught until 1983. on retirement from teaching Canney relocated to Italy, where his oil paintings drew on a new, more vibrant colour palette. In 1992 he moved from Italy to France, then finally to Devizes, in Wiltshire, where he continued to paint and make constructions and reliefs. michael Canney’s work progressed through a variety of styles during his lifetime, from representational paintings (such as the example of a still life painting in this exhibition) to abstract works, pure white reliefs and hardedged, mathematically based constructivist pieces. For many years he combined his artistic endeavours with work as an art gallery curator, educator, writer and broadcaster (BBC Radio on Art and Architecture, BBC TV on Ecological and Environmental Issues winning a major award at International Film Festival).

Selected one person exhibitions: Bristol University 1980, Newlyn Art Gallery 1983, Prescote Art and Design, Edinburgh 1984, The Belgrave Gallery, London 1990 and 1995, Devizes museum 1998, martin du Louvre, Paris 2000.

Katharine House Gallery, marlborough 2005, Fine Art Society 2007.

mICHAEL CANNEY Untitled (Still Life with Wine Bottles) / c1950 oil on board / 60 x 49 cm Signed

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Tom Cross

1931–2009

Painter, printmaker, teacher and writer, born in manchester. From the very early stages of his career, travel was an important aspect of Tom Cross’ development as a painter, beginning with a scholarship to the British School in Rome after finishing at the Slade School of Art in 1956. A subsequent bursary from the French Government gave him the opportunity to live and work in Paris, and in the South of France, where he brushed shoulders with Picasso and Braque, and met Dubuffet. He returned many times to Italy, particularly the marche, where much of his earlier work was executed.

He held several teaching posts in Britain and abroad, principal of Falmouth School of Art from 1976–87. He was a member of London Group and chairman of Penwith Society of Arts, 1982–84. In 1998, Cross spent time working and exhibiting in Guernsey. The rocky coastline was very different to the soft river landscape of southern Cornwall. In 1999, he lectured and exhibited his work in Australia before returning to England to produce a group of work showing the Australian landscape. In 2010, Belgrave St Ives held a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work: Tom Cross: Fifty Years' Work.

Tom Cross was the author of several books about West Country Art and Artists, in particular Painting the Warmth of the Sun: St Ives Artists, 1939–75, published by Lutterworth Press in association with Television South West, 1984.

Tom CRoSS Night and the River / 1995 oil on canvas / 40 x 46 cm Signed Titled and dated on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Estate

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Tom CRoSS Scott’s Quay, Low Tide / 2004 oil on canvas / 61 x 76 cm Signed Titled and dated on label on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Estate 25

Bob Crossley

1912–2010

Born Northwich, Cheshire, apprenticed metal turner, worked as coach painter/sign writer then in graphics. Served with RAF 1941–45. After demobilisation he attended Rochdale School of Art. Exhibited at the manchester Academy (elected member 1950), Paris Salon, London Group and one person exhibition at Crane Kalman Gallery, manchester (1959).

In 1959 Crossley moved to St Ives, he was elected a member of the Penwith Society of Arts (1960) and the Newlyn Society of Artists (1961). With the need to support his family, Crossly ran a beachside shop during the summer months this enabled him to paint for the rest of the year. In 1963 he moved to London where, alongside his painting, he developed printmaking. The hard-edged abstract screenprints were a commercial as well as artistic success. He had one person exhibitions at the Reid Gallery, London (1960 and 1964), Gallerie Bique, madrid (1965) and Curwen Gallery, London (1972). With a growing family, Crossley returned to St Ives and took a studio at the Porthmeor Studios that he maintained until the end of his working life when he was in his late 90s. Crossley’s tenacity and determination to succeed as an artist propelled him throughout his career. The same power of will saw him making annual skiing trips to the Alps. In his 90th year he was awarded a medal by the Swiss Tourism Authority for his devotion to the sport.

His earlier work echoed his Northern roots – brooding landscapes and figures painted with a dark palette but with increasingly expressive brushwork using thick slabs of colour. Almost inevitably, his palette started to lighten after he had moved to Cornwall and the paintings became more abstract. Whilst painting in London Crossley made a series of painterly white and black paintings that are perhaps his most elegant works. Crossley took something of his experience in printmaking back to his painting and the chroma intensified significantly from the 1970s on, the application of paint, often in broad brushstrokes, remained paramount; colour harmonies and contrasts informed the paintings whether abstracts or landscape based, in both oil and acrylic.

Later one person exhibitions include: Penwith Gallery 1979, 1987, 1999, Bristol Art Centre 1980, Rochdale Art Gallery 2004, Belgrave St Ives 2009 and 2012.

Bibliography: Bob Crossley: A Lancashire Lad published by the St Ives Printing and Publishing Company 2009.

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BoB CRoSSLEY Untitled (Landscape) / c1970s Acrylic on paper / 44.5 x 34 cm Provenance: The Artist’s Estate

BoB CRoSSLEY Untitled (Still Life – String, Paint Pots and a Brush) / 1960 oil on board / 37 x 58 cm Signed and dated

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Paul Feiler

1918–2013

Born Frankfurt, came to England 1933. Studied at the Slade School of Fine Art 1936 – 39 alongside Patrick Heron and Bryan Wynter. Taught at West of England College of Art, Bristol 1946–75. First one person exhibition at Redfern Gallery 1953. Established a home and studio in Cornwall in 1954.

As Head of Painting in Bristol he was able to attract many painters from Cornwall to teach in his department.

Feiler’s early works demonstrated an affinity with Cezanne. Structure would remain an important element in his work throughout his career.

William Scott, whom Feiler met in the early 1950s saw the characteristics of the work of Nicholas de Stael in Feiler’s development of his language of landscape painting using slabs of heavy impasto. From the mid 1950s Feiler produced a series of paintings with strong vertical bands echoing the sea cliffs of Cornwall. Becoming more abstract in the 1960s, inspired by the Lunar landings, the paintings continued to have luscious painterly grounds, predominately of flake white, but with the introduction of geometric shapes. The work became more optical and contemplative from the 1970s on with graduated shifts of tone and colour that evoke a sensory exploration shifting between surface appearance and mediative depth.

Feiler often showed alongside his Cornwall based fellow painters; Frost, Hilton, Lanyon, Wynter etc. although he never saw himself as part of any group. He was also included in important exhibitions of the period such as the British Council’s touring exhibition British Abstract Painting 1957 and British Painting of the 1960s Tate Gallery 1961. Feiler had a solo exhibition at Tate St Ives 2005.

Works in many public collections including Arts Council and Tate Gallery.

PAUL FEILER Split ovals / 1963 Chalk and charcoal on paper / 26 x 22.5 cm Signed and dated Titled on reverse Provenance: Private Collection 28

Clifford Fishwick

1923–1997

Painter and teacher, born near Accrington, Lancashire, married to the painter, Patricia Fishwick. He attended Liverpool School of Art, 1940–42, then after Naval service, returned to complete his studies, 1946–47, including art teacher’s diploma. Fishwick combined a busy painting career with teaching at Exeter College of Art, becoming principal, 1958–84.

He was a member of Newlyn Society from 1952–83 and exhibited at Penwith Society of Arts in 1950–60 and had a solo show in 1983. over the years, Fishwick’s style changed as certain influences took effect, the Neo-Romantics, the Cornish painters and the second school of Paris painters, such as Nicolas de Stael. His later work was darker, more loosely put together and more abstract.

CLIFFoRD FISHWICK Portrait of Jack Pender / c1947 Watercolour / 37 x 27 cm Studio stamp on reverse

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John Emanuel

b.1930

Born in Bury, Lancashire John Emanuel was apprenticed as a painter and decorator. His introduction to art was gained through a series of illustrated talks given by a lecturer from the Extra mural Department of manchester University. He moved to Cornwall in 1964 to pursue his deepening interest in art. Emanuel made a living signwriting to support his family while he developed his drawing and painting skills with the help of artist friends such as John Wells, Denis mitchell and Alexander mackenzie.

Inspired by a love of his subject – the figure and the figure embraced by the landscape – Emanuel has developed a distinctive method of working. often using a limited palette there is a sculptural quality to the work as the surfaces are worked and reworked to realise the form. His paintings in oil and mixed media often place the female form within a landscape that is simplified but recognisable, whether it is West Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly or Cumbria. This combines the artist’s dedication to drawing the nude, often from life, with sensitivity to the ancient landscape. It is this interaction between the classical and sometimes sensual nude with its rugged environment that characterises his work.

Since the early 1980s Emanuel has lived in St Ives, working from one of the famous Porthmeor Studios overlooking the beach. He is a member of Penwith Society of Art and Newlyn Society of Artists. Throughout his career he has shown in many solo and mixed exhibitions. Exhibiting regularly at the Penwith Gallery and Belgrave Gallery, St Ives. Earlier exhibitions included the Stour Gallery, montpelier Sandleson, Candover Gallery and Wills Lane Gallery, amongst others.

JoHN EmANUEL Standing Figure oil on handmade paper / 71 x 28.5 cm Signed and titled on the back board

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Max Chapman

1911–1999

Born in Dulwich. Studied at Byam Shaw School of Art 1927–30, where he was taught by Charles Ricketts who funded a scholarship to Italy for him in 1934. Chapman moved to Newlyn in 1936, buying Ernest and Dod Procters’ Art School as his studio. Chapman became friends with many of the prominent Newlyn and St Ives artists. originally a figurative painter, he was inspired by exposure to the American Abstract Expressionists painters and changed direction in the 1950s to produce non-representational art.

