Chris Beetles Summer Show 2015 by Chris Beetles

Chris Beetles Summer Show 2015

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY

Copyright © Chris Beetles Ltd 2015 8 & 10 Ryder Street St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com www.chrisbeetles.com IBSN 978-1-905738-68-7 Catalogue in publication data is available from the British Library

Written and researched by David Wootton, with contributions from Alexander Beetles, Fiona Nickerson and Phil Tite Edited by Catherine Andrews, Fiona Nickerson and David Wootton Design by Jeremy Brook of Graphic Ideas Photography by Julian Huxley-Parlour Reproduction by www.cast2create.com Colour separation and printing by Geoff Neal Litho Limited Front cover: Peter Coker, North Sea Oostende [86] Front endpaper: Edward Bawden, The Foundry [76] Frontispiece: Frank O Salisbury, King Alfred Rebuilding the Walls of the City of London [64] Title page: Albert Goodwin, Punch and Judy on the Beach at Ilfracombe [14] Title verso: John Varley, View on the Thames near Battersea (detail) [04] Back endpaper: Keith Grant, Earthsong [102]

JOHN VARLEY John Varley, OWS (1778-1842) John Varley was a central figure for the watercolourists of the early nineteenth century. A founder member of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, and its most prolific exhibitor, he was also a highly significant teacher of both professionals and amateurs, and a writer of instruction manuals. He encouraged his students to paint in the open air, but also promoted the Picturesque theory of adapting nature to the requirements of composition. Of Lincolnshire descent, John Varley was born in Hackney, Middlesex, on 17 August 1778. He and his brothers ‘were said to have been born at the Blue Posts (formerly the Templars’ house), after their father had converted it to private use, although the building was still an inn in 1785’ (T F T Baker (ed), A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 10: Hackney, London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research, 1995, pages 10-14). Despite parental disapproval, three of his siblings would also become artists: Cornelius Varley, William Fleetwood Varley and Elizabeth Robinson Varley. The death of Varley’s father in 1791 left the family in poverty, and forced a move to a more modest dwelling, off Old Street, Hoxton. Varley’s early attempts to undertake an apprenticeship – first as a silversmith and then as a law stationer – did not suppress his desire to become an artist. So he spent a brief time working with a portrait painter in Holborn before becoming a pupil and assistant to Joseph Charles Barrow at the age of fifteen or sixteen. Barrow ran an evening drawing school at his house – 12 Furnival’s Inn Court, Holborn – where he was assisted by François Louis Thomas Francia, and the young Varley had to undertake the more menial tasks when he was not receiving lessons. While drawing in Hornsey Wood in spring 1796, John Varley met John Preston Neale and, forming a lasting friendship, would often accompany him on sketching expeditions to villages north-east of London. In the following year, he was lucky enough to accompany Barrow on a more distant journey, to Peterborough, in Cambridgeshire, and while there produced a pencil drawing of the cathedral. This became his first exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1798, and he then showed there regularly until 1804. Either in 1798 or 1799, Varley made his first sketching tour to Wales, in the company of George Arnald, an experience that would prove decisive in the direction of his art. He returned

there in 1800, and again in 1802, when he was joined by his brother, Cornelius. (John moved from Hoxton to live with Cornelius in Charles Street, Covent Garden, in 1800; then, a year later, moved again, to live with his other brother, William, at 2 Harris Place, an alley near the Pantheon, the entrance to which stood on the eastern section of Oxford Street.) During the same period, Varley began to study at Dr Thomas Monro’s informal academy at his home in Adelphi Terrace, and he also visited him at his country cottage in Fetcham, Surrey. The association would last for 20 years and prove very useful to Varley, for Monro kindly introduced him to patrons and pupils. One early patron, Edward, Viscount Lascelles, invited Varley to his Yorkshire home, Harewood House, in 1803. If he did not meet Thomas Girtin at Monro’s academy, Varley would certainly have copied examples of his watercolours, and the influence of Girtin soon showed in his work. At the time of Girtin’s death, in 1802, he joined the Sketching Society that Girtin had founded, which was then chaired by John Sell Cotman. In turn, Cotman’s use of clear, flat washes would also influence Varley. Following his marriage to Esther Gisborne in 1803, Varley began to father a family of eight children, and so needed to combine his development as an exhibiting watercolourist with a settled career as a drawing master. While proving a mainstay of the Society for Painters in Water Colours, which he helped to found in 1804, he trained many of the leading watercolourists of the following generation. Two of the earliest were William Turner of Oxford and William Mulready, the latter becoming his assistant (and also his brother-in-law, marrying his sister, Elizabeth, in 1803). In 1806, the Varleys moved to 5 Broad Street, Golden Square, Soho, which allowed more room for a growing family and an increasing number of pupils, including William Henry Hunt and John Linnell. In the same year, Peter DeWint became a neighbour of Varley in Broad Street, and took lessons from him. From 1809, Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding also became a pupil (and four years later would marry the sister of Varley’s wife). From the time of his move to Broad Street, Varley also rented a house in the summer months at Twickenham, so that he and his pupils could sketch along the River Thames. A little later, he would rent a house in Chelsea for the same purpose. However, he still found time to make more ambitious trips in order to inspire his art, notably a visit to the Northumberland coast in 1808.

From 1812, Varley altered the style of his work and exhibited fewer watercolours, a response to his commitments as a teacher and family man. By this time, he was charging amateurs a guinea a lesson and apprentices £200 for the seven years, so that his income would soon rise to £3000 a year (putting him on a par with those in the higher echelon of the mercantile class). In about 1814, the Varleys moved to 44 Conduit Street, off Regent Street. Practising what he preached, Varley increasingly employed compositions that reveal the inspiration of the Classical tradition and of J M W Turner’s Liber Studiorum. He also made use of the Patent Graphic Telescope, invented as an artistic aid by his brother, Cornelius (who had trained under their uncle, Samuel Varley, a watchmaker and jeweller). Varley disseminated his systematic approach to art through a series of manuals that were mainly intended for amateurs, including A Practical Treatise on the Art of Drawing in Perspective (1815-20), Treatise on the Principles of Landscape Design (in eight parts, 1816-21) and Precepts of Landscape Drawing (circa 1818). In 1817, the Varleys moved to 10 Great Titchfield Street, in the artistic quarter north of Oxford Street.

In 1818, Linnell, a former pupil, introduced Varley to William Blake. He entered Blake’s circle of admirers, known as the Ancients, and gave lessons to at least two of its members: Francis Oliver Finch and Samuel Palmer. As Varley believed strongly in astrology, he was attracted to Blake’s propensity for visions and excited by the spiritual portraits that Blake drew on visits to Varley’s house at Great Titchfield Street between 1819 and 1825. Linnell would engrave some of these as illustrations to Varley’s Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy (1828). From 1818, Varley began to ask Linnell repeatedly to lend him money but, still unable to manage his finances two years later, he was declared bankrupt and gaoled. Remaining insolvent throughout the 1820s and 30s, he attempted to improve his situation by exhibiting an increased number of works at the Society of Painters in Water Colours, in the years 1823-26, and opening a gallery at his home. However, a fire in Great Titchfield Street in June 1825 – that started in the workshops of Crozet, a carver and gilder – spread to Varley’s address, and the damage must have affected the artist’s chances of recovery.

Having lost his first wife in 1824, Varley married Delvalle Lowry, the daughter of his friend, the engraver Wilson Lowry, in the following year. They would have two children. During the 1830s, Varley began to recapture the power of his early watercolours and, by the end of the decade, was inspired by the work of Samuel Palmer to paint dense washes in a glowing tonality on coarse paper. His imaginative compositions were received with enthusiasm, not least by the dealers, Samuel Woodburn and William Vokins, the second becoming a friend. He spent his last days with Vokins at his house at 5 John Street, off Oxford Street, dying there on 17 November 1842. He was survived by his second wife. In 1843, the Society of Painters in Water Colours showed a posthumous group of Varley’s watercolours, ‘an unusual concession made … for the sake of his penurious family’ (Wilcox 2005, pages 112-113); one was bought by Albert, the Prince Consort. Of John Varley’s ten children, two became professional painters: Albert Fleetwood Varley and Charles Smith Varley. His work is represented in the Government Art Collection and numerous public collections, including the British Museum, The Courtauld Gallery, Tate and the V&A; Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum (Grasmere), Hereford Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and Tyne and Wear Museums; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (Victoria). Further reading Adrian Bury, John Varley of the Old Society, Leigh-on-Sea: F Lewis, 1946; Claus Michael Kauffmann, John Varley, 1778-1842, London: Batsford/Victoria and Albert Museum, 1984; Claus Michael Kauffmann, ‘Varley, John (1778-1842)’, H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol 56, pages 148-149; Anne Lyles, ‘John Varley’s early work’, Old Water-Colour Society’s Club, vol 59, 1984, pages 1-22; Anne Lyles, ‘Varley (1) John Varley’, Jane Turner (ed), The Dictionary of Art, London: Macmillan, 1996, vol 31, pages 908-909

01 Conway Castle Signed Watercolour 5 3⁄4 x 8 1⁄2 inches

02 Near Dolgelly, Wales Signed Watercolour 5 1⁄2 x 8 1⁄2 inches

03 Berry Pomeroy Castle, Devonshire Signed Watercolour 14 1⁄4 x 20 inches Possibly the work exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water Colours, 1815, as no 236, ‘Berry Pomeroy, Devonshire’

04 View on the Thames near Battersea Signed Signed, inscribed with title and dated 1828 on reverse Watercolour 5 3⁄4 x 10 inches

WILLIAM SIMPSON William Simpson, RI FRGS (1823-1899) William Simpson was a pioneering Special Artist; that is a visual journalist sent to record major news stories for illustrated publications. Making his reputation with lithographs of his watercolours of the Crimean War, and even gaining the name ‘Crimea Simpson’, he later developed a close association with The Illustrated London News.

Further reading Delia Millar, ‘Simpson, William (1823-1899)’, H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol 50, pages 716-718; Simon Peers and Paul Theroux, Mr William Simpson of ‘The Illustrated London News’: Pioneer War Artist, 1823-1899, London: Fine Art Society, 1987 For a biography of William Simpson, please see overleaf. ☞

Linseed Oil Mill, Peshawer The Indian Mutiny, which ended after more than two years of bloodshed in 1859, had excited the interest of the British public. The printer William Day – encouraged by the sales of Simpson’s Crimea book The Seat of War in the East (1855-56) which he had printed for Colnaghi’s, and the success of John Frederick Lewis’s book The Holy Land (1842-45) with its 250 lithographic illustrations – thought he could revive the flagging fortunes of his business by producing a book on India. Simpson was commissioned to make the illustrations and spent three years travelling in India drawing monuments, landscapes and scenes of everyday Indian life which seemed so exotic to the public at home. Simpson recounts in his autobiography: At Peshawur I made the acquaintance of Captain Speedy. He had the gift of picking up languages and could speak Pucktoo, the language of the Afghans nearest Peshawur. He went with me to the bazaar, and by his speaking powers got all sorts of fellows to

05 Linseed Oil Mill, Peshawer Signed, inscribed with title and dated 1860 Watercolour 10 x 14 inches

stand and be sketched, Peshawur being a place with a wonderful variety of races and types from India, The Himalayas, Tibet, Afghanistan, and all parts of Central Asia. (George Eyre-Todd (ed), The Autobiography of William Simpson, RI (Crimean Simpson), London: T Fisher Unwin, 1903, page 109) On his return to London, Simpson spent four years finishing 250 watercolours. Many had even been transferred to stone for lithographic reproduction when Day went bankrupt – a complete shock to Simpson who was unaware of Day’s financial troubles. He had already paid his own expenses throughout the trip to India and was listed as being owed £2800 by the company, even losing all his watercolours after they were disposed of as bankrupt stock. He wrote, ‘This was the big disaster of my life. When the crash came, I was really left a beggar. I had not a penny. Here was the reward of my seven years’ work’ (op cit, page 177). The note on Linseed Oil Mill, Peshwar is written by Phil Tite.

William Simpson was born in Glasgow on 28 October 1823, the son of a marine engineer and mechanic. His formal education as a child consisted of 15 months at a writing-school in Perth. However, he received some training in lithography from David Macfarlane, while working at his lithographic office, and then underwent an apprenticeship to Allan and Ferguson, a local firm of lithographers. When the Glasgow School of Design opened in 1845, he also attended classes there. Moving to London in 1851, Simpson began to undertake a number of exciting assignments as an employee of Day & Son, and was able to claim to be the first Special Artist to be involved in action. He was sent to the Baltic by the dealer and publisher, Colnaghi, to record the naval battles that instigated the Crimean War, and arrived in the Crimea itself in 1854, only two weeks after the Battle of Inkerman. The resulting lithographic folio, The Seat of War in the East, was the first of his many books. In the same period, he toured Circassia with the Duke of Newcastle. He spent three years in India between 1859 and 1862, in the aftermath of the Mutiny, making architectural and archeological sketches, and visiting Kashmir and Tibet.

In 1866, Day & Son went bankrupt, and Simpson began to work for The Illustrated London News. He was sent to St Petersburg to record the marriage of the future Tsar Alexander III, and also toured Russia with the Prince of Wales,

Chapel of the Invention of the Cross An experienced military surveyor, Captain Charles Warren (18401927) was recruited by the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1867 to conduct a reconnaissance of Biblical archaeology in the Holy Land. His own major excavations centred on Jerusalem, where he discovered a network of tunnels beneath the Temple Mount.

taking in Jerusalem on his return journey. Through the late 1860s and the 1870s he increased the rate of his travels. In 1868 he accompanied Napier on his expedition to Abyssinia, and in 1869 was present at the opening of the Suez Canal. He covered the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and then the resulting Paris Commune. In 1872 he went to China for the wedding of the Emperor, subsequently visiting Japan and returning across America. He was in India with the Prince of Wales in 1875, Asia Minor in 1877 and Afghanistan in 1878-79 and again in 1884-85. Though Simpson worked chiefly in monochrome for his assignments, he exhibited a number of watercolours and oils, from 1874, at the Royal Society of British Artists and the New Society of Painters in Water Colours. Elected an associate of the NWS in 1874 and a full member five years later, he was instrumental in transforming the society into the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1884. Following his marriage in 1881, he settled in Willesden, Middlesex, and devoted himself to writing. His autobiography would appear in print four years after his death at home on 17 April 1899. His work is represented in the collections of the Palestine Exploration Fund and the V&A, while The Mitchell Library, Glasgow, holds over 600 of his manuscripts, scrapbooks, drawings, sketches and watercolours.

This is a cave very deep down below the pile of buildings which all come under the name of the ‘Holy Sepulchre.’ It is to the west, and pilgrims descend to it by the Chapel of St Helena, from which a stair leads down to the cave. There is a window, seen in the drawing, in which Queen Helena [mother of the Emperor Constantine] sat and watched the workmen engaged in searching for the true cross. (Underground Jerusalem. Descriptive Catalogue of the Above Collection of Water-Colour Drawings by William Simpson On View and For Sale at The Pall Mall Gallery, London: W M Thompson, 1872)

In March 1869, William Simpson joined Warren in Jerusalem, and accompanied him on some of his underground explorations. Drawings that he made at the time were published in The Illustrated London News, on 24 April 1869, and subsequently in publications of the Palestine Exploration Fund. He also published his own article, ‘The Royal Quarries’ (Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 30 September 1870), and lecture, ‘Jerusalem: An Introduction to its Archaeology and Topography’ (Transactions of the Society for Biblical Archaeology, 1872). His work provides a unique record because many of the excavations were later filled in.

Modern archaeological investigation has revealed that this cave was originally part of an Iron Age quarry and converted into a cistern by the Romans. Filled in during the fourth century to create foundations for the church rebuilt by the Emperor Constantine, it appeared again during further rebuilding in the eleventh century.

In April 1872, the Pall Mall Gallery held the exhibition, ‘Underground Jerusalem’, comprising 40 works by Simpson, which he worked up from his original drawings. These included two of the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross, which is situated in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was constructed on the site of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The artist explained the character and significance of this chapel in the catalogue:

06 Chapel of the Invention of the Cross (opposite) Signed, inscribed with title and dated 1871 Watercolour and pencil with bodycolour on paper on board 22 x 15 1⁄4 inches Exhibited: ‘Underground Jerusalem’, The Pall Mall Gallery, 48 Pall Mall, April 1872, no 14, price 70 guineas

CONSTANCE FREDERICA GORDON-CUMMING Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming (1837-1924) Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming was one of the most intrepid and enterprising women travellers of the Victorian period, who also had the skill and industry to record her journeys in word and image. Encouraged by her many distinguished connections, during the height of the British Empire, she visited India, Ceylon and many of the countries of the Pacific Rim, between 1868 and 1880.The extent of her achievement is still in the process of evaluation. For a biography of Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 2014, pages 13-14. Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Cambridge). Further reading Elizabeth Baigent, ‘Cumming, Constance Frederica Gordon(1837-1924)’, H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol 14, pages 631-632; Hugh Laracy, Watriama and Co. Further Pacific Island Portraits, Canberra: ANU E Press, 2013

‘After a general survey of the surroundings, I took up a very commanding position in an embrasure at one of the projecting angles of the wall, from which I obtained a capital view of one of the principal bastions, and four of the great watch-towers overlooking the outer and inner entrance to the Ha-ta-mun. Such strange, picturesque buildings, with several tiers of tiled roof, and what appears like four storeys of square windows, which really are ports for cannon, but these are concealed by moveable doors, on which are painted black and red circles to represent the muzzles of big guns. From this point one gets a really grand impression of the walls and towers, with the camels’ camping-ground below, and the heavily laden carts and shouting coolies, and occasional processions appearing and disappearing into the tunnel-like archway at the base of the great wall, which is the outer gateway.’ (Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China … with illustrations, Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1886, vol ii, page 275, ‘Peking Seen from the Walls’)

07 The Wall which Divides the Chinese and Tartar Cities. Peking Signed, inscribed ‘Hata Mun. One of the South Gates of the Tartar City. Peking. Done from the City Wall – looking onto the Chinese City. Joseph Edkins. See “Wanderings in China.” Pub’ by Blackwood. Vol II pages 268 to 273. specially 275’, and dated ‘June 12th 1879’ Watercolour with pencil, 14 1⁄2 x 23 inches Illustrated: Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China ... with Illustrations, Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1886, vol ii, page 153

HERC ULES BRABAZON BRABAZON Hercules Brabazon Brabazon, NEAC PS (1821-1906) For much of his life, Hercules Brabazon Brabazon pleased himself as a gentleman traveller, producing luminous, loosely-handled watercolours of favourite paintings and places (including India, which he visited in 1870, 1875 and 1876). Admired by John Ruskin as an heir to J M W Turner, he joined the eminent critic on a sketching tour to northern France in 1880.Yet his startling modernity was probably recognised only in the 1890s, by a younger generation of artists, which included John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert and Philip Wilson Steer.Through their enthusiasm, he was elected a member of the New English Art Club in 1891, and held the first of a series of solo shows at the Goupil Gallery in the following year. For a biography of Hercules Brabazon Brabazon, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 1998, page 79. His work is represented in numerous public collections, including the British Museum, The Courtauld Gallery, Tate and

the V&A; The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), Manchester Art Gallery and The Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester); and Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge MA). Further reading Hilarie Faberman, ‘Brabazon, Hercules Brabazon (b Paris, 21 Nov 1821; d 14 May 1906)’, Jane Turner (ed), The Dictionary of Art, London: Macmillan, 1996, vol 4, page 619; Martin Hardie, rev Jessica Kilburn, ‘Brabazon [formerly Sharpe], Hercules Brabazon (1821-1906)’, H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol 7, pages 131-133; C Lewis Hind, Hercules Brabazon Brabazon, 1821-1906: His Art and Life, London: George Allen, 1912 Chris Beetles has mounted a number of highly successful exhibitions of the work of Hercules Brabazon Brabazon. The most recent, entitled Art and Sunshine, was held in 1997 and accompanied by a large illustrated catalogue: 176 pages, 273 colour plates and extended biographical essays.

13 San Stae,Venice The Church of Sant’Eustachio, or San Stae as all Venetians know it, was rebuilt in the late seventeenth century to designs, in the Palladian style, by the little known architect, Giovanni Grassi. Domenico Rossi (16571737) then designed the striking façade in Baroque style in 1709, in response to a competition, and seven different artists produced the façade sculptures. John Ruskin failed to appreciate its cumulative grace, and included it among his list of ‘five buildings … illustrative of the last degradation of the Renaissance’ (Venetian Index, 1853). Nevertheless, it was popular as a subject for painters, including Brabazon’s friend, John Singer Sargent.