Chapman worked experimentally leading him to utilise papier colle, a form of collage developed by Georges Braque. He combined this use of paper with his own process of working simultaneously with both oil and emulsion paint to produce paintings with a subtle translucent yet partially obscured surface. He called these works Collages Noyée.

Classic collé retains the separateness of its components, while collage noyée unites them under one skin; the underlying structure of coloured papers is moulded and manipulated into low relief, then subjected to pigment washes to conceal and reveal what lies underneath. The imagery is thus drowned – hence the term collage noyée.

Selected exhibitions included; Leger Gallery, molton Gallery, New Vision Centre, Grabowski Gallery, Leicester Galleries and London Group.

mAx CHAPmAN Untitled Collage / 1961 oil and collage on canvas / 90 x 80 cm Signed and dated on reverse Provenance: New Vision Centre

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Michael Finn

1921–2002

Born Addlestone, Surrey, Canney studied at Kingston Art School 1938–42. He joined the RAF and became a highly regarded pilot. At the end of the war Canney continued his art education at the Royal College of Art under Carel Weight (1946–49). He taught at Somerset College of Art from 1949, was Principal of Falmouth School of Art (1958–72) and Principal of Bath Academy of Art (Corsham) until retiring from teaching in 1982. Following retirement Canney moved to St Just to pursue his long postponed career as a full-time artist.

Finn had been making mixed media collages and constructions in the 60s and 70s, he was now able to develop this work through a series of paintings and mixed media collages that were to become his main preoccupation, where he employed simple areas of colour with structural bands or assembled elements. He also started to make minimalist altar crosses and crucifixes from pieces of discarded wood.

The simple configurations of bands and rectangular shapes, with which he articulated the colour fields, had a softness of painterly touch conveying something of the gentleness of the artist. Finn combined this painterliness with a sense of structure through utilising horizontal or vertical lines. Perhaps his sense of structure had been inherited from his formative years as the son of an architect. These rectangles of shimmering colour maintain a feeling of subtle gravity and tentative references to the landscape.

Finn’s Christian (Catholic) faith was realised through his life and his art. He was a modest and graceful man and his art was a vehicle for him to express the ineffable. His use of deep reds, earthy browns, subtle colour-greys and whites elicit elegiac moods. Even in the chromatically darkest paintings there is a sense of hope and peace.

Some of his wooden crosses, often with washes of white or bleached colour, were used as a basis for fabrication in metal for him by michael Werbicki of Bristol. The crosses, as in the original wooden example in this exhibition demonstrates, are sculptures that convey a sense of spirituality that isn't necessarily religious but can be interpreted as such if desired.

Sister Wendy Beckett used his work to illustrate three of her books. member Newlyn Society of Artists and Penwith Society of Arts.

Selected one person exhibitions: Salthouse Gallery, St Ives 1987, Newlyn orion Gallery 1989, Wolf At the Door, Penzance 1990, David messum, London 1993, Royal Cornwall museum, Truro 1994, Great Atlantic mapworks, St Just 1997, Newlyn Art Gallery 2001, Falmouth Art Gallery 2001, Lemon Street Art Gallery, Truro 2010, Katharine House Gallery, marlborough 2016.

Selected Public Collections: Tate Gallery, Cornwall Council Collection, Falmouth Art Gallery, Truro Cathedral, Plymouth Art Gallery.

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mICHAEL FINN maquette for Crucifix Sculpture Painted wood / 42 cm (H) A working stage maquette in wood for bronze sculpture

mICHAEL FINN Untitled (Grey with Black Verticals) / 1998 Acrylic on canvas / 123 x 152 cm Signed and dated on reverse

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Sir Terry Frost RA

1915–2003

Painter, print maker and teacher, born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

Frost did a variety of jobs after leaving school, then served in the Army and was held as a prisoner of war. Imprisoned in Bavaria he met painter Adrian Heath who encouraged Frost to paint in oil. After the war Frost studied at St. Ives School of painting and Camberwell School of Art in the late 1940s. Frost then went to teach at a number of art schools.

He began abstract painting in 1949, shortly before returning to St. Ives where he worked 1950–52 as assistant to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

In the early 1950s Frost’s Porthmeor studio was next to Ben Nicholson.

The older artist encouraged Frost, telling him – with prophetic insight – that the semi circles, squares, wedges, and crescents in Frost’s vivacious pictures would provide a valid landscape for an entire career. Frost’s natural gifts with paint handling is coupled with a temperamental extroversion to create powerful virtuosity. The elements derive from key side objects like rudders, boats, riggings, buoys and so on, which are reduced to emblematic, decorative roles in a simplified composition that is essentially a synthetic transformation of reality.

In 1992, Frost was elected Royal Academician and then made Knight of the Realm for services to Art and Art Education in 1998. Frost had a solo show at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2000, Tate St. Ives in 2003 and several at Belgrave St. Ives from 2003 to present.

TERRY FRoST A Book of Ideas – Page 65 / c1970s Ink and graphite / 46 x 37.5 cm Provenance: The Artist’s Estate

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TERRY FRoST Two Suns / 1982 Acrylic and gouache on paper / 46 x 76 cm Signed and dated Exhibited: ‘Sun + Moon + Stars’, Newlyn Orion Gallery, 1989 Provenance: The Artist’s Estate / Private Collection 35

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TERRY FRoST Green Dipper Collage / 2002

TERRY FRoST Spiral Sun / c1990s

Canvas collage and acrylic / 26 x 26 cm Signed and dated Signed and titled on reverse Provenance: Private Collection

mixed media and collage / 19 x 19 cm Frost Estate Stamp Countersigned by Anthony Frost

TERRY FRoST Untitled (July 71) / 1971 Gouache on paper / 77 x 52 cm Signed and dated on artist’s label on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Estate

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Jeffrey Harris

b.1932

Jeff Harris was born in Leeds and began painting as a boy. He studied at Leeds College of Art and cites visiting lecturer Victor Pasmore as an early influence. He was awarded a Leeds College of Art Travelling Scholarship in 1953 to study in Paris for six months, and in 1954 undertook a Bachelor of Education.

Harris moved to St Ives in 1956, where he met and later married Tasmanian-born painter Gwen Leitch. Gwen was offered No.7 Porthmeor Studios in 1956, which she and Jeff then shared for fifteen years. During this time, Jeff befriended fellow artists Tony o’malley, Patrick Heron, Breon o’Casey and Bernard Leach, and was an active member of the Penwith Society of Arts.

From 1966 to 1969 he taught painting and drawing at Falmouth Art School and, after emigrating to Australia with Gwen in 1970, he taught at the Tasmanian School of Art and later the South Australian School of Art. He continued to paint and hold exhibitions in Sydney, Tasmania and South Australia and retired early from teaching to focus on his own work.

Jeff still paints most days in a studio at the end of his garden and visits St Ives when he can.

Before moving to Australia, Harris had solo shows with Rowan Gallery, London (1961) and Peterloo Gallery, manchester (1962), as well as exhibiting in mixed exhibitions including Penwith Gallery (1957–70), City Art Gallery, Plymouth (1960), Axiom Gallery, London (1966) and Arts Council UK (1966).

Jeffrey Harris’ work is held in collections including the UK Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, Cornwall County Council UK, Whitworth Art Collection, manchester University, Alston Hall, UK Education Department, Lancashire, Artbank, Australia, New Norcia monastery, Westerns Australia and in private collections in Australia, UK and USA. Belgrave St Ives will be hosting a one-person exhibition of the artist’s work in 2020.

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JEFFREY HARRIS Dalesman / 1974 oil and pencil on masonite / 29 x 32 cm Signed and dated Provenance: The Artist’s Studio

JEFFREY HARRIS Honesty with White Jug / 2017 oil on canvas / 40 x 46 cm Signed with initials and dated Provenance: The Artist’s Studio

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Patrick Hayman

1915–1988

Born in London in 1915, Hayman spent his formative years in New Zealand, where he was closely involved with several of the most important young artists of the brilliant group associated with Colin mcCahon. He returned to England in 1947, and before long became part of the burgeoning post-war art scene in Cornwall. At first as a resident and thereafter as an annual visitor he exhibited in St. Ives, as well at many leading London galleries.

From 1958 to 1963 he edited The Painter and Sculpture a quarterly magazine of the arts that fervently promoted humanistic figurative art. In later years, Hayman lead more of a reclusive life, his free and melancholy spirit finding expression in an outpouring of visionary paintings, drawings and constructions, as well as a number of beautiful painted poems.

Belgrave St Ives held a major exhibition, Patrick Hayman – Visionary Artist, in 2015.

Selected bibliography, Patrick Hayman – Visionary Artist, mel Gooding, Belgrave Gallery, 2005.

PATRICK HAYmAN The Dancers / 1950 Gouache on paper / 19 x 25.5 cm Signed Titled and dated on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Estate / Private Collection

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PATRICK HAYmAN Green Still Life / c1955 oil on board / 50.75 x 76 cm Signed; also signed, titled and dated on reverse (There is also a small portrait study in black on reverse) Provenance: The Artist’s Estate 41

Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE

1903–1975

Born Wakefield, Yorkshire, Hepworth studied at Leeds School of Art from 1920–1921 and at the Royal College of Art 1921–24. After completing college, Hepworth lived in Italy for two years with her husband the sculptor John Skeaping. Following time spent in Florence she travelled to Rome where she received a thorough training in direct carving that developed a deep understanding and life-long passion for marble.