08 San Stae,Venice Signed with initials Watercolour and bodycolour, 6 x 8 inches

09 Fondamente in Venice Watercolour with bodycolour and pencil on tinted paper 7 1⁄4 x 10 inches

10 Souvenir of Boudin Inscribed ‘Boudin’ on reverse Watercolour and bodycolour on tinted paper 7 x 9 3⁄4 inches

11 The Basilica on the Hill Signed with initials Watercolour and bodycolour with pencil on paper laid on board 10 1⁄4 x 14 inches

ALBERT GOOD WIN Albert Frederick Goodwin, RWS (1845-1932) In synthesising the influences of J M W Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites, Albert Goodwin may be considered one of the most Ruskinian of Victorian landscape painters. Indeed, he was taken up by John Ruskin and, in 1872, given the opportunity to travel with him on an intensive tour of Italy and Switzerland.This set the pattern for many further and extensive travels. Like Ruskin, Goodwin responded to landscape with a religious fervour and understanding; but he interpreted it with even greater eclecticism than did his mentor, even experimenting with the style of James McNeill Whistler, Ruskin’s adversary in the field of aesthetics. Albert Goodwin was born in Boxley Road, Maidstone, Kent, on 17 January 1845, the son of the builder, Samuel Goodwin, and his wife, Rosetta. He was educated locally, in Bedford Place, at a school run by William Henry Wicksteed. On leaving school, he was apprenticed to a local draper, but after six months he left to take up painting. He was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, becoming the pupil of Arthur Hughes, who lived for a time in Maidstone, and later Ford Madox Brown. His early landscapes – mainly of Kent, but also of Jersey, Holland and Newcastle – are of an intense, jewel-like precision. Brown told his patron, James Leathart, that he believed that Goodwin would ‘become before long one of the greatest landscape painters of the age’ (in a letter dated 12 July 1864). Following the death of his first wife, Mary Ann, in 1869, Goodwin moved to London to work in the studio of Arthur Hughes. It was probably through Hughes that Goodwin met the critic, John Ruskin, and then gave him a lesson in watercolour painting. At about the time that he was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, in 1871, Ruskin commissioned him to produce some landscapes of Oxfordshire. Then, in the following year, Ruskin took him and Arthur Severn on a three-month tour through Switzerland to Italy. Goodwin never forgot this introduction to alpine scenery, which remained for him a standard of beauty, or to the cities of Italy, which he revisited on numerous occasions. As if demonstrating the programme that Ruskin had laid out in Modern Painters, Goodwin looked increasingly to the example of Turner; at times, however, he tried to synthesise it with the aesthetic of Whistler. This conflict of influences is dramatised to fascinating effect in Goodwin’s privately printed diaries.

Goodwin was a hardworking and prolific artist, driven by religious belief and moral responsilibity to express his talent and provide for his family. He travelled extensively in search of varied, and often exotic, landscapes, and visited Egypt (1876), India (1895), the West Indies and North America (1902, 1912) and New Zealand (1917). Sometimes these sites became settings for literary or biblical subjects, some developed on a large scale and painted in oil. Goodwin exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy (1860-1920) and the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours. He became an associate of the RWS in 1871 and a full member a decade later. In addition, he held eight solo shows at the Fine Art Society (1886-1907), three at Leggatt’s (1912-22), two at the Rembrandt Gallery (1902, 1904), and others. Later in his career, he reworked and embellished many of his favourite watercolours, adding ink lines, surrounding them with borders, and assembling them in albums. Through his career, he lived in London, Devon and Sussex. He died on 10 April 1932, outliving his second wife, Alice, by 16 years. He was survived by their five daughters and two sons. His work is represented in numerous public collections, including the British Museum, Tate and the V&A; and The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and The Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester). For further information on the life and work of Goodwin, please refer to Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, 1986; Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, 1996; and Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932, 2007; all published by Chris Beetles Ltd. Chris Beetles has also published a sumptuous limited edition volume of over 400 pages and more than 200 colour plates, accompanied by extracts from Goodwin’s diaries.

12 The Lagoons nr Chioggia,Venezia Signed, inscribed with title and dated 1917 Watercolour and bodycolour 13 3⁄4 x 20 inches

13 Cape Town Docks Signed, inscribed with title and dated 1917 Watercolour with bodycolour and black chalk, 11 3⁄4 x 17 3⁄4 inches Probably the work exhibited in ‘Drawings and Pictures by Albert Goodwin, RWS’ at Leggatt Brothers Gallery, 1919, no 43

14 Punch and Judy on the Beach at Ilfracombe Signed, inscribed ‘Ilfracombe’ and dated /97 Oil on board 12 x 15 1⁄2 inches Literature: Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932 Limited Edition Book, Chris Beetles Ltd, 1986, plate 58 Exhibited: ‘Albert Goodwin RWS 1845-1932. 129 of his best works borrowed from Private Collections’, a Museum Tour of the Royal Watercolour Society, Sheffield Mappin Art Gallery, Ruskin Gallery, Stokeon-Trent City Museum and Art Gallery, May-October 1986, no 39

15 Sunrise, Cairo Signed, inscribed with title and dated 1921 Watercolour and bodycolour with pen and ink on paper laid on board 15 x 21 3⁄4 inches

ARTHUR HOPKINS Arthur Hopkins, RWS RBC (1847-1930) Arthur Hopkins worked with equal success as an illustrator and painter. Establishing his reputation through contributions to literary and news magazines in the 1870s, he gradually developed as a watercolourist of landscapes and genre scenes that, in their sensitivity, have been compared to the work of Helen Allingham. Arthur Hopkins was born at Chestnut House, 87 The Grove, Stratford, Essex, on 30 December 1847, the third of nine children of Manley Hopkins, a marine insurance agent. His siblings included the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the illustrators, Everard and Edward Hopkins. In 1852, the family moved to 9 Oak Hill Park, Frognal, Hampstead, and four years later, Mr Hopkins became Consul-General for Hawaii in London, a position that he retained for over 40 years. Arthur Hopkins was educated at Lancing College, Sussex, between 1860 and 1865, and revealed his talent for drawing during these years, and especially on family holidays, when he sketched alongside his brother, Gerard. However, he worked for some years in the City of London before turning to art, and seems to have made a gradual transition from one career to

the other. While living at 47 Manchester Street, in 1867, he exhibited a work at the Dudley Gallery, in its first ‘Winter Exhibition of Cabinet Pictures in Oil’. By 1869, he had begun to contribute to The Illustrated London News (doing so until 1898), while in 1870 he illustrated his first book, Isaac Gregory Smith’s The Silver Bells. His formal studies in art seem to have been confined to a year at the Royal Academy Schools, in 1872. In 1873, Hopkins married Maria Rebecca, the daughter of Daniel S Bockett of Heath House, Hampstead. They settled at 4 Kensington Crescent, but moved north to 22 Ann’s Villas, Notting Hill, in 1876. Hopkins soon began to make his name as a magazine illustrator, and especially for his contributions to The Graphic (1874-86), which were admired by Van Gogh. Notably, he collaborated with George du Maurier, in 1875, on the illustrations to Elizabeth Lynn Linton’s The Atonement of Leam Dundas, which appeared in The Cornhill. Three years later, he illustrated Thomas Hardy’s novel, The Return of the Native, for its initial appearance in Belgravia, of which he was a staff member. During the mid 1870s, Hopkins also sent his first exhibits to the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Painters in WaterColours, and was soon exhibiting internationally. He was elected as an associate of the RWS in 1877, and a full member in 1896, and would later serve as the society’s treasurer. He was

also a member of the Royal Society of British Colonial Artists. Moving to ‘Tre Vean’, 80 Finchley Road in 1884, Hopkins concentrated on painting from the 1890s. Sketching trips to the West Country and family holidays in Whitby helped influence his imagery. The last of his three children was born in 1894, and his expanding family probably encouraged a further move, around the turn of the century, to ‘Hurstleigh’, Arkwright Road, Sir Roger de Coverley on the Ice The Roger de Coverley is a once popular English country dance in 9/8 time, often placed at the end of an evening as a ‘finishing dance’. In Scotland, it is called The Haymakers, and in the United States The Virginia Reel. Its development is long and complex. The steps are based on those of Rinnce Fada, a pre-Christian Irish dance that translates as ‘Long Dance’. However, the tune is supposed to be from the reign of Elizabeth I, and is likely to be of north-country origin. The earliest printed version of the tune is probably that which appears in John Playford’s The Division Violin (1685). While no one is entirely certain of the identity of Roger de Coverley, Ralph Thoresby, of the family of Calverley of Calverley in Yorkshire, suggested, in 1717, that the dance is named after a knight who lived in

Hampstead (which was previously the home of the watercolourist, H G Hine). A volume of large cartoons, entitled Sketches and Skits, which appeared in 1901, perhaps brought to a close his more humorous vein, but he continued to work as a painter into the 1920s. He died at home on 10 September 1930.

the reign of Richard I. Since the early eighteenth century, it has been more closely associated with Sir Roger de Coverley, the fictional character who appeared in Addison and Steele’s daily publication, The Spectator (1711-12). An English squire, who exemplified the values of an old country gentleman, he was said to be the grandson of the man who invented the dance. By the time that Arthur Hopkins produced his image of the Sir Roger de Coverley, in 1889, dancing on ice had become a fashionable winter entertainment. In an article published in Chamber’s Journal for 1868, an anonymous writer stated that ‘the ice is now thick enough to bear well, and I have just come in from joining in a noisy game of Puss in the Corner, and dancing a Roger de Coverley in skates’.

16 Wild Wood (opposite) Signed and dated 1911 Watercolour 12 1⁄4 x 18 inches

17 Sir Roger de Coverley on the Ice Signed and dated ’88 Grisalle, 12 1⁄2 x 19 inches Illustrated: The Graphic, 12 January 1889, pages 48-49

ROSE BARTON Rose Barton (1856-1929) Even her contemporaries appreciated the Anglo-Irish artist, Rose Barton, as the equal of Herbert Menzies Marshall in her work as an urban topographer.

Further reading Rose Barton RWS (1856-1929), London: Christie's, 1987

For a biography of Rose Barton, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 2008, page 7.

18 Wellington Arch Signed Watercolour with bodycolour 15 1â &#x201E;4 x 9 inches

ROBERT FRASER Robert Winchester Fraser (1848-1906) During his lifetime, Robert Fraser was the best known of the artist members of his family. He established his style early, and then produced fresh and fluent landscape watercolours throughout his career. For a biography of Robert Fraser, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 2010, page 29. His work is represented in the collections of The Higgins Bedford and the Borough of Darlington Art Collection.

The Fraser Family The eight artist members of the Fraser family are now remembered for their resonant landscape watercolours of the wide, flat Fenlands. They were part of a movement that ‘sought to describe the colours and natural forms of hidden corners of the countryside rather than give a general impression of the scene’ (Christopher Newall, Victorian Watercolours, Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1987, page 120). Six were the sons of the Scots-born Surgeon Major Robert Winchester Fraser, who settled in Bedford to educate his children, and later moved to Hemingford Grey, in Huntingdonshire. The other two were his grandsons, the children of Robert Fraser. The Chris Beetles Gallery has regularly shown a range of the Frasers’ works that has been significant in both number and quality. In 2010, it built on its experience by publishing Charles Lane’s The Fraser Family, the first substantial publication devoted to the artists. The main text comprises a group biography, which is supported by a number of, previously unpublished, portrait photographs. This traces their Scottish roots and Bedford childhoods, before charting their artistic careers, and detailing their painting grounds. Many images, maps and topographical photographs illustrate those grounds and the watercolours that resulted. The text also introduces the reader to the fact that three of the brothers were illustrators. A series of monographic appendices then records and analyses the work.