From 1932, she lived with the painter Ben Nicholson and for a number of years the two artists made work in close proximity to each other. They spent periods of time travelling throughout Europe, and it was here that Hepworth met Georges Braque and Piet mondrian, and visited the studios of Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, and Jean Arp. The School of Paris had a lasting effect on both Hepworth and Nicholson as they became key figures in an international network of abstract artists.

In 1939 Hepworth and Nicholson moved to St Ives (joined there by Naum Gabo).

She and Nicholson were to became a hub for a generation of younger, emerging British artists such as Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton and Terry Frost. Throughout the 1950s, Hepworth gained international recognition and by the early 1960s, her work had become not just about a strict geometry but also about composite structures and monumental presence. She was made a Dame in 1965 and appointed a Trustee of the Tate Gallery. She was a leading figure in the international art scene throughout a career spanning five decades and she was one of Britain’s first truly global artists.

Hepworth was introduced to the art of printmaking by master printer Stanley Jones who worked with the leading artists in St Ives in 1950s. Sea Forms in this exhibition was drawn by Hepworth in her St Ives studio and printed at the Curwen studio in London by Stanley Jones in the summer of 1969. Printmaking was an ideal medium for Hepworth, combining her superb draughtsmanship with a sense of structure that relates to her sculpture.

Barbara Hepworth’s name is synonymous with the history and culture of St Ives and her studio and sculpture garden remain one of the town’s most popular destinations.

The Hepworth Wakefield, which opened in 2011, also showcases Hepworth’s work and hosts contemporary art exhibitions.

For a comprehensive overview of Hepworth’s life and work visit the Hepworth Trust’s website: https://barbarahepworth.org.uk/biography/

BARBARA HEPWoRTH Spring 1957 (Project for Sculpture) / 2003 Lithograph / 35.5 x 25.5 cm (image) Sheet size: 58 x 44.5 cm Published by Tate St Ives Embossed signature and title Edition 71/300

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BARBARA HEPWoRTH Sea Forms / 1969 Lithograph / 60 x 82 cm From the ‘Twelve Lithographs’ portfolio Printed by Stanley Jones and published by Curwen Studios Signed Edition 30/60 (from the ‘home’ edition) 43

Four-Square (Walk Through) / 1966 (BH 433) Bronze / 4290 x 1990 x 2295 cm Image for reference only

AFTER BARBARA HEPWoRTH Untitled (Four-Square) / c1960s Perspex / 30.3 (H) cm Possibly by Anthony Benjamin Relates to the sculpture ‘Four-Square’

by Barbara Hepworth Provenance: Dr. Ronald Lande

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Patrick Heron CBE

1920–1999

Painter, designer, writer and teacher born in Leeds, son of T m Heron, the founder of Cresta Silks; as a child Heron lived for some time in Cornwall, where he eventually settled in Zennor. Studied at Slade School of Fine Art, 1937–39. As a conscientious objector during WW2 he worked on the land, also having a short time at Leach Pottery. In London in 1945 he resumed painting and had his first solo show at the Redfern Gallery, 1947. Wrote on art for New English Weekly, and also for New Statesman and Nation, gaining a wide readership. Painted frequently in Cornwall during visits, buying his permanent home, Eagles Nest, in 1955. Taught at Central School of Arts and Crafts, 1953–56. In mid 1950s Heron began to paint abstract works, and he was Britain’s strongest link to the New York Abstract Expressionists discussing the first exhibition of their works in Europe in 1956.

His soft edged lozenges of vibrant colour because unmistakable, and were shown in a number of solo exhibitions at Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, from 1960 and elsewhere widely abroad including a solo show at Tate St. Ives in 2018.

The episodic character of Heron’s oeuvre, which moves from one set of concerns to another, is probably the outcome of his attunement to the shifting sand and central issues of avant-garde painting. An erudite and lucid art critic whose writings on British art proved influential in promulgating the work of his Cornish colleagues internationally, Heron was responsible, in part, for visits by leading American critics like Greenberg and Hilton Kramer to St. Ives during the late 1950s.

Heron’s book The Changing Forms of Art, published in the mid 1950s, established Heron as a formalistic critic, sensitive to the inherent visual nature of the plastic arts. His analyses were based principally on the physical and optical qualities of the art under discussion, and, where his own painting was concerned, on the spatial dynamics of colour, which was the main expressive dimension. “Colour is both the subject and the means; the form and the content in my paining today,” Heron wrote in 1962.

PATRICK HERoN 5 November 1994 / 1994 monoprint / 76 x 56 cm Signed, titled and dated on reverse Exhibited: Camden Arts Centre, 1994 Provenance: Caroline Wiseman Modern Art / Private Collection 45

PATRICK HERoN Anniversary / 1998 Lithograph / 54 x 74.5 cm (image) Sheet size: 73 x 101.5 cm Printed at Curwen Studio to celebrate their 40th Anniversary Inscribed ‘6 colour lithograph published by John and Jill Hutchings’ Unsigned proof aside from the edition of 40 Provenance: The Publisher’s Archive 46

PATRICK HERoN January 1973: 12 / 1973 Screenprint / 59.5 x 79.5 cm Signed and dated Edition 5/72

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Roger Hilton CBE

1911–1975

Hilton’s reputation places him in a central position in both St. Ives and British art. He was not, however, a pioneer of post-war Cornish art. His development as a radical artist took place in London and Paris long before he began regular visits to Cornwall in the 1950s and before he settled there in the 1960s. His unrivalled understanding of the avant-garde French painting since the 1930s – particularly the lyrical abstraction of contemporaries like Bissiere, Singier, mannessier, de Stael and others – made him a guru for the younger tachist-inspired painters in England.

Hilton’s work has another, more ordered side to the abstraction lyrique for which he is better known. In a quieter mood Hilton constructed a picture from bare essentials, the lush pigment giving body for a spare iconography of abstract shapes whose source resided in anatomical fragments.

“Coal Scuttle must have been painted at Glebe Cottage, Litton Cheney, Dorset, owned by his parents. The same is true of the equally economical painting of a view through a doorway towards a stand with a vase of flowers. The spatial depth provided by the junction of wall and floor is softened by the angles of the door and the large scalloped patch of light in the middle of the floor. The lit area is extended up the side of the door, while the grey rear of the wall is repeated on the top of the door. In many ways, this quiet work is Hilton’s most impressive painting from the 1930s, with it’s fluidity of touch, its control of restricted tones and rendering of space combined with domestic poetry.”

Extract from: ‘Roger Hilton’, Adrian Lewis, Ashgate Publishing, 2003, page 12.

RoGER HILToN Untitled (Interior Glebe Cottage, Litton Cheney, Dorset) / c1930s oil on canvas / 50.5 x 35.5 cm Provenance: Rose Hilton Collection / The Artist’s Family Exhibited: Leicester Polytechnic, 1984, Cat. No.53 (touring exhibition) Literature: ‘Roger Hilton’, Adrian Lewis, Ashgate Publishing, 2003, illus. plate 1, page 113 48

RoGER HILToN Untitled / 1972 Coloured crayon and charcoal / 19 x 24 cm Signed and dated

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RoGER HILToN Untitled (Chickens) / 1973 Gouache and charcoal / 38.5 x 56 cm Signed with initials and dated

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Inez Hoyton

1903–1983

Painter, designer and textile artist, Hoyton was born in Winchester, Hampshire. She ďŹ rst trained for the ballet but went on to study at Leeds College of Art. She taught at Benenden School, Kent during the war and came to Cornwall with her husband Bouverie Hoyton when he was appointed Principal of the Penzance School of Art. Hoyton divided her time between painting, travelling and teaching.

She was a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists, St Ives Society of Artists and the Penwith Society. Hoyton exhibited at the orion Gallery in Penzance and widely in Britain.

INEZ HoYToN Porthgwarra Cove oil on board / 25 x 32.5 cm Signed (also dated indistinctly) Titled and inscribed on reverse

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INEZ HoYToN Surf on a Cornish Beach oil on board / 41 x 51 cm Signed

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Bryan Ingham

1936–1997

Bryan Ingham was born in Preston, Lancashire and became known as a painter, sculptor, collagist and etcher. Although skilled in all of these media, and particularly well regarded as a painter, it is perhaps in his etching that he most excelled and will be best remembered. He studied at St. martin’s School of Art (1957–61), then the Royal College of Art (1961–64), with a stay at the British Academy, Rome (1966). After teaching for a period at maidstone College of Art, he won an Italian Government scholarship and a Leverhulme Postgraduate Research Award, which enabled him to spend time in Italy, eventually arriving at the British School in Rome, where he ‘lived well and busied himself in the same studio that Barbara Hepworth had used’.

Ingham lived for most of his adult life at Jollytown on The Lizard, Cornwall, but also maintained a studio in Back Road West, St Ives for a number of years.

He exhibited in mixed exhibitions from 1964 including Lord’s Gallery, London, Wills Lane Gallery, St Ives, New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham and others.