19 The Church by the Pond Signed and dated 1886 Watercolour with bodycolour 13 1⁄2 x 9 1⁄2 inches Literature: Charles Lane, The Fraser Family, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2010, page 73

WILLIAM FRASER GARDEN William Fraser Garden (1856-1921) William Fraser Garden is now the best-known member of this artist family. He refined his method of painting at an early age in order to produce landscapes that are intensely detailed, scrupulously accurate and sometimes startling in colour. For a biography of William Fraser Garden, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 2010, page 30. His work is represented in the collections of The Norris Museum (St Ives, Huntingdon).

20 Towpath and Church, Hemingford Grey Signed and dated 1903 Watercolour 14 x 10 1⁄2 inches

21 The River Ouse and Mill at Hemingford Grey Signed and dated ’98 Watercolour 11 1⁄2 x 15 inches

22 Hemingford Mill Signed and dated 1908 Watercolour with bodycolour 7 3⁄4 x 9 3⁄4 inches

23 All Saints and the Waits, St Ives Signed and dated ’04 Watercolour 5 1⁄2 x 7 1⁄4 inches

GORDON FRASER George Gordon Fraser (1859-1895) Able to match the talents of his better-known brothers in his atmospheric watercolours, Gordon Fraser also developed an independent career as a humorous illustrator – a career cut short by a fatal accident. George Gordon Fraser was born in Cramond, Edinburgh, on 11 April 1859. The family moved to Bedford in 1861 and, eleven years later, he began to attend the local grammar school. While there, he studied art under Bradford Rudge. During his youth, he enrolled his younger brother, Anderson, and a group of mainly Scottish school friends into a band of like-minded youths called the Cudgel Community, and recorded their exploits in neatly written and illustrated books.

At the age of 18, in 1877, Gordon Fraser began to establish himself as an artist with a single watercolour at ‘The Annual Exhibition of Modern Painters’ at the Walker Gallery, Liverpool. Four years later, he published his first illustrations – those to Wilfred Meynell’s article, ‘Little-Known Sketching Grounds’ – in The Art Journal.

Between 1884 and 1893, he exhibited eight watercolours at the Royal Academy. In 1886, E E Leggatt became his agent. On 9 September 1884, Fraser married Catherine Home Ramsay Ross of Larne, at Larne, Antrim, Ireland. Remaining in Ireland for an extended honeymoon, he would make the country a significant subject of his watercolours and illustrations. On returning to England, he and his wife settled in London, at 27 Ingersoll Road, Shepherds Bush. In 1886, she would give birth to the first of their four children. The growing family led to moves, first to Hemingford Abbots, Huntingdonshire, in 1887, and then, in 1889, to nearby Houghton. Through an introduction from his brother, the illustrator, Frank, Gordon Fraser contributed a large number of full-page strip cartoons to Fun, from January 1889 until his death. In the June of that year, three of those drawings were exhibited by the Dalziel Brothers at an ‘Exhibition of Works of English Humourists in Art’ at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. His other work for magazines included contributions to Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday and Larks!, while his book illustrations comprise those to Jerome K Jerome’s The Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891) and his own booklets, O’Brien’s Breeches (1892) and The Moonlighters (undated). While skating, on 15 February 1895, Fraser drowned beneath the ice near Hemingford Abbots. However, his body was not recovered until 6 April. He was buried beside his father in the churchyard at Hemingford Grey. A collection of his cartoons, entitled Humorous Pictures, was published posthumously in 1896.

25 Wallingford from the River Thames Signed Watercolour with bodycolour 10 1⁄2 x 15 inches Literature: Charles Lane, The Fraser Family, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2010, page 108

24 Duck Shooting Signed Watercolour with bodycolour 14 x 9 3⁄4 inches

26 Evening by the River Signed Watercolour with ink 10 3â &#x201E;4 x 14 3â &#x201E;4 inches

27 The Ouse Signed and dated 1888 Watercolour and bodycolour 13 x 20 inches

WILLIAM LIONEL WYLLIE William Lionel Wyllie, RA RBA RE RI NEAC (1851-1931) The leading British marine artist of the late nineteenth century, William Lionel Wyllie captured the sea and shipping in a wide range of images from

fresh watercolours of Northern France through etchings of the Thames to large-scale canvases of historically significant events.

28 Fort Macmahon, Pas de Calais Inscribed with title on reverse Oil on board 11 3⁄4 x 22 inches

29 Sailing Boats at Dawn Signed Watercolour 9 1⁄2 x 13 1⁄2 inches

For a biography of William Lionel Wyllie, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 2014, page 36. Further reading Stephen Deuchar, ‘Wyllie, W(illiam) L(ionel) (b London, 6 July 1851; d London, 6 April 1931)’, Jane Turner (ed), The Dictionary of Art, London: Macmillan, 1996, vol 33, page 452; H B Grimsditch, rev Roger Quarm, ‘Wyllie, William Lionel

(1851-1931)’, H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol 60, pages 654-655 Chris Beetles is the publisher of the definitive biography of W L Wyllie entitled W L Wyllie: Marine Artist, 1851-1931, by Roger Quarm, former curator of pictures at the National Maritime Museum, and John Wyllie, the artist’s grandson.

30 Bergenhus and Vaagen Signed and inscribed with title Watercolour with pencil 9 1⁄2 x 13 1⁄2 inches

31 Ladybird Inscribed with title and ‘Chap 11’ on reverse Watercolour and pencil 4 1⁄2 x 3 inches 32 High Tide at Wimereux Watercolour on paper laid on board 5 3⁄4 x 4 3⁄4 inches

33 Gate Bloody Tower Inscribed with title Inscribed ‘Head Piece Chapter V’ below mount Pen and ink 6 x 6 inches Illustrated: W L and M A Wyllie, London to the Nore, London: A & C Black, 1905, page 46, heading to Chapter V, ‘The Tower and London Bridge’ 34 Northfleet Cement Works Inscribed ‘Head Piece Chapter XI’ on reverse Pen and ink 5 1⁄2 x 4 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: W L and M A Wyllie, London to the Nore, London: A & C Black, 1905, page 46, heading to Chapter XI, ‘Northfleet to Tilbury Docks’

36 In Full Sail Inscribed with a ‘to do’ list on reverse Pen and ink drawing of a sailing ship on reverse Pen and ink 2 1⁄4 x 3 1⁄2 inches

35 Boats at Low Tide Pen and ink with pencil 6 3⁄4 x 8 3⁄4 inches

37 On Summer Seas Etching 3 x 4 inches A private view invitation to an exhibition of watercolours by W L Wyllie, entitled ‘On Summer Seas’, held by Robert Dunthorne at The Rembrandt Head, 5 Vigo Street, London W, on 11 June 1887

38 The Highway of many Nations Etching 4 x 3 inches A private view invitation to an exhibition of watercolours by W L Wyllie, entitled ‘The Highway of many Nations’, held at the Leicester Galleries, Leicester Square WC, on Saturday 3 December 1904

39 Moonlit Trees Pencil drawing of a Knight on reverse Pen ink and watercolour with pencil, 4 1⁄4 x 5 1⁄4 inches 40 Out Fishing Watercolour with bodycolour and pencil, 5 1⁄2 x 5 inches

41 Evening Sky Watercolour with bodycolour 4 3⁄4 x 8 1⁄4 inches

42 A Break in the Evening Clouds Watercolour 2 x 5 1⁄2 inches

43 Afterglow Watercolour 2 3⁄4 x 4 1⁄2 inches

44 The View from the Beach Pencil drawings of boats and figures on reverse Watercolour with bodycolour and pencil 2 1⁄4 x 5 3⁄4 inches

45 Out at Sea Watercolour with bodycolour 1 3⁄4 x 6 inches

46 Coastal Panorama Watercolour with bodycolour and pencil 2 x 8 1⁄2 inches

47 After the Storm Watercolour drawing of the head of an old woman on reverse Watercolour 8 1⁄4 x 4 3⁄4 inches 48 Evening over the City Watercolour 8 1⁄4 x 6 1⁄2 inches

48 47 49 Morning, Noon, Evening and Night Signed with initials and dated 1863 Inscribed with title on reverse Watercolour of coastal scene at night on reverse Watercolour 7 1⁄4 x 4 1⁄4 inches

50 Sunset Storm Watercolour 2 1⁄2 x 4 1⁄2 inches 51 Sunset over the City Watercolour 3 x 4 3⁄4 inches

52 Bright Evening Watercolour Pencil drawing of a ship on reverse 4 3⁄4 x 7 inches

53 Sunset Watercolour 2 3⁄4 x 5 inches

54 Mackerel Evening Sky Watercolour 2 1⁄4 x 5 inches

55 Evening Sky Watercolour 3 x 4 3⁄4 inches

56 Along the Coast from Wimereux Dated 1862 Watercolour with pencil, 4 x 6 3⁄4 inches

57 Looking West from Wimereux Dated 1861 Watercolour, 3 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2 inches

58 Coastal Town Watercolour with pencil, 1 3⁄4 x 5 inches

59 Ships off the Coast Watercolour, 1 1⁄2 x 3 inches

60 The English Channel Watercolour, 2 3⁄4 x 4 3⁄4 inches

WILLIAM ED WARD FROST William Edward Frost, RA (1810-1877) William Edward Frost was one of the most popular Victorian painters of the nude, appreciated for a purity of approach and elegance of execution. His subjects ranged from generalised recreations of the ancient world to representations of specific episodes from classic English poetry. William Edward Frost was born in Wandsworth, then in Surrey, in September 1810. He showed artistic talent from an early age, and was encouraged in this by his father: first by his arranging drawing lessons with a Miss Evatt, a neighbouring amateur, and then, in 1825, by his introducing him to William Etty, who became his mentor. On Etty’s recommendation, he entered Henry Sass’s School for Drawing and Painting at 6 Charlotte Street, in 1826, and spent three years there, while also studying at The British Museum each winter. He was then accepted into the Royal Academy Schools and gained First Medals in every class except the Antique, in which Daniel Maclise was a competitor.

Specialising in portraiture from about 1830, Frost painted more than 300 portraits during a 15-year period, and showed some as his first exhibits from 1836. However, a series of successes with mythological and allegorical subjects, often inspired by Spenser and Milton, led him to change his focus. In December 1839, he received the Academy’s Gold Medal for Prometheus Bound by Force and Strength (exhibited at the RA in 1840). Four years later, he won a third-prize premium for Una Alarmed by the Fauns and Satyrs, his entry for the competition to decorate the New Palace of Westminster, while his academy exhibition picture, Christ Crowned with Thorns, was selected by a prizeholder of the Art Union Society. This early development of his reputation culminated in his election as an Associate of the Royal Academy of Arts in November 1846.