Ingham’s skill as an etcher was widely acknowledged, and he taught the subject regularly until about 5 years before his death, latterly at Falmouth Art School, and also at Farnham Art College. His facility is clearly demonstrated in the four works in this exhibition.

Ingham held solo exhibitions in the UK and Germany, but it wasn’t until he began working with the Francis Graham-Dixon Gallery from 1988 that his work started to achieve the financial rewards it deserved. In the 1990s, towards the end of his life, he exhibited again in St Ives, this time with David Wilkinson’s Book Gallery. His work is represented in a number of public collections, including Arts Council, Ashmolean museum, oxford, V&A museum, Dartington Hall and the Print Collectors’ Club in Washington.

BRYAN INGHAm Worpswede Stilleben / 1982 Etching / 34 x 26.5 cm Signed, titled and dated Artist’s Proof

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BRYAN INGHAm Three Love Fragments I / 1979

BRYAN INGHAm Three Love Fragments II / 1979

BRYAN INGHAm Three Love Fragments III / 1979

Etching and aquatint / 22 x 21 cm Signed with initials and dated 1979–82 Inscribed with title and poetry in pencil Edition 14/75

Etching and aquatint / 22 x 21 cm Signed with initials and dated 1979–82 Inscribed with title and poetry in pencil Edition 14/75

Etching and aquatint / 22 x 21 cm Signed with initials and dated 1979–82 Inscribed with title and poetry in pencil Edition 14/75

Peter Lanyon

1918–1964

Peter Lanyon was educated at St Erbyn's School, Penzance and Clifton College. He studied under Borlase Smart in 1936 and in 1936–37, Penzance School of Art. In 1937, he met Adrian Stokes who helped introduce him to contemporary painting and sculpture, and who advised him to go to the Euston Road School. In 1938 Lanyon studied there for four months under Victor Pasmore, before meeting Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo who had moved to St Ives on the outbreak of war. He received private art tuition from Ben Nicholson. As a result, the character of his work changed considerably. He learned to think abstractly in terms of shape and space while still relating ideas to landscape.

Lanyon chose to make more direct reference to the local landscape than Gabo or Hepworth. Visual and structural information concerning the Cornish fishing harbour of St Ives was combined with figurative suggestion in the final painting. He talked about exploring vertiginous edges such as ‘the junction of sea and cliff, wind and cliff, the human body and places’, and in 1959 began gliding. The tactile surfaces and compact, enclosed forms of his work of the early 1950s began to expand into a new flowing style on an increased scale, encouraged by his knowledge of Abstract Expressionism.

Lanyon had solo exhibitions at a number of galleries including Gimpel Fils gallery in 2003 and Tate St. Ives in 2011.

Selected bibliography: Peter Lanyon, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings and Three-Dimensional Works, Toby Treves, modern Art Press, 2018.

PETER LANYoN Standing Stones / 1951 Lithograph / 45 x 28 cm (image) Sheet: 52.5 x 38 cm Signed and dated Registration Proof 55

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PETER LANYoN Clevedon – Sketch I / 1964

PETER LANYoN Untitled (Coastal Drawing) / c1964

Pencil on paper / 40 x 50 cm Signed, titled and dated by the artist on reverse Also signed, titled and dated by Sheila Lanyon (the artist’s widow) on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Family / Private Collection

Conte on paper / 40 x 50 cm Studio stamp on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Family / Private Collection

PETER LANYoN Returned Seaman / 1973 Lithograph / 63 x 70 cm Printed by Curwen Studio and published as part of the Penwith Portfolio, 1973 Signed in the plate Edition 38/90 57

Jeremy Le Grice

1936–2012

Born into a family with deep roots in the Peninsula, it is unsurprising that Jeremy Le Grice’s paintings were informed by the ancient landscape and customs of West Penwith.

A precocious talent, Le Grice had begun painting at the age of nine, and was already proficient in drawing and painting by the time he attended Peter Lanyon’s ‘provocative art classes’ at St Peter’s Loft in St Ives, the Guildford School of Art, and finally the Slade School of Fine Art. With this grounding, he spent much of the late 1950s and 1960s establishing a reputation as a painter whilst living at St Just on the exposed north coast of Cornwall. As well as the wild and dramatic landscape of the area, Le Grice was also fascinated by the fishing town of Newlyn, and the two paintings in this exhibition exemplify these twin strands in his work of the period; the brooding landscape and the dark hulls or abandoned hulks, symbolic of the industry, enterprise and history of West Cornwall.

Le Grice exhibited in mixed exhibitions at the Newlyn Art Gallery from the 1950s and was included in Twenty Cornish Artists at the Falmouth Art Group and Polytechnic (1958). He held his first one-person exhibition in London at the Hamet Gallery (1970) and was included in Derek Culley, Denis Bowen and John Bellany’s Celtic Visions touring exhibition (1988). Royal Cornwall museum, Truro, held a major retrospective exhibition, Le Grice at Seventy (2006) and more recent posthumous showings include Jeremy Le Grice – A New Survey at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens Gallery, Penzance (2017) and Off the Radar, A Critic’s Choice, selected by William Packer at Browse and Darby, London (2018).

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JEREmY LE GRICE Hull IV / 1956 oil on board / 40 x 49.5 cm Signed, titled and dated on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Studio

JEREmY LE GRICE Close Hill / 1956 oil on board / 61 x 55.5 cm Signed and dated on reverse Titled and dated on frame Provenance: The Artist’s Studio 59

Bernard Leach CH CBE

1887–1979

Artist and potter, born in Hong Kong, studied drawing and painting at the Slade School of Fine Art and etching at the London School of Art. He went to Japan in 1909 to teach etching and it was through his friend Soetsu Yanagi that he discovered the art of pottery, this was a revelation to him. Leach studied in Japan under the master potter ogata Kenzan and met Shoji Hamada. In 1920 he returned to England with Shoji Hamada to set up the pottery in St Ives. It was from this base Bernard Leach was to become the major influence on twentieth century pottery in Britain. He revived the art of traditional craft pottery, combining Eastern principles and techniques with a crafts-based workshop.

An extract from the letter Leach wrote to the St Ives Times to explain his intentions in setting up the pottery nicely sums up his aspirations ‘...I have long been studying pottery in the Far East, where the traditions of old craftsmanship and beauty have not yet been driven out, and the various kinds of earthenware, stoneware and porcelain, which my Japanese friend and assistant, mr Hamada and I will make, will be an attempt to combine the fine old craft of both East and West to our present needs...’

It was at the Leach Pottery that literally hundreds of trainee, apprentice and experienced potters honed their skills under the tutelage of Leach and other lead potters. The pottery produced everyday ‘domestic ware' and individual studio ceramics as it does to the present day.

Bernard Leach’s influence was spread through film, television and publications notably a 1952 film The Leach Pottery and the 1960 BBC film of St Ives Pottery A Potter’s World. Leach also wrote several books perhaps the most famous being 'A Potter’s Book first published 1940.

His final book Beyond East and West was published posthumously.

The Leach Pottery is celebrating its Centenary in a programme of events throughout the year.

BERNARD LEACH Self Portrait / c1980s Etching / 19.5 x 15 cm Signed with initials and dated 1914 in the plate Edition 7/25

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LEACH PoTTERY Framed Tile with Combed Slip and Spiral Decoration / c.1930-1940

BERNARD LEACH Framed Tile with Snail on a Branch / c.1930-1940

Stoneware / 10 x 10 cm (tile) Impressed pottery seals on reverse

Stoneware / 10 x 10 cm (tile) Impressed pottery seals on reverse

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Janet Leach

1918–1997

Born in Texas, USA, Janet Darnell was already a practising studio potter when she first encountered Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada after they visited Black mountain College, North Carolina, as part of a US lecture tour. After forming a friendship with both, and then visiting and studying in Japan, Janet married Bernard Leach and settled in St Ives in 1956, where she managed his Leach Pottery before setting up her own private studio.

Her work was distinct to her husband’s, and she was known to say that ‘I married Bernard Leach but I didn’t study under him.’ Her combination of thrown and hand-built pieces incorporated characteristics of traditional Tamba and Bizen wares, while many of her forms were a reinterpretation of classical Japanese pots associated with the tea ceremony, though rendered freely and with great vigour. In its strength and clarity, her work carried an unmistakable voice, combining both austerity and sensuality.

Leach exhibited widely in the UK and Japan, and was the subject of a major retrospective at Tate St Ives in 2006–07.

Note: By repute this was the funerary jar which Janet Leach made to commemorate the life of her husband Bernard Leach.

JANET LEACH Large Handbuilt Vase / c1980 Stoneware / 29 cm (H) Impressive vase of organic form with glazed rim and incised decoration Impressed Leach Pottery seal 62

Padraig Mac Miadhachain

1929–2017

Born in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, Paddy mac miadhachain (pronounced mac-mee-A-Hon) studied at the Belfast College of Art, Belfast, N Ireland (1947 –1949), National College of Art, Dublin, Rep. of Ireland (1950) and later at the Akademia Sztuk Pieknych, Krakow, Poland (1960–1961). A scholarship and award winning artist from early in his life in art, Paddy enjoyed a long and distinguished exhibiting career that spanned nearly 70 years and encompassed the UK, Ireland, East and Western Europe, North America and the Soviet Union.

Although not generally associated with the St Ives School, Paddy mac miadhachain had a strong empathy for the work of many of its artists, an empathy that began when he met the landscape painter Piotr Potworowski during his scholarship year in Poland. Potworowski had close links with the St Ives artists resulting from the eight years he spent as Professor of Painting at the Bath Academy of Art, Corsham (1949–57), where he had considerable influence and came into contact with Peter Lanyon, Bryan Wynter, Terry Frost, Adrian Heath and others that were teaching there during the period. Through him Paddy also encountered the work of Northern Irishman William Scott, Roger Hilton, Alfred Wallis, Alan Davie and Ben Nicholson.

Based primarily in Dorset, Paddy mac miadhachain was a regular visitor to St Ives, where he maintained a studio and important friendships with a number of the St Ives artists for many years. He exhibited regularly in the town (Salthouse Gallery, New millennium Gallery, New Craftsman Gallery, Belgrave Gallery, etc.), culminating in a major exhibition of his work covering the period 1953–2012 at Belgrave St Ives in 2018 following his death in 2017.

PADRAIG mAC mIADHACHAIN A Time of History (Celtic Series) / 2008 oil on board / 21 x 21 cm Signed Signed, titled and dated on reverse Provenance: Private Collection

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PADRAIG mAC mIADHACHAIN Far, Far Away for Venice / 1997 oil on canvas / 30 x 25.5 cm Signed Also signed, titled and dated on reverse Provenance: Private Collection 64

Margo Maeckelberghe

1932–2014

margo maeckelberghe was born margo Try in Penzance and, with the exception of a brief period in London and Gibraltar, lived her whole life in close proximity to the moorland and coastal landscape of West Penwith that was the essence of her artistic expression.

She studied at the Bath Academy of Art at Corsham (1949–52), where her tutors included William Scott, Terry Frost, Piotr Potworowski, Kenneth Armitage and Bryan Wynter, going to work as studio assistant to Scott for a further year after she graduated. Scott and Lanyon were key influences in the simplified and abstracted approach to landscape that became her signature style. maeckelberghe was fascinated by the elemental nature of West Cornwall, and much of her painting sought to convey the forces of wind and sea as they collided with the granite-formed land that was her ancestral home.

For many years she maintained a studio at Bryan Wynter’s former home up on Zennor Carn, a place where these elements performed freely and were at their most tangible.

She was a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists and the Penwith Society of Arts from the very early 1960s and exhibited regularly with both for many years. She also exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, culminating in a solo exhibition Extended Landscape at Tate St Ives (2008). Belgrave St Ives presented an important exhibition of works on paper in the same year.

Her work is in many private and public collections both in the UK and abroad, including the British Council, Victoria and Albert museum, Toronto University Collection in Canada and the Kunst museum, Berlin, Germany. mARGo mAECKELBERGHE Prussia Late / 1968 Gouache on paper / 35 x 24 cm Signed Also signed, titled and dated on reverse

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mARGo mAECKELBERGHE Penwith Red mixed media / 10.5 x 33 cm Signed Titled on reverse Provenance: Priscilla Fursdon Collection

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mARGo mAECKELBERGHE Towards Nancledra, Cornwall oil on board / 44 x 62.5 cm Signed

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Margaret Mellis

1914–2009

Painter, maker of reliefs and collages and sculptor born in Wu-Kung-Fu, China, of Scottish parents. moved to Britain as a baby, and was educated in Edinburgh and attended the College of Art there from 1929–33. Her teachers including Hubert Wellington and S J Peploe. A postgraduate award and scholarship allowed her to study and travel on the continent, where she was taught in Paris by Andre Lhote. From 1935–37 she held a fellowship at Edinburgh Art College. Then studied at Euton Road School and then in 1939, with her first husband Adrian Stokes (she later married Francis Davison), moved to St. Ives where they became key figures in the artists’ colony.

There she was influenced by Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo and adopted a Constructivist style, making reliefs, returning to painting after the war, when she lived for two years from 1948 in the South of France. Returning to England in 1950 she went to live in Suffolk, settling in Southwold where found objects and driftwood were employed in her work.

Selected bibliography: Margaret Mellis, Andrew Lambirth, published by Lund Humphries, 2010.

mARGARET mELLIS Untitled (Skew Series) / 1983 oil on unstretched canvas / 13.5 x 12 cm Estate stamp and reference no. 8.251 on reverse

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mARGARET mELLIS Frills oil on unprimed canvas / 33 x 30 cm Studio stamp on reverse Estate ref no. 8.194

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John Milne

1931–1978

Sculptor in bronze, wood, aluminium and stone. Born in Eccles, Lancashire, milne studied electrical engineering at Salford Royal Technical College, 1945, then transferring to art at the College, specialising in sculpture there until 1951 when he moved to St Ives. In the following year he attended Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, in Paris. For two years he was a pupil of Barbara Hepworth and her assistant. Although some of Hepworth’s students moved away from her style, milne’s sculpture continued to bear some relation to it.

From the early 1960s milne visited Greece regularly, an influence which showed itself in many works. Belgrave St. Ives held a major exhibition in 2000 and a further exhibition in 2018.

Selected bibliography: John Milne: Sculptor – Life and Work, J P Hodin, 1977.

JoHN mILNE Poseidon (Jm95) / 1970 Cold cast aluminium / 68 cm (H) Inscribed with initials and dated under base Edition 7/9 Provenance: Private Collection Exhibited: John Milne, Marjorie Parr Gallery, London, 1972 Literature: ‘The Sculpture of John Milne’, Peter Davies, Belgrave Gallery, 2000, illus.p78 Note: this sculpture has been restored by Rupert Harris Conservation Ltd. 70

JoHN mILNE osiris (Jm189) / 1977

JoHN mILNE maquette for Deimos (Jm60) / 1968

JoHN mILNE Resurgence (Jm171) / 1976

Polished and patinated bronze 34 (H) cm (excl. base) Signed with initials and dated under base Edition 1/6 Provenance: Private Collection Literature: ‘The Sculpture of John Milne’, Peter Davies, Belgrave Gallery, 2000, illus. p.92

Polished bronze 22 (H) cm (incl. base) Signed with initials and dated under base Marked ‘A/C’ (Artist’s Copy) aside from edition of 6 Provenance: Private Collection Literature: ‘The Sculpture of John Milne’, Peter Davies, Belgrave Gallery, 2000, illus. p.74

Bronze / 45.5 (H) cm Height 48 cm (incl. base) Inscribed J.E.M. and dated under base Edition of 2/9 Provenance: Private Collection Literature: ‘The Sculpture of John Milne’, Peter Davies, 2000, illus. p.89

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Denis Mitchell

1912–1993

Sculptor, painter and teacher, born in Wealdstone, middlesex. In 1930, he attended evening classes at Swansea School of Art ad then moved to St. Ives in 1938. A series of jobs followed over the years, including running a market garden and tin mining, and at the same time mitchell pursued his painting and sculpting seriously. He began to sculpt in wood and became assistant to Barbara Hepworth in 1949–59. He formed Porthia Prints, 1957–60, his first sculptures in bronze were made in 1959. He taught part time at Redruth Art School and Penzance Grammar School, 1960–67, then was able to become a full time sculptor, working in Newlyn sharing a space with John Wells. mitchell’s sculpture is elegant and beautifully finished, abstract with figurative references. In 1968, the Foreign office commissioned for the University of Andes, Colombia, where mitchell lectured briefly two years later. In 2005, a celebratory exhibition was held as Tate St. Ives, in which bronzes from the 1960s and 70s and several carvings in wood, slate and stone from the 1970s and 80s were drawn together.

DENIS mITCHELL Untitled Constructivist Woodcut / 1982 Woodcut / 17 x 6 cm Inscribed inside card ‘With love to Keith, Elizabeth and the Boys’, and dated 1982 on reverse

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DENIS mITCHELL Drawing for Sculpture V / 1964

DENIS mITCHELL Trenow No.2 / 1974

mixed media / 28 x 19 cm Signed and dated Titled on reverse

Bronze / 10 (H) cm Inscribed with initials, titled and dated under base Provenance: Private Collection

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DENIS mITCHELL St Ives from Lelant / 1948

DENIS mITCHELL Untitled (St michael's mount) / 1947

oil on panel / 23.5 x 30.5 cm Signed and dated Provenance: The Artist’s Family

oil on board / 41 x 47 cm Signed and dated

Paul Mount

1922–2009

Sculptor, painter and teacher, mount studied at the Royal College of Art 1940–41 and 1946–48. He taught at Winchester School of Art and in 1955 went to Nigeria to establish an art department at YABA College of Technology. Whilst in Africa he was introduced to architectural sculpture. In 1962 mount returned to the UK and set up a studio in St Just, Cornwall. He became a member of the Newlyn and Penwith Society of Artists where he showed both sculpture and painting.

In 1964 he had his first one-person show in London at the Drian Gallery, followed by exhibitions at marlborough Fine Art, the New Art Centre and Beaux Arts. He worked closely with architects on several commissions producing sculpture that was integral to buildings in both Africa and the UK. mount exhibited widely in Europe and the USA and is represented in numerous private and corporate collections.

PAUL moUNT Phoenix II / 1980 Stainless steel / 47 x 71 x 30 cm The form of this sculpture is adjustable Signed on slate base Provenance: Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist)

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Ben Nicholson OM

1894–1982

Ben Nicholson was born into a family of painters and went on to become one of the most important British artists of the Twentieth Century. He trained in London at the Slade School of Fine Art between 1910 and 1911, where he was a contemporary of Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer, mark Gertler, and Edward Wadsworth.