As Frost was intimately familiar with Etty’s methods and ideas, he became a principal source for the older artist’s biography. He was also knowledgeable about the work of Thomas Stothard, collecting a large number of engravings of the artist’s work. In addition, he collaborated with Henry Reeve on a catalogue of the art collection of Hugh Munro of Novar, which was privately printed in 1865. After a gap that surprised and irritated him, Frost was elected a full academician in 1870. Yet, at the time of the exhibition of his diploma work, Nymphs and Cupid, two years later, he voluntarily retired from the RA. He had also exhibited regularly at the British Institution. Never marrying, Frost lived with Elizabeth, his unmarried sister, latterly at 40 Fitzroy Square. On his death on 4 June 1877, she became his sole executor. Almost a year later, on 14 March 1878, Christies held a sale of the remains of Frost’s studio, including a hundred of his works, as well as his copies after old masters. His work is represented in numerous public collections, including The British Museum; and the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford) and The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge). Further reading Robyn Asleson, ‘Frost, William Edward (1810–1877)’, H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol 21, pages 70-71; Philip McEvansoneya, ‘Frost, William Edward (b London, Sept 1810; d London, 4 June 1877)’, Jane Turner (ed), The Dictionary of Art, London: Macmillan, 1996, vol 11, pages 804-805

Frost attracted a ready patronage among middle-class industrialists and aristocrats and, indeed, from Queen Victoria, who paid £420 for Una Among the Fairies and Wood Nymphs (1847), and subsequently commissioned two more pictures. However, his work was popular with all levels of society, as a result of the wide circulation of engravings of his paintings made by Peter Lightfoot, among others. Frost shared several of his patrons with Etty, and his work was inevitably compared to that of his mentor. However, some contemporary critics did distinguish between the two, William Sandby writing that Frost differed materially from Etty, ‘in the chastely correct and highly-finished manner in which he depicts the undraped nymphs in his pictures’ (The History of the Royal Academy of Arts, London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1862, vol 2, page 221).

61 Love Pen ink and watercolour 7 x 4 1⁄2 inches

62 Satyr Pen ink and watercolour with pencil 11 x 13 1⁄2 inches Preliminary drawing for one of the figures in Una Alarmed by the Fauns and Satyrs, the Prize Cartoon for the House of Commons, 1843

Satyr In 1841, a Fine Arts Commission was appointed to oversee the interior decoration of Charles Barry’s newly built Houses of Parliament. The commissioners were keen to foster a national school of history painting, and so, in 1843, mounted a competition for designs for fresco decorations based on British history and literature. The 140 resulting submissions were the subject of a public exhibition at Westminster Hall in the July of 1834. The large-scale drawings, or cartoons, included, as no 10, William Edward Frost’s Una Alarmed by the Fauns and Satyrs, for which the present work is a study. It was inspired by an episode in The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser’s epic allegorical poem, published in 1596: Una, the personification of the Protestant ‘True Church’, unintentionally beguiles fauns and satyrs, and is alarmed by their false worship of her.

As explained by William Sandby in his 1862 The History of the Royal Academy of Arts, this composition was the first of ‘that series of subjects of a sylvan and bacchanalian character, suggested by Spenser and Milton, which Mr Frost has since pursued with so much success’ (vol II, page 220). Frost was one of 11 artists to be awarded a premium for his submission, receiving a third prize of £100. However, as an article in The Spectator on 15 July 1843 explained, ‘the object of this competition was merely to ascertain what talent British artists possessed for producing designs of elevated character, on a grand scale, suited to architectural decoration’. In the event, Frost was not chosen to contribute to the schemes of mural painting, and the schemes progressed very slowly, being completed only in 1927, 50 years after Frost’s death.

FRANK O SALISBURY Francis Owen Salisbury, RBA RI ROI RP (1874-1962) Dubbed ‘Neo-Pre-Raphaelite’ by the German critic, Hermann Muthesius, Frank Salisbury was one of the leading artists to maintain a traditional approach through the first half of the twentieth century. Equally successful for his portraits and his history subjects, he celebrated leadership and commemorated national events, so gaining the unofficial title of ‘Britain’s Painter Laureate’, as well as making a fortune on both sides of the Atlantic. Frank Salisbury was born at Leyton Road, in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, on 18 December 1874. He was the ninth of eleven children of Henry Salisbury, a master plumber, glazier, house painter and ironmonger, and his wife, Susan Hawes. Frank Salisbury was too delicate to go to school until he was 12 years old. He then attended Harpenden British School, under Mr Henshaw, but so dreaded it that his sister, Emilie, a student teacher, taught him at home. In order to gain strength, he grew crops and kept sheep, and also repaired bicycles at his father’s Cycle Depot.

At the age of 15, Frank was apprenticed to his eldest brother, Henry James Salisbury, who managed a major stained glass company in Alma Road, St Albans. His rapid development led Henry to sponsor him to study under John Crompton at Heatherley’s School, in London, on three days a week, to further a career in painting. In taking this direction, he received support from the agricultural scientist, Sir John Bennet Lawes, who lived at Rothamsted Manor, in Harpenden. In 1892, Salisbury won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools. Attending for five years, he won two silver medals and two scholarships, including a Landseer Scholarship in 1896, which enabled him to visit Italy, and so gain a taste for grand themes. He also travelled in France and Germany. Salisbury’s first exhibit at the Royal Academy, in 1899, was Reflections, a portrait of Alice Maude Greenwood, the daughter of Charles Colmer Greenwood of St Albans. Two years later, she became his wife, and they settled at Elmkirk, Kirkwick Avenue, Harpenden. Their twin daughters would frequently sit for him, and childhood subjects became an early speciality. In all, Salisbury would exhibit 70 works at the Royal Academy over a span of 44 years, and so was disappointed that he was never elected an Academician. However, he would become a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Royal Society of British Artists (both circa 1916), the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (1917) and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (1921).

By the early 1900s, Salisbury was establishing himself as a painter of history subjects as well as portraits. The exhibition of his vast painting, The Passing of Queen Eleanor, at the Royal Academy in 1907, gained him a commission to paint The Trial of Queen Katherine before the Consistory Court of Blackfriars for presentation to the Palace of Westminster. In 1907, he moved into his new home, ‘Red Gables’, at West Common, Harpenden, which was built to his own design in collaboration with his brother, Eustace. However, by 1914, and with increasing success, he had moved to London, and settled at 62 Avenue Road, in St John’s Wood. During this period, Salisbury received his first commission to contribute to the decoration of the Royal Exchange, in the City of London, the result of which was Alfred the Great Repairing the Walls of the City of London (1912), for which the present work is a finished study (see note opposite). With his later commissions for the Royal Exchange, he moved into contemporary history with two images of King George V and Queen Mary at the end of the First World War; one shows them visiting the battle districts of France, and the other leaving St Paul’s after the National Thanksgiving Service. This led to commissions for numerous important national events and royal ceremonies, including The Heart of Empire – the Jubilee Thanksgiving in St Paul’s Cathedral (1935) and The Coronation of King George VI (1938). Some of these were exhibited around the country. Salisbury was soon in demand internationally as a painter of official portraits, including five presidents of the United States and, in 1934, the Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini. The last led to his being made Cavaliere di Gran Croce dell’Ordine della Corona d’Italia in 1936. Native honours included his receipt of the honorary degree of LLD from St Andrews University (1935) and his appointment as Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (1938). By 1932, he had become so successful that he was able to build Sarum Chase, a neo-Tudor mansion, at 23 West Heath Road, Hampstead, to designs by his nephew, Vyvyan Salisbury, the son of Eustace. Sarum was the old name for the city of Salisbury. A committed Methodist, Salisbury also arranged and paid for the restoration of Wesley’s House in City Road, in 1934, and painted one of his portraits of John Wesley and other religious works to hang there. Wesley’s Chapel, which adjoins it, contains three stained glass panels to his designs. Indeed, stained glass was his favourite form, and he distinguished himself sufficiently in it to be elected Master of the Worshipful Company of the Glaziers and Painters of Glass for the year

1933-34. He celebrated this election by painting one of several self-portraits in his role as a master glazier. In 1944, Salisbury published the first version of his memoirs as Portrait and Pageant, to coincide with a retrospective exhibition of the same name at the Royal Institute Galleries in Piccadilly. Nevertheless, he continued to fulfil major commissions until the death of his wife in 1951. He died at home, at Sarum Chase, on 31 August 1962. The house and its contents were bequeathed to the British Council of Churches. His work is represented in The Government Art Collection, the Parliamentary Art Collection and the Royal Collection, and numerous public collections, including the Guildhall Art Gallery, John Wesley’s House & The Museum of Methodism, the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Air Force Museum; Belton House (Grantham), National Museums Liverpool and St Albans Museums; and The World Methodist Museum, Lake Junaluska NC. Further reading Benjamin Aquila Barber, Frank O Salisbury, Leigh-on-Sea: F Lewis, 1936; Maurice Bradshaw, rev Charles Noble, ‘Salisbury, Francis Owen [Frank] (1874-1962)’, H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol 48, pages 702-703; Nigel McMurray, Frank O Salisbury. Painter Laureate, Bloomington IN: Authorhouse, 2003

King Alfred Rebuilding the Walls of the City of London Since the sixteenth century, the Royal Exchange has acted as a centre of commerce for the City of London. The third and present building was constructed, to the design of William Tite, between 1842 and 1849 and, while originally open to the air, its courtyard was roofed over in the years 1883-84. It was at this point that mural decoration, originally mooted at the time of construction, was considered more seriously. A committee was formed, which, in 1892, began to choose subjects for the decoration that focussed on the history of the City. Thirty murals were commissioned from prominent artists of the day, and completed between 1895 and 1927. Painted on canvas, they were attached to the wall by the technique of marouflage, that is with the use of white lead in oil. In 1911, the committee accepted an offer by Alderman Sir Charles Wakefield to contribute a panel to the scheme. He commissioned Frank Salisbury to paint Alfred the Great Repairing the Walls of the City of London, for which the present work is a finished study, and presented it to the Royal Exchange in 1912. One of the most

Frank O Salisbury, Alfred the Great Repairing the Walls of the City of London, Royal Exchange, London. Presented by Sir Charles Wakefield, 1912

successful contributions, it has been described as combining a ‘taut fusion of design, psychological effect, and symbolism’ (Willsdon 2000, page 385), and led to two further commissions for the scheme representing King George V and Queen Mary at the end of the First World War. One shows them visiting the battle districts of France, and the other leaving St Paul’s after the National Thanksgiving Service. Alfred the Great Repairing the Walls of the City of London would be reproduced in various popular histories of Britain – including Hutchinson’s Story of the British Nation (1922), and Cassell’s History of the British People (1925) – and so helped construct a view of the past during the early twentieth century. Further reading Clare A P Willsdon, Mural Painting in Britain 1840-1940. Image and Meaning, Oxford University Press, 2000, especially Chapter 4, ‘Pageantry and Propaganda: Murals in the Royal Exchange and London Livery Company Halls’

FRANK O SALISBURY Francis Owen Salisbury, RBA RI ROI RP (1874-1962)

left: a contemporary view of the Royal Exchange by William F Walcot, RBA RE (1874-1943) 63 The Royal Exchange and Bank of England Signed Etching and drypoint 4 x 5 3⁄4 inches

‘Salisbury’s composition, with its taut geometric scaffolding framing Alfred on his black stallion like some Roman Imperator, and its touches of gilding and notes of bold red, green and black, presents a highly decorative, almost heraldic effect, whilst the Latin inscriptions around its border … confirm Alfred’s implied line of inheritance from Roman London.The Corporation had proudly compared its achievements in building and in housing provision with those of ancient Rome, and Salisbury not only copied his shields from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts but also based his London Wall on surviving fragments of the original.’ (Clare A P Willsdon, Mural Painting in Britain 1840-1940. Image and Meaning, Oxford University Press, 2000, page 71)

Historical Background to the Subject of King Alfred Rebuilds the Walls of the City of London In the year 865, a large number of Scandinavian forces, led by Ivarr the Boneless and his brothers Halfdan and Ubba, landed in Anglo-Saxon Britain. By 867, Northumbria had been overrun and its kings killed. East Anglia had fallen by 870 and the kingdom of Mercia was reduced to a fraction of its former size by attacks in 868-69 and 872-74. Alfred became king of the West Saxons in April 871, succeeding his brother Aethelred. Around the same time, a second great Scandinavian army, led by the Danish king Guthrum, arrived in Britain. Under Guthrum, the Danes conquered much of Mercia and, after almost capturing Alfred at Chippenham in 877 and forcing him to flee to the Somerset wetlands, subjected and settled much of the kingdom of Wessex. However, by May 1878, Alfred had rallied enough support from the shires of Somerset, Wiltshire and West Hampshire that he was able to rout a Danish force at Edington and put Guthrum under siege. The Danish king was forced to surrender and was baptised as a Christian. Though this victory prevented all of Wessex falling to Guthrum, it was not decisive, and Alfred continued to repel raids from the Danish forces. In 886, whilst defending the remaining Anglo-Saxon lands from the Danes, Alfred reoccupied the old Roman city of London, much of

which had fallen into disrepair after the collapse of Roman rule in the fifth century. As part of Alfred’s refortification of the city, he restored the city’s old Roman walls, which had been damaged by decades of Danish attacks. In the same year, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle asserted that all Anglo-Saxons, aside from those under subjection to the Danes, were submitted to Alfred as the first ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons’. The note on the Historical Background is written by Alexander Beetles.

64 King Alfred Rebuilding the Walls of the City of London Signed with monogram Inscribed with title and ‘Royal Exchange’ on a label on reverse of frame Oil and gold paint on canvas 36 x 24 inches Provenance: ‘The Studio of Frank O Salisbury (1874-1962) The Property of The British Council of Churches’, Christie’s, 25 September 1985, Lot 118 This is a study for Alfred The Great Repairing the Walls of the City of London, commissioned by Sir Charles Wakefield and presented by him to The Royal Exchange, London, in 1912.

CECIL ARTHUR HUNT Cecil Arthur Hunt, VPRWS RBA (1873-1965) Once elected a full member of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1925, Cecil Arthur Hunt retired from his career as a barrister and turned his serious pastime of painting into a profession. While he had first established himself as a painter of mountains, especially the Alps and the Dolomites, he soon proved himself a master of a great variety of topographies. The impressive, often stark, effects that he achieved rival those associated with his friend and mentor, Frank Brangwyn. Cecil Arthur Hunt was born in Torquay, Devon, on 8 March 1873, the son of the highly regarded writer and geologist, Arthur Roope Hunt. He was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge, studying Classics and Law, and being called to the Bar in 1899. He treated painting and writing as serious pastimes until 1925, when he was elected to the full membership of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours. He then relinquished his legal career to become a professional painter.

Hunt had first exhibited in 1900, at the Alpine Club Galleries, and had held his first major show a year later, alongside E Home Bruce at the Ryder Gallery. An enthusiastic amateur climber, he first established himself as an atmospheric painter of mountains, especially of the Alps and Dolomites. However, he was soon accepted as a master of a great variety of topographies, for he exhibited the products of his wide travels frequently and extensively. Favourite destinations included the West Country, the West Coast of Scotland, the Rhone Valley, Northern Italy, Rome and Taormina. Hunt developed an unusual watercolour style of scraping through semi-wet bodycolour with a palette knife, thereby modelling shadows and shapes and giving a sculptural quality to his watercolours. Another idiosyncratic technique he used was to polish the surface of a work with a silk handkerchief or an agate to emphasise its transparent qualities and apparent depth. He was keen to impart his technique to younger watercolourists and published widely including a six-part treatise on it in The Artist between June and November 1936. From 1911, until his death, Hunt lived at Mallord House in Chelsea, especially designed for him by Sir Ralph Knott to

65 Vallemaggia Signed Inscribed ‘Val Maggia’ on reverse Watercolour and bodycolour 16 3⁄4 x 22 1⁄2 inches

Vallemaggia Cecil Arthur Hunt travelled through Switzerland to Italy via the Vallemaggia in 1924. His sketchbook of that trip are full of sketches and diary notes of his travels including those of Locarno and Bellinzona.

include a large studio on the ground floor. During the summer months he and his family retreated to the farm estate of Foxworthy, on the edge of Dartmoor. Hunt showed work regularly at the Royal Academy (from 1912), the Royal Society of British Artists (from 1914) and the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours (from 1918). He was elected a member of the RBA in 1914, an associate of the RWS in 1919, and a full member six years later. He acted as the Vice-President of the RWS for a three-year period from 1930. His many substantial solo shows included six at the Fine Art Society (1919-34) and one at Colnaghi’s (1945). Following his death, in August 1965, he was the subject of a large memorial show at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours.

Chris Beetles has done much to revive interest in the work of Cecil Arthur Hunt. He mounted a large-scale retrospective exhibition in 1996 at his London gallery, on the exact site of the artist’s first substantial show in 1901. The retrospective was accompanied by a definitive catalogue, which remains available from the gallery, as both a paperback and a limited edition hardback. The notes on the works of Cecil Arthur Hunt are written by Fiona Nickerson.

66 Byzantine Church, Daphni Signed and inscribed ‘Daphne’ Signed, inscribed with title and exhibition number, and dated 1930 on Fine Art Society label on original backboard Watercolour, bodycolour and pencil 19 x 14 1⁄4 inches Exhibited: ‘The Isles of the Aegean and Beyond, Recent Watercolours’, Fine Art Society, 1930, no 7 Byzantine Church, Daphni Hunt travelled to Greece and Italy in May 1931, His sketchbook of that tour contains a sketch of ‘Daphne’ [sic] and is inscribed ‘With Curtis Green RA & Mrs G. Venice in a few days then steamer to Athens via Corinth Canal. Voyage in Greece & Car to Hanging Monasteries of Meteora etc etc back from Brindisi up East Coast of Italy to Stresa on L Maggiore’.

67 Highland Sunset Signed Signed and inscribed with title on original backboard Watercolour and bodycolour 12 x 16 1⁄2 inches Provenance: William Macdonald Exhibited: Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, 1961, no 603 (bought by William Macdonald)

68 Hills of Skye Signed and inscribed with title Watercolour and bodycolour 11 3⁄4 x 16 3⁄4 inches

69 Duntulm Castle, Skye Signed Watercolour and coloured chalk 15 1⁄2 x 22 inches Provenance: William Macdonald Possibly the work exhibited at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Art, 1935, no 706 as ‘Ruins at Duntholm, Skye’ Duntulm Castle, Skye Cecil Arthur Hunt visited the Isle of Skye and sketched Duntulm Castle on a touring holiday of Scotland in July 1930. Once the seat of the Chiefs of Clan Macdonald of Sleat, the ruins of Duntulm Castle stand on the north coast of Trotternish, Isle of Skye.

70 Top of the Pass Signed Watercolour 8 1⁄4 x 10 3⁄4 inches

CHARLES KNIGHT Charles Knight, ROI VPRWS (1901-1990) The Sussex landscape painter, Charles Knight, channelled the tradition of English watercolour painting in order to produce his own original contribution. As a result, he became a pillar of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours and received acclaim, from William Russell Flint, as the ‘star turn’ of the Recording Britain scheme.

For a biography of Charles Knight, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 2008, page 24. In 1997, the Chris Beetles Gallery hosted ‘… More Than a Touch of Poetry’, an important retrospective exhibition of the work of Charles Knight, organised in conjunction with the Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, and Hove Museum and Art Gallery. It was accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.

71 Incoming Tide at Spekes, North Devon Signed Watercolour and bodycolour with pencil on tinted paper 11 x 15 1⁄2 inches Exhibited: Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, Spring 1970, no 141

72 Beech Tree in Early Spring. Study in New Timber Avenue. Sussex Signed Signed and inscribed with title on reverse Watercolour 14 3⁄4 x 21 3⁄4 inches

73 The Stable A Preparatory Study Watercolour 8 3⁄4 x 13 inches

74 The Stable Signed and dated 43 Watercolour with pencil 14 1⁄2 x 19 1⁄2 inches Provenance: Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield; Fine Art Society, July 1987 Literature: Michael Brockway, Charles Knight RWS ROI, Leigh-on-Sea: F Lewis, 1952, no 195, plate 30 Exhibited: Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, Autumn 1943, no 43

JOHN PIPER John Egerton Christmas Piper, CH LG (1903-1992) From the outset of his career, John Piper proved to be multi-talented, for he earned his living as an art and theatre critic while establishing himself as a painter and stained-glass designer. Though central to the Modern Movement in Britain during the 1930s, he soon moved away from pure abstraction to a personal form of Neo-Romanticism inspired by many aspects of landscape, both native and foreign. Instrumental in reviewing notions of Englishness, he wrote British Romantic Artists (1942) and was an ideal choice for involvement in Recording Britain (1940) and as an Official War Artist (1944). Sustaining a radical versatility, his later achievements included a notable series of settings for the operas of Benjamin Britten, as well as impressive bodies of oils, watercolours, murals, prints and illustrations.

John Piper was born in Epsom, Surrey, on 13 December 1903 and studied at Epsom College (1917-21). A talented writer and artist from an early age, he kept topographical and architectural notebooks and illustrated his own privately printed books of poetry. Reluctantly, he became an articled clerk in the office of his solicitor father (1921-26), leaving to study art on his father’s death. Following his study under Raymond Coxon at Richmond College of Art (1926), Piper held his first exhibition (of wood engravings) at the Arlington Galleries. He then attended the Royal College of Art, where he studied painting under Maurice Kestleman and lithography and stained glass under Francis Spear (1927-29). He left the Royal College early, in order to marry Eileen Holding, who had been a fellow student at Richmond. He earned his living writing art and theatre criticism for The Listener and the New Statesman, and spent time painting and making stained glass. However, he soon met Myfanwy Evans at the Suffolk home of his friend Ivon Hitchens, and dissolved his first marriage in order to marry her. Elected to the London Group (1933) and 7 & 5 Society (1934), Piper began to take an active interest in Modernism. He made constructions and collages which show the influence of Ben Nicholson and, with Myfanwy Evans, co-edited Axis, the pioneering journal of abstract art (1935-37). However, his increasingly direct knowledge of Picasso and European Modernism and, conversely, his continued topographical preoccupations, encouraged Piper to distance himself from Nicholson’s approach. Instead he tended to assimilate these disparate influences, as in the Landscape Collages (1936-38), which made use of watercolour and gouache, and which were inspired by Paul Nash. His interest in a sense of place was encouraged by John Betjeman, who in 1937 commissioned the Shell Guide to Oxfordshire.