From 1920 to 1933 he was married to the painter Winifred Nicholson and lived in London. After Nicholson’s first exhibition of figurative works in London in 1922, his work began to be influenced by Synthetic Cubism, and later by the primitive style of Rousseau. In London Nicholson met the sculptors Barbara Hepworth (to whom he was married from 1938 to 1951) and Henry moore. on visits to Paris he met mondrian, whose work in the neoplastic style was to influence him in an abstract direction, and Picasso, whose cubism would also find its way into his work.

His gift, however, was the ability to incorporate these European trends into a new style that was recognisably his own.

He first visited St Ives in 1928 with his fellow painter Christopher Wood, where he ‘discovered’ the fisherman and painter, Alfred Wallis. Nicholson moved to St Ives in 1939, living initially at Carbis Bay and then at ‘Trezion’, Salubrious Place, for 19 years.

(The etching ‘St Ives from Trezion’ in this exhibition is one of the iconic images of St Ives, representing the view from Nicholson’s home and studio.).

The presence of Hepworth and Nicholson in St Ives acted as a powerful magnet, drawing some of the best emerging artists from around the country to the town, and establishing the colony of modernist artists that, for a short while, became one of the most important centres for art in the world.

For further information, please visit the Tate website: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/ben-nicholson-om-1702

BEN NICHoLSoN July 15 / 1954 Collograph / 33 x 27 cm Printed under the guidance of Nicholson at the Ganymed Press, London Literature: ‘Ben Nicholson – Work Since 1947’, Herbert Reed (introduction), Lund Humphries, 1956 76

BEN NICHoLSoN Single Form (Lafranca 22) / 1969

BEN NICHoLSoN Aegean II (Lafranca 63) / 1967

Etching / 31 x 38 cm (irr.) (plate) Sheet size: 43 x 53 cm From the suite ‘Ben Nicholson No.3’, published in 1971 by Ganymed Original Editions Signed and dated Edition 40/50 Provenance: Private Collection

Etching / 15.5 x 23.5 cm (plate) Sheet size: 32 x 38 cm Etching No.5 from ‘Greek and Turkish Forms’, published in 1968 by Ganymed Original Editions and Marlborough Fine Art, London Signed and dated Edition 29/50 Provenance: Private Collection

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BEN NICHoLSoN St Ives from Trezion (Lafranca 43) / 1967 Etching / 17.5 x 29 cm Signed and dated Edition 44/50 Provenance: William Weston Gallery / Private Collection

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Simon Nicholson

1934–1990

Born London, studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art and archaeology and anthropology at Trinity College, Cambridge. Lived and worked in St Ives in the early 1960s before moving to USA to teach. Whilst living there Nicholson had solo exhibitions in San Francisco and Pittsburgh. He returned to the UK in 1971 and was an open University Lecturer until 1989. He became chairman of the Art and Environment: Interactive Art and Play an innovative course at oU. The course combined Nicholson’s dual interests of education in open, interactive environments and urban planning.

Working primarily in collage and utilising everyday found objects, Nicholson constructed formal systems both aesthetically pleasing and psychologically stimulating. other one-person exhibitions included mcRoberts and Tunnard Gallery 1964, York University 1978, Retrospective Exhibition Falmouth College of Arts and Dartington Hall 1999. Wills Lane Gallery, St Ives held examples of Nicholson’s work and he was included many group exhibitions (see references below for further details).

Nicholson’s published essay, Theory of Loose Parts, 1971, explored his conviction that every human being could and should share his delight in discovery and invention resulting in a more humane environment. “There is evidence that all children love to interact with variables such as materials and shapes; smells and other physical phenomena, such as electricity, magnetism and gravity; media such as gases and fluids; sounds, music and motion; chemical interactions, cooking and fire; other people, and animals, plants, words, concepts and ideas. With all these things all children love to play, experiment, discover and invent and have fun. All these things have one thing in common, which is variables or ‘loose parts’”.This paper, published in a Landscape Architecture journal was to have a profound impact on many childcare professionals and environmental educators.

Selected bibliography: Cecile N. mcCann The meticulously devised constructions of Simon Nicholson published by Westart (1968).

Sir Alan Bowness/David Brown St Ives 1939–1964 Twenty-Five Years of painting, sculpture and pottery published by Tate Gallery Publications (1985).

SImoN NICHoLSoN 6340 / october 1963 Paint, Board and Card / 122 x 120 x 39 cm Signed and titled on reverse

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Kate Nicholson

1929–2019

Born at Bankshead, Cumberland, Nicholson lived mainly in Paris 1932–38, returning to Cumberland in 1939 to finish her secondary education. She studied art part time and travelled. Nicholson attended Bath Academy of Art 1949–54 and continued to make trips to Cumberland and Cornwall as well as to various countries in Europe (and later to North Africa) with her mother, the artist Winifred Nicholson. She taught art at Totnes High School 1954–55.

After previously visiting Cornwall on a regular basis she settled in St Ives in 1955, although frequently returning to Bankshead to paint there. Painting trips abroad and to Scotland with her mother formed an important aspect of Nicholson’s artistic career, regularly visiting Greece on painting trips.

Nicholson showed with the Penwith Society in St Ives, from 1950, as a key and active member. Selected solo exhibitions included Waddington Galleries 1959, and 1961, marjorie Parr Gallery 1966 and 1968 and LYC museum and Art Gallery, Cumbria 1975 and 1981. Nicholson was included in several group shows including the Arts Council touring exhibition Six Young Painters in 1961.

Belgrave St Ives held a major one-person exhibition in 2013 and Falmouth Art Gallery held a solo exhibition curated by Jovan Nicholson in 2019.

Work in selected public collections include: Arts Council, Cornwall Council, Fitzwilliam museum and Pallant House.

Selected Bibliography: Jovan Nicholson Kate Nicholson 2019 Philip Wilson Publishers. Belgrave St Ives Kate Nicholson Paintings from the Artist’s Studio 2013 with catalogue introduction by Christopher Andreae. Sir Alan Bowness/David Brown St Ives 1939–1964 Twenty-Five Years of painting, sculpture and pottery Tate Gallery Publications 1985.

KATE NICHoLSoN Boothby orchard in Spring / 1949 oil on board / 73.5 x 61 cm Signed, titled and dated on reverse Provenance: Private Collection 80

KATE NICHoLSoN Untitled / c1947 oil on canvas / 76.5 x 63.5 cm Probably painted in AthĂŠe-sur-Cher Signed and titled (indistinctly) on reverse 81

Harry Ousey

1915–1985

Born in Longsight, manchester, Harry ousey initially began training as an architect in London, but after experiencing exhibitions by Paul Nash, Kurt Schwitters, Edouard mesens and others, moved increasingly towards painting. He exhibited in manchester and Salford in the late 1940s before moving to St Ives in 1950, where he enjoyed the stimulating company and conversation of artists including Peter Lanyon and Ben Nicholson.

He then settled in Perranuthnoe, near marazion for a number of years, during which time he achieved his first solo exhibitions in London, showing with the Lincoln, mercury and Drian Galleries throughout the 1960s before finally moving to France in the mid 1970s. Falmouth Art Gallery holds an important collection of 25 works by the artist.

HARRY oUSEY Untitled / 1957 Watercolour and crayon on paper / 28 x 38.5 cm Signed with initials and dated Provenance: The Artist's Estate

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John Anthony Park ROI RBA

1880–1962

J A Park was of an older generation compared to the other painters in this exhibition, both in years and in style, that harked back to his time in Paris where he gained first hand knowledge of the French Impressionists.

Nonetheless he was a central figure within the existing art community of St Ives (he was a founder member of the St Ives Society of Artists in 1927) and unlike many of the other older painters he was very supportive of the younger artists arriving to paint in the town. Born in Preston, Lancashire, Park moved to St Ives in 1899. He studied under the successful seascape artist Julius olsson and was to spend most of his life in the small fishing town although he lived for a short while in Brixham, Devon and moved back to Preston in his late years.

He brought something of his experience of France to the streets and harbour scenes of St Ives. Painting en plein air and applying his paint in slabs of bright colour through broken brushwork. This technique suited the sun dappled streets and the boats bobbing in light speckled water.

He was a popular figure, out most days painting directly from his subject, on-lookers interacting with him as he painted. Although his approach was traditional and retrospective his dedication, painting ability and the colour in his paintings was admired by many of the modernists especially Patrick Heron who regarded Park to be superior in his use of colour to most of the younger artists. There were few opportunities for exhibiting art locally in those early days so Park made his living by selling directly to holiday visitors, residents and through exhibiting at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and other art institutions.

Selected bibliography: Austin Wormleighton Morning Tide, John Anthony Park and the Painters of Light St Ives 1900–1950 (1998) published by Stockbridge Books.

JoHN ANTHoNY PARK Untitled (St Ives Street Scene) oil on board / 29 x 24 cm Signed

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Victor Pasmore RA CH CBE

1908–1998

Born Surrey, began to paint at Harrow School (1923–26) but the death of his father obliged him to curtail his education in order to make a living. He studied evening classes at Central School of Art and joined the London Artists’ Association through which he met William Coldstream and Claude Rogers. Elected a member of the London Group in 1934. In 1937, along with Rogers and Coldstream, he established the School of Drawing and Painting which became known as the Euston Road School, and with financial help from Sir Kenneth Clark, he was able to concentrate on art full time. Pasmore taught at Camberwell School of Art 1943–49, Central School of Art 1950–54, Newcastle (Durham University) 1954–61.

After an earlier period of painting in a ‘Fauve’ influenced style he returned to a producing a more ‘naturalistic’ and ‘atmospheric’ appearance to his paintings ‘a quite realism’ that was more akin to the Euston Road School practice of naturalism through careful observation.

As well as figure studies, there were often views of the Thames from near his home in Chiswick, partly inspired by the work of Turner and Whistler the paintings reveal a search for an underlying geometry. Some of these works were shown at the Redfern Gallery (1947).

In 1948, inspired by Piet mondrian and Paul Klee, and disillusioned by representational art, Pasmore began to experiment with pure abstraction, first with collage and then with painting and construction of reliefs, pioneering the use of new materials the new work became architectonic in structure and appearance. His 1950 mural for Kingston Bus Depot reveals a debt to Ben Nicholson whom he came to know when he visited St Ives and joined the Penwith Society of Arts. Subsequently, Pasmore became a major figure in the late 1940s and 1950s as a pioneer of abstract art and a leader of the English Constructivists, regarded

by Herbert Read as ‘the most revolutionary event in post-war British art’.

Teaching was always an important aspect of Pasmore’s work and he was instrumental in establishing Bauhaus inspired Basic Design courses at Central School of Art and, along with Richard Hamilton, at Newcastle. Pasmore was also consulting director of urban design for Peterlee New Town where he designed the now grade II listed Apollo Pavilion – a piece of architecture that embodied his constructivist theories. It is worth remembering that many artists and architects of the 1950s and 60s held a strong belief of a utopian future through the built environment. In 1956 he was included in the This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. He showed at the Venice Biennale in 1961 the same year he retired from teaching to concentrate on his studio work and architectural commissions. He moved to live in malta in 1966 where he continued to develop his work in paintings and prints by which time the geometric reliefs had started to give way to a more nature-based metamorphic character.

Bibliography: Alan Bowness, Luigi Lambertini Victor Pasmore Catalogue Raisonne, 1926–79 published by Thames and Hudson 1980.

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VICToR PASmoRE Brown Image / 1971 Lithograph, etching and screenprint / 94 x 95 cm Printed at 2RC Workshop, Rome Signed with monogram and dated From the edition of 90

VICToR PASmoRE Idea for Green Darkness / 1986 oil on canvas laid on panel / 54.5 x 78 cm Signed with monogram Provenance: Stamperia d’Arte 2RC, Rome / Caroline Wiseman, London / Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin / Private Collection 85

Bryan Pearce

1929–2007

Bryan Pearce was born in St Ives. Initially introduced to painting and drawing by his artist mother as a form of therapy, Pearce immediately took to the practice. In the early 1950s he attended the St Ives School of Painting, led by Leonard Fuller, who encouraged Pearce to develop his unique representation of the world through painting and drawing.

At the instigation of Peter Lanyon, Pearce had his first one person exhibition at the Newlyn Art Gallery in 1959. often paired with the earlier local Naive artist, Alfred Wallis, although with different temperaments, both are genuine ‘outsider’ artists with a similar matter-of-fact freshness and singularity of view.

Always beginning a painting with a feint pencil outline and gradually blocking in areas using a personal palette of colours, a sense of order and calmness, bathed in the ambient light of western Cornwall, pervades Pearce’s work. From the 1970s, with the help of other St Ives artists, Pearce produced a series of etchings. Also, under the direction of fellow artists and master printmaker, a number of silk screen stencils based on his oil paintings were produced.

BRYAN PEARCE Jug and orange / 1967 oil on board / 76.5 x 63.5 cm Signed Titled and dated on artist’s label on reverse Provenance: Gary W. Mattesson Exhibited: New Arts Centre, London, 1968 / Sheviock Gallery, 1969 / Penwith Society of Arts Spring Exhibition, St Ives, 1973 Penwith Society of Arts Winter Exhibition, St Ives, 1982 / ‘Artists from Cornwall’ Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, 1992 Retrospective, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, 1995.

Literature: 'The Path of the Son', Ruth Jones, published by Sheviock Gallery, 1976 (illustrated plate 18).

The Western Morning News, 8 March 1982 / ‘Ambit’ (Issue 71), 1977, p.20.

‘The Innocent Eye – Primitive and Naive Painters in Cornwall’, Marion Whybrow, 1999, p.122.

This painting was part of the artist’s personal collection until 2003.

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BRYAN PEARCE Red and White Gloxinia on Striped Cloth / 1993 oil on board / 50.5 x 61.5 cm Signed Titled and dated on reverse Provenance: Private Collection Exhibited: Penwith Gallery, St Ives, 1993 / Wills Lane Gallery, St Ives, 1993 Newlyn Gallery, Cornwall, 1993 87

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BRYAN PEARCE St Ives Harbour

BRYAN PEARCE The Doll / c1950

Watercolour and gouache / 36 x 51.5 cm Signed

Watercolour / 24.5 x 34 cm Signed Titled on label on reverse Provenance: Tony Warren Collection

BRYAN PEARCE Untitled (The Island with a Boat and Four Gulls) Conte on paper / 24 x 31 cm Signed Provenance: Private Collection

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Douglas Portway

1922–1993

Born Johannesburg, Portway studied fine art at the Witwatersran Technical College and later taught at the University of Johannesburg.

His first solo exhibition in 1945 at the Constantia Gallery established his reputation in South Africa. In 1952 he was awarded a travel grant from the Institute of International Education enabling him to travel to the USA. When South Africa became culturally isolated in the 1950s, Portway became more conscious of his homeland and the characteristics that set it apart from the European continent. He turned away from his Western influences and adopted a style which incorporated the ethnic design that surrounded him, although he later realized that he would always remain an outsider to a culture which was not fully his own. As a result of his study trip to the United States, Portway was greatly influenced by the intellectual currents of abstract expressionism and the philosophy of Zen Buddhism, and started exploring these new influences in his own work.

In 1956 he took part in the Venice Biennale, before travelling in Europe finally settling in Ibiza in 1959. During this period he had solo exhibitions at the Drian Gallery in London, as well as in Paris, Ibiza and South Africa. In 1967 Portway settled in St. Ives and began an association with the marjorie Parr Gallery there and in London, before moving to Bristol in the early 1980s. Portway also had regular annual working periods in Razac d’Eymet, Dordogne, France.

His work is in the collections of the Tate Gallery, V&A museum and the Scottish Gallery of modern Art and many other galleries in the UK and abroad.

Bibliography: J.P. Hodin, Douglas Portway: A Painter’s Life, Cranbury, 1983. John Peffer, Art and the end of apartheid, University of minnesota Press, 2009.

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DoUGLAS PoRTWAY Reclining Nude mixed media on silk / 25 x 36 cm Signed

Tony Shiels

b.1938

Born in Salford, manchester, Shiels studied at Heatherley’s School of Art from 1954 to 1956, and then briefly at Andre Lhote’s Academy in Paris 1957. In 1958 he moved to St Ives and remained in Cornwall almost continuously until 1993. He was a member of both the Newlyn and Penwith Societies, and also exhibited in St Ives with the New Craftsman, Wills Lane Gallery and Belgrave St Ives. outside of Cornwall, Shiels exhibited in London with the Rawinsky Gallery, Austin/Desmond and montpelier-Sandelson, as well as shows with Gordon Hepworth, Exeter, and a number of international exhibitions.

Writing in 1962, Alan Bowness wrote an assessment of Shiels work: “I first noticed Shiels’ paintings in a small St Ives gallery some two summers ago. The pictures, mostly small gouaches with landscape subjects, had a distinct quality of their own – they were done by someone with a natural ability to make interesting compositions and a real feeling for paint and colour. Anthony Shiels is certainly a young painter to watch.”

Selected bibliography: Monstermind: The Magical Life and Art of Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels, Rupert White, published by Antennae, 2014. Tony Shiels: Third Generation St Ives, Steven Cousins, published by Quickmap Ltd, 2016.

ToNY SHIELS Chess Players / 1958 Gouache on paper / 51 x 35.5 cm Signed and dated Also signed, titled and dated on reverse Provenance: Private Collection 91

William Scott RA

1913–1989

William Scott is a ‘St. Ives artist’ by proxy. His professional ties with leading Cornish modernists, mainly through exhibiting with them or inviting them to teach under him at Corsham Court, were close. But he never lived in Cornwall, and working visits were to mousehole, rather than to St. Ives itself.

Scott’s austere yet sensitively painted compositions, based on a figure, landscape, or most commonly, still life themes, places his work in kinship to St. Ives artists like Hilton, Frost or Feiler. At times during the 1950s Scott’s is barely distinguishable from the work of Hilton or Frost. The formal reduction of his motifs led him close to abstraction.

The lithograph on page 93 relates to a series of paintings of pots and pears from the same period. Scott’s images of pears and frying pan presents two of his most familiar icons. The handmade, even wobbly, autographic quality of the thick, Roualt-like dark lines that define these still life form counters the mechanical, impersonal process of fine art print making.

Selected bibliography: William Scott, Norbert Lynton, Thames & Hudson, 2004.