Piper spent much time working over the established categories of British landscape. Instrumental in reviewing notions of Englishness, he wrote British Romantic Artists (1942), and was an ideal choice for involvement in Recording Britain (1940) and as an Official War Artist (1944). During the Second World War, he painted bombed churches and would later revitalise many buildings with his stained glass (from 1954) and tapestries (from 1966). From before the war, he was already an important muralist and stage designer, producing the curtain for the first definitive performance of Sitwell & Walton’s Façade (29 May 1942) and a notable series of settings for the operas of Benjamin Britten (from The Rape of Lucretia, 1946). These many and varied projects find their roots in his work as a watercolourist. His finest work as a painter was produced in the 1940s, and includes a commission from Queen Elizabeth (the late Queen Mother) to make watercolours of Windsor Castle, and one from Osbert Sitwell to paint oils and watercolours of the Sitwell family homes at Renishaw, in Derbyshire and Montegufoni, near Florence. The Sitwell pieces were exhibited at a major solo show at the Leicester Galleries (1945) and used to illustrate Osbert’s autobiography. At the end of the decade, Piper became preoccupied with the motif of Snowdonia, and made many highly acclaimed watercolours and oils. In later years, Piper took a number of official roles, serving as a Trustee for both the National and Tate galleries and sitting on the Oxford Diocesan Advisory Committee, the Royal Fine Art Commission and the Arts Council panel. As a reward for such work, and for a lifetime’s achievement as an artist, he was made a Companion of Honour (1972). Major retrospectives were held at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1979) and the Tate Gallery (1983). He died at Fawley Bottom, Oxfordshire, on the 27 June 1992. His work is represented in the Goverment Art Collection and the Royal Collection, and in numerous public collections, including the British Museum, Tate and the V&A; The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), Manchester Art Gallery, Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery and The Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester); National Museum Wales (Cardiff ); and Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge MA). A recent significant addition to the extensive bibliography of John Piper is: Frances Spalding, John Piper, Myfanwy Piper. Lives in Art, Oxford University Press, 2009.

75 St Thomas Becket, Fairfield, Kent Signed Watercolour with ink and bodycolour 14 x 19 inches

St Thomas Becket, Fairfield, Kent The tiny church of St Thomas Becket stands isolated on Romney Marsh, the village that it served having long since disappeared. It was originally constructed in the twelfth century of a wooden frame and walls of wattle and daub. Then, in the eighteenth century, the walls were rebuilt in brick, and the interior transformed by a triple-decker pulpit and box pews, all painted in white. John Piper was greatly drawn to this space, which seems to combine the architectural and the organic, and included a watercolour of it in his book on Romney Marsh, which was published as a King Penguin in 1950.

ED WARD BAWDEN Edward Bawden, CBE RA (1903-1989) One of the most significant graphic designers of the twentieth century, Edward Bawden worked with ease between the fine and applied arts. Even before his appointment as an Official War Artist in 1940, he had established a reputation as a designer, illustrator and painter, and the output of his long career included ceramics, lithographic prints, murals, wallpaper designs and watercolours. For a biography of Edward Bawden, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 2006, pages 40-41.

76 The Foundry Signed Watercolour and coloured inks 14 1â &#x201E;2 x 19 1â &#x201E;2 inches

His work is represented in numerous public collections, including the British Museum, the Imperial War Museums, Tate and the V&A; and Braintree Museum, Chelmsford Museum, The Fry Art Gallery (Saffron Walden) and The Higgins Bedford. Further reading Douglas Percy Bliss, Edward Bawden, Loxhill: Pendomer Press, 1979; Justin Howes, Edward Bawden. A Retrospective Survey, Bath: Combined Arts, 1988; Tribute to Edward Bawden, London: The Fine Art Society, 1992; The World of Edward Bawden, Colchester: The Minories, 1973; Dr Malcolm Yorke, The Inward Laugh. Edward Bawden and his Circle, Huddersfield: Fleece Press, 2005

STANLEY ROY BADMIN Stanley Roy Badmin, RWS RE AIA (1906-1989) Throughout his career, S R Badmin used his great talents – as etcher, illustrator and watercolourist – to promote a vision of the English countryside and thus of England itself. By underpinning his idealism with almost documentary precision and detail, he was able to produce images that appealed to all, and could be used for a great variety of purposes, from education through to advertising. The wellbeing suggested by each rural panorama is all the more potent, and pleasing, for the accuracy of each tree and leaf, and the plausibility of the slightest anecdotal episode. 77 Spey Valley near Kingussie Signed Signed, inscribed with title and dated 1950 below mount Watercolour with pen and ink 9 1⁄4 x 14 3⁄4 inches Literature: Park Browman and others, The British Countryside in Colour, London: Odhams Press, 1950, between pages 144-145, as ‘In the Valley of the River Spey, near Kingussie, Inverness-Shire’ Exhibited: ‘S R Badmin RWS. The English Landscape, an Exhibition of Watercolours’, Leicester Galleries, March 1955, no 31, as ‘Spey Valley’

78 Leith Hill from the South Signed and inscribed with title Inscribed ‘Leith Hill’ below mount Signed and inscribed with title and ‘(March)’ on original RWS label Watercolour with pencil 5 1⁄2 x 10 inches Exhibited: Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, Spring 1982, no 42; ‘S R Badmin RWS’, June 1985, no 15

For a biography of S R Badmin, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 2004, pages 36-37. His etchings are represented in numerous public collections, including the British Museum; the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford); Aberystwyth University School of Art; and the Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University (NY). Chris Beetles has been the leading authority on S R Badmin for the last 30 years, since he mounted a large-scale exhibition and published S R Badmin and the English Landscape (1985). Earlier this year, he presented a further major exhibition of over 200 unseen works, mostly from the Badmin Estate. This was accompanied by the catalogue, S R Badmin RWS: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, which includes a second edition of Chris Beetles’ catalogue raisonné of the prints, a newly-researched chronology, bibliography and a list of exhibitions. Both the original book and the new catalogue are available from the gallery.

PETER COKER Peter Godfrey Coker, RA (1926-2004) ‘One of the foremost realist painters in England … Coker will be remembered for the refreshing nature of his astringent vision, for his consummate mastery as a draughtsman, painter and etcher, and as proud and vigorous inheritor of a great artistic tradition.’ (Frances Spalding, Independent, 20 December 2004)

Peter Coker was born in London on 27 July 1926. He first studied at St Martin’s School of Art (1941-43; 1947-50), and began to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy from 1950. Though he was a contemporary of John Bratby and Edward Middleditch at the Royal College of Art (1950-54), his work related only briefly to the raw figuration of the Kitchen Sink School. This was signalled by his paintings of a Leytonstone butcher’s shop which were included in his highly successful first solo show (Zwemmer Gallery 1956). His development as a landscape painter originated in his first encounter with the canvases of Gustave Courbet on a trip to Paris (1950). By the mid 1950s, he was an established landscapist in the French manner, working from the motif on the coasts of Normandy (1955) and Brittany (1957), and drawing inspiration from such contemporaries as Nicholas de Stäel. Later in the decade, he revived the spirit of Barbizon in his paintings of Epping Forest. Coker moved with his family to Manningtree in Essex (1962), and added occasional appearances at Colchester School of Art to teaching at St Martin’s. Nevertheless, he concentrated on his work, and made time for painting trips to France, the North of England and Scotland. He held solo shows at the Zwemmer Gallery (1960s), the Thackeray Gallery (1970s) and Gallery 10 (1980s), and continued to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy. He was elected an Academician (ARA 1965, RA 1972), and had his early images of the butcher’s shop presented at the RA in one of an increasing number of public retrospectives (1979). From 1972, Coker made several visits to Bargemon, Provence, during which he gradually accepted the character of the South of France, and integrated its startling light and colour into his established palette and handling. Late in the decade, he applied this approach to an ideal motif, in beginning a series of paintings of the garden of the Clos du Peyronnet, Menton. Following the death of his son Nicholas in 1985, he stayed at Badenscallie, Ross-shire, Scotland. There he began an impassioned series of landscapes, extended on subsequent visits, which focussed on salmon nets drying at Achiltibuie. These reaffirmed his essential identity as ‘a northern painter’, which had actually become more strongly emphasised by his contrasting achievement of painting the south. The many studies and paintings inspired by both Mediterranean France and the West of Scotland comprised important elements of

such recent retrospectives as that of drawings and sketchbooks at the Fitzwilliam Museum (1989) and that of paintings and drawings at Abbot Hall Art Gallery (1992). In October 2002, Chris Beetles mounted a major retrospective of the work of Peter Coker and, at the same time, launched the artist’s authorised biography. The beautifully produced hardback book, with over 250 illustrations, contains contributions from Richard Humphreys (Tate Gallery), John Russell Taylor (The Times), and David Wootton (Chris Beetles Ltd). The book includes a comprehensive biography and chronology, essays, appraisals of his work, a catalogue raisonné and lists of his exhibitions and sketchbooks. While the monograph and retrospective were being planned, it seemed that the artist’s career might have been drawing to a close. However, the joint project revived his energies significantly. This was manifested by a range of new work shown at Chris Beetles Gallery during Spring 2004. The motifs were mostly familiar, being drawn from existing sketchbooks, and ranged across France and encompass Britain. Yet the handling was freer than ever, and the palette more vibrant – accomplishments of which Peter was justifiably proud. This display was complemented by an exhibition of Parisian subjects, touring to Gainsborough’s House, in Sudbury, the Royal Academy of Arts, in London, and the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield. Peter Coker died in Colchester, Essex, on 16 December 2004. His work is represented in numerous public collections, including Tate; and Museums Sheffield.