For further information visit: www.williamscott.org

WILLIAm SCoTT Divided Counterchange / 1972 Screenprint / 58 x 39 cm From the ‘A Poem for Alexander’ series Signed Edition 18/72 92

WILLIAm SCoTT Still Life: Three Pears and a Pan / 1955 Lithograph / 36 x 53 cm Signed Edition 41/50

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Michael Snow

1930–2012

Artist and teacher, born in manchester. He was educated at Laurence Sheriff School, Rugby, and worked for three years in Cheshire before settling in Cornwall in 1952. He was elected as a member of the Penwith Society, became secretary in 1954 and showed regularly until resigning in 1965.

Snow was closely associated with Ben Nicholson and other advanced St. Ives-based artists. He was the co-founder of the Peterloo Group in manchester in 1957 and had a solo exhibition there in 1959. He taught for some years at Exeter College of Art and had a retrospective at Gordon Hepworth Gallery, Exeter, in 1993. Belgrave St Ives held a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work in 2014.

mICHAEL SNoW Red Painting / c1950s oil on board / 51 x 13 cm Signed and dated on reverse Provenance: The Artist’s Estate

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mICHAEL SNoW Abstract Linen Tablemat / 1955 Screenprint on linen / 30 x 46 cm Signed with initials in the print One of a set of tablemats produced by Porthia Prints in 1955; the project was organised by Denis Mitchell and Stanley Dorfmann. Designs were produced by several of the major names in St Ives art, with each artist receiving a number of mats as payment. Edition not known.

Literature: ‘Avant Garde British Printmaking 1914-1960’, F. Carey and A. Griffiths, pp185-6 95

Troika Pottery

1963–1983

Troika was established 1963 in St Ives by sculptor Leslie Illsley, potter Benny Sirota and architect Jan Thompson, initially on the site of a previous pottery of Powell and Wells at Wheal Dream (now the site of St Ives museum). When the lease expired in 1970 the pottery moved to larger premises in Newlyn.

The name ‘Troika’ was chosen to reflect the team of three founders.

The company’s designs were avant garde, with strong, structural, heavily textured pieces rather than the plain and functional designs of the period. This was in reaction to the rather 'worthy' wares produced by the Leach Pottery for example.

Early works were smooth and glazed, but later the company produced mainly textured pieces that became their signature style.

Forms included; Aztec masks, Cylinder Vases, Wheel Vases and Chimney Vases. many of the products were produced from moulds then hand-painted to give an individual feel. The business grew into employing up to 15 individual local artists at one time working on finishing and decorating the ceramics – most of the pieces bear personal, identifiable maker’s marks.

As well as selling their pottery locally to the tourist trade, influential stores Heals and Liberty were early stockists. However, Troika suffered from a change in fashion and a wave of cheap imports that swept into the UK in the 1970s and early 80s and the company finally closed in 1983.

Troika is an example of entrepreneurship that helped less privileged artists resident in Cornwall in the post-war period to make a living. other examples include Susan Lethbridge's Toy Trumpet (1940s) and Denis mitchell's Porthia Prints (1950s).

TRoIKA PoTTERY Box with Scarab Design / c1965 Stoneware / 14 (H) cm An early Troika Pottery scarab design box and cover (slight repair to cover) Painted mark and impressed trident mark

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Doris Vaughan

1894–1974

Born in Cheltenham and lived in London. In 1927, Vaughan and her husband, the artist Colin Sealy, acquired a studio in St. Ives. This was where Vaughan’s paintings developed their distinctive and easily recognizable style characterised by bold drawing and strong colouring.

Vaughan became particularly fond of painting coastal scenes, especially the harbours of mousehole and St. Ives.

During the 1930s Doris exhibited on a number of occasions at the Lucy Wertheim Gallery with solo shows of her watercolours in 1934 and 1937 and finally her oil paintings in 1939. Vaughan moved to Chelsea Studios in the Fulham Road, during this time, Vaughan attended Raymond Coxon’s evening classes at the Chelsea Adult Education Centre. Vaughan then moved to Cheyenne Walk where she lived until the early 1970s when the council compulsorily acquired the property for demolition. In 1976, the year after her death, an exhibition of Vaughan’s work was held at Gallery 10, Richmond.

DoRIS VAUGHAN Village Band oil on board / 26.5 x 36.5 cm Signed Note: This is Porthmeor Square, opposite Porthmeor Studios, St Ives

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John Wells

1907–2000

John Wells, the subject of an impressive 1998 retrospective at the Tate St. Ives, spent most of his long life in Cornwall. Born in London in 1907, he studied medicine and practiced as a doctor on the Scillies during the war. Encouraged by a chance meeting with Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood in 1928, who were staying near Falmouth, Wells determined to ‘retire’ early. After the war he gave up medicine, moved to the mainland and dedicated his energies to painting. He impressed Gabo, Hepworth and Nicholson; he participated in the Crypt exhibitions and helped found the Penwith Society.

Behind Wells’ scientific mind lies a romantic, even mystical, personality. The artist expresses a sense of the hidden order behind natural appearance. In his Pantheistic landscapes he does not slavishly copy outward appearance but finds graphic and plastic techniques to paint intangibles like the warmth of the sun or the journey of a beetle. Any religious implications are matched by a spirit of scientific enquiry.

JoHN WELLS Topsail / 1950 Etching / 14.5 x 12 cm Signed and dated Edition 11/25 Provenance: Private Collection 98

JoHN WELLS Untitled Watercolour and pastel / 16.5 x 20.5 cm Signed and dated Studio stamp Provenance: The Artist’s Estate 99

Guy Worsdell

1908–1978

Born in Yorkshire, Guy Worsdell was taught by John Farleigh and Bernard meninsky at Central School of Arts and Crafts. He moved to St Ives in 1953 and soon established himself with the local art community, exhibiting alongside W. Barns-Graham, Peter Lanyon, Terry Frost, Sven Berlin and John Wells at the Castle Inn, an ‘alternative’ exhibition space for the ‘modern’ painters, established by Denis mitchell’s brother Endell.

Worsdell’s first solo exhibition took place at the John Whibley Gallery in Baker Street, London in 1959, and he had further solo exhibitions with the marjorie Parr Gallery in both London and St Ives. Worsdell was a member of the Penwith Society, and examples of his work are held in the collections of Cornwall County Council, Gracefield Arts Centre, the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy of music, amongst others.

GUY WoRSDELL Portrait of Bernard Leach Pencil on paper / 27 x 21 cm Signed

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GUY WoRSDELL Untitled (Five Vases and a Bowl) oil on board / 49.5 x 60 cm Signed

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Karl Weschke

1925–2005

Weschke was born at Taubenpreskeln, near Gera, Germany, and after a difficult childhood and short-lived military career, ended up as a prisoner of war living in Britain in 1945. An early interest in art began to develop, and he studied at St martin’s School of Art in 1949 before leaving prematurely to develop his practice independently. After a number of short-term jobs and travels to Scotland, Spain and Sweden, Weschke returned to England in 1955 and, with the encouragement of his friend Bryan Wynter, moved to Cornwall. At first he lived in Zennor, but from 1960 he moved to small, isolated cottage overlooking the sea at Cape Cornwall, where he lived until his death in 2005.

By the time of his move to Cape Cornwall he was a member of the Penwith Society of Artists and had held his first one-person exhibition at the New Vision Centre in 1958, where he received favourable attention from the influential critic John Berger. This led to inclusion in many mixed exhibitions, as well as solo exhibitions with the Arnolfini, Bristol (1964), Whitechapel Gallery (1974) and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (1980), amongst others. In 1996-97 there were special displays of his work in the Tate Gallery, London, which led to a retrospective exhibition at Tate St Ives in 2004.

Although associated with the St Ives School through geographical proximity and his friendships with Bryan Wynter, Roger Hilton and W.S. Graham, etc., his mature work, which focused on landscape, the female form and animal figures, owed more to German Expressionism than the landscape-inspired abstraction of the St Ives moderns. His paintings of the 1960s are powerful and dramatic, using a restricted palette of browns, ochres and blacks to impressive, almost awesome, effect. The large painting Sturmflöten, included in this exhibition, was exhibited at his Tate St Ives retrospective in 2004 and is a quintessential example of the artist’s work of the period.

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KARL WESCHKE Untitled Landscape / 1974 oil on board / 26 x 35 cm Signed and dated on reverse

KARL WESCHKE Sturmflöten / 1966 oil on canvas / 213.5 x 152 cm Dated 1965/66 Provenance: Private Collection (purchased direct from the artist) Exhibited: ‘Karl Weschke’, Whitechapel Gallery, London 1974 Exhibited: ‘Karl Weschke: Beneath a Black Sky: Paintings and Drawings 1953-2004’, Tate St Ives, 2004 Literature: Jeremy Lewison, ‘Karl Weschke’, Kunstsammlung Gera, 2001, p.70 (illus.)

Literature: Jeremy Lewison, ‘Karl Weschke – Portrait of a Painter’, 1998, p.81 Note: A similar painting to this is Weschke’s ‘Pillar of Smoke’, 1964, in the Tate collection

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KARL WESCHKE Untitled Landscape / 1964 Charcoal and pencil / 17 x 27 cm Signed and dated KARL WESCHKE The Fire Eater / 2004 Published by Tate St Ives Etching / 28 x 21.5 cm Signed and dated Edition 18/200 104