79 Normandy Beach Signed Charcoal and coloured chalk on tinted paper 22 x 30 inches Provenance: Fine Art Society, 1968; Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation

80 Cuillin Hills, Bruack na Frithe Signed Oil on paper 22 x 29 inches Provenance: Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation Literature: David Wootton, Peter Coker RA, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2002, page 125, Catalogue Raisonné no 197 Exhibited: ‘Peter Coker’, Thackeray Gallery, 1972, no 7

81 Kinlochbervie, Sutherland Signed, inscribed with title and dated 68 Coloured chalk with charcoal on paper laid on board 21 1⁄4 x 53 1⁄4 inches Provenance: Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation Exhibited: ‘Peter Coker ARA, Pastels’, Stone Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1969, no 1; ‘Peter Coker ARA Paintings and Drawings’, Thackeray Gallery, 1970, no 13

82 Bargemon Signed with initials, inscribed with title and dated 80 Pen ink, watercolour and bodycolour 22 x 30 inches Provenance: Costa Georgopoulos Literature: David Wootton, Peter Coker RA, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2002, page 133,Catalogue Raisonné no 401 Exhibited: ‘An Exhibition by Peter Coker of Drawings and Watercolours 1955-1989’, Gallery 10, OctoberNovember 1989, no 2

83 Achvraie from Tigh a’Sgiobair Signed Oil on linen 44 1⁄2 x 49 inches Provenance: FlemingWyfold Art Foundation Literature: David Wootton, Peter Coker RA, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2002, page 137, Catalogue Raisonné no 487 Exhibited: Royal Academy of Arts, Summer 1986, no 608

84 Salmon Nets, Achiltibuie Signed with initials, inscribed with title and dated 87 Watercolour, bodycolour and ink 13 1⁄2 x 23 inches Sketchbook no 26, pages 31 & 32 Illustrated: David Wootton, Peter Coker RA, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2000, page 170 Exhibited: ‘Peter Coker RA’, October 2002, no 92

85 Quiberville Signed with initials Inscribed with title on reverse Watercolour and bodycolour 15 3⁄4 x 23 inches Sketchbook no 31, pages 17 & 18 Exhibited: ‘Peter Coker RA’, October 2002, no 124

86 North Sea Oostende Signed with initials Signed, inscribed with title and dated 1987 on reverse Oil on canvas 53 3⁄4 x 85 1⁄2 inches Provenance: Costa Georgopoulos Literature: David Wootton, Peter Coker RA, London: Chris Beetles Ltd, 2002, pages 107 & 140, Catalogue Raisonné no 539, as ‘North Sea [also known as “Promenade Ostend”]’ (illustrated on page 107) Exhibited: ‘Peter Coker: An Exhibition of Scottish Landscapes’, Gallery 10, June 1988, no 7, as ‘North Sea’

DONALD HAMILTON FRASER Donald Hamilton Fraser, RA (1929-2009) His boldly-handled and richly-coloured semi abstracts established Donald Hamilton Fraser as one of the most distinctive Modernist painters of the immediate postwar generation.

Further reading Clare Hinton, Donald Hamilton Fraser. A retrospective: metamorphosis not metaphor, Tilford: CCA Galleries/Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2009

For a biography of Donald Hamilton Fraser, please refer to Chris Beetles Summer Show, 2012, page 23

87 Sussex Landscape Oil on board 15 x 17 1â &#x201E;2 inches

88 Flowers in a Green Space Signed Oil on canvas 24 x 29 1â &#x201E;2 inches Provenance: Gimpel Fils, London

89 Landscape Signed with initials Oil on paper 12 x 17 3â &#x201E;4 inches

90 Reflected Moon Signed on label on reverse Oil on board 27 x 35 inches Provenance: Gimpel Fils, London

91 Blue Landscape Signed and dated 57 Oil on canvas 28 x 36 inches Exhibited: Gimpel Fils, London, November 1958, no 23, purchased by Godfrey Winn

92 Cliffs and Sea, South Coast Oil on canvas 11 1⁄2 x 14 1⁄4 inches

KEITH GRANT Keith Frederick Grant (born 1930) One of the greatest living British landscape painters, Keith Grant has travelled extensively, and has confronted the elements in order to produce extraordinary, resonant images of nature, especially in the north. Recently, he has preferred to recollect his experiences in the tranquility of his studio in Norway, and work imaginatively to produce an exciting series of what he calls ‘autobiographical’ paintings. Keith Grant was born in Liverpool on 10 August 1930. Educated at Bootle Grammar School, he left at the age of 13 to work in the local Co-op. He received his first opportunity to practise as a painter while doing National Service in the RAF. In turn, classes at the Working Men’s College, Camden, enabled him to enroll at Willesden Art School (1952-55). Going on to the Royal College of Art (RCA) (1955-58), he studied under Colin Hayes, John Minton, Kenneth Rowntree and Carel Weight, and gained a silver medal for mural painting.

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (1994), which entitled its retrospective ‘Fire and Ice’, so encapsulating his landscape art. Not exclusively a landscapist, Grant has produced illustrations, abstract sculpture, mosaic designs and portraits in oils, including a commission to paint HRH Prince Andrew (1994). Grant settled in Norway in 1996, and now lives in the village of Gvarv, in Telemark, with his Norwegian wife and their daughter. Nevertheless, he has exhibited internationally, and continues to travel widely. For instance, in 2001, he accepted an invitation from the British Antarctic Survey to co-inaugurate its Artists and Writers’ Programme (with fellow painter Philip Hughes). This resulted in an appearance on BBC television news in an item on Antarctica. Other recent projects include stained glass and mosaic decorations for Charing Cross Hospital (2000), and a portrait of the Oxford Professor of Poetry, Sir Geoffrey Hill, 2015

Having encountered the work of Turner and Palmer early in his development, Grant fell under the influence of such Neo-Romantic painters as Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland while at the RCA.

Representing Keith since 2009, the Chris Beetles Gallery held the highly successful solo show, ‘Elements of the Earth’, in 2010, and is busy preparing a major monograph on the artist for publication in the near future.

Yet, in his devotion to landscape, he has explored many places not previously painted by British artists.

His work is represented in the Government Art Collection and numerous public collections, notably The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge).

Supported by Colin Hayes, Grant developed a particular enthusiasm for northern terrains, visiting Scotland, Iceland (on at least four occasions) and – most significantly – Norway. He first visited Norway in 1957 and, feeling an immediate affinity with the land and its people, began to incorporate motifs inspired by the country into his work. Travel scholarships took him back to Norway in 1961 and 1976, and he returned there again and again. During part of this period, he was Head of Painting at Maidstone College of Art (1969-71). From the early 1980s, Grant seized opportunities to explore contrasting climes. In 1982, he accepted an invitation to French Guiana to paint the launch of the Ariane rocket, and exhibited the resulting works in the following year at the Paris International Air Show. This led to visits to Sarawak (1984), Cameroon (1986) and the Negev Desert in Israel (1988), and later to Venezuela (1992). Still devoted to the cold north, he worked in Arctic Greenland during 1989. At the end of the decade, Grant began to exhibit his paintings in a series of significant solo shows. Venues included London dealers: Cadogan Contemporary (from 1989), the Crane Kalman Gallery (1989), the Gillian Jason Gallery (1990) and Cassian de Vere-Cole (1994). He also showed at Roehampton Institute (1992), where he was Head of Art, and The

Portrait of Sir Geoffrey Hill – Oxford Professor of Poetry 2010-2015.

1961-1989 Gudbrandsdalen Gudbrandsdalen is the valley of ‘Gudbrand’ in the Norwegian county of Oppland, directly north of Oslo. It is frequently mentioned in the eleventh-century saga, Heimskingla, or Chronicle of the Kings of Norway.

93 Gudbrandsdalen Signed and inscribed with title, and dated 61/62 on reverse Oil on board 9 1⁄4 x 17 inches

‘The clouds in great avenues receding from us as we move across the green blue-grey of the Atlantic. Blinding light as the sun strikes near cloud. Enormous cumulus – all shades of blue, rose-grey, pearl-grey, distance shot with the palest hues.Through the racing mist and, far below, the chased and rippling surface of the sea. 56

The ocean burnished by the weather into great pools of cloud-reflecting light.The coast of Iceland, then the view of Surtsey, and the small volcano erupting violently.The great steam masses higher than the largest cumulus. Distance. Clarity. Blueness. A sense of the earth moving beneath one, and the sense of travelling North.The mystery of the mist over the great glaciers.’ (Keith Grant, Journal, 14 May 1966)

Iceland’s Atlantic In 1966, a loan from his dealer, Roland Browse and Delbanco enabled Keith to make his second trip to Iceland. He remembers that,

94 Iceland’s Atlantic Signed Inscribed with title and dated 1967 on reverse of original frame Bodycolour and charcoal 12 x 23 1⁄2 inches

I was teaching at Hornsey College of Art then. I took their photographic assistant with me to take the photographs, and we were given a small aeroplane, and so we flew around an island that had come out of the sea next to Surtsey. It’s been washed away now … it was called Syrtlingur, and I’ve got some very dramatic pictures of that – movie picture as well. I’d made quite a few paintings based on that experience for an exhibition at the New Art Centre, which Max Wykes-Joyce commented on in Arts Review. He asked why more artists hadn’t taken an interest in aerial views of the earth.

95 Harstad I Signed and inscribed with title and dated 62 on reverse Oil on board 8 3⁄4 x 30 inches

Harstad I Harstad is a municipality in Troms County, in northern Norway. Keith Grant first stayed there in 1960. He remembers that ‘there was a particular line of cliffs on the island of Hinnøya off the coast. You could look across the straight, and these cliffs impressed me enormously’. In the late 1970s, he used a view of the same cliffs in one of the paintings that he dedicated to the memory of Benjamin Britten.

‘I have produced a composition with a Norwegian fishing boat. It is all there: the calm in the cold mornings when the grey light (or blue like a whale’s back) is the dulled luminosity of the sun that does not set. A breathless chill greyness when a sound carries across the water. An oar dropping into a boat startles the cormorants on a far distant rock. A cough as the man in morning sullenness bends to lift the nets into the large vessel alongside.The eminence of great mountains, diaphanous breath issuing from forest and fissure. The hours of suspended life: a great codfish deep in the glassy depths of the fjord: upwards a cold lens-eyed stare.’

(Keith Grant, Journal, 4 October 1971) 96 The Lofoten Islands Signed and dated 71 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches

97 The Red Mountain Signed, inscribed with title and ‘One of the series of “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”’, and dated 1972 on a card originally attached to stretcher Acrylic on canvas 24 x 48 inches

The Red Mountain This is a painting from Keith’s series, ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’, inspired by a famous work of the same name by the seventeenth-century Japanese poet, Matsuo Bash . The first works were painted in watercolour and ink and the later ones in acrylic. In 1973, the Scottish Arts Council mounted a touring exhibition of the series, which opened in Edinburgh in November 1973 and ended at Aberdeen Art Gallery in April 1974. A notice in Art and Artists described the exhibition in the following way: The main feature is a series of 24 canvasses representing a continuous horizon of the north Norwegian coast line, each picture standing for 1 hour of the day. The exhibition will also contain other large paintings and numerous small works from the artist’s successful series of acrylics entitled ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’. It has been Keith Grant’s sole concern to give the North an articulate visual expression parallel to those in music and literature. The inspiration for the work comes largely from a journey to the far north of Norway and Scotland.

98 The Cloud Forest, Gunung Api, Sarawak Signed, inscribed ‘Cloud Forest G Api Sarawak’ and dated 85 Signed, inscribed with title and dated ‘July 85’ on reverse Oil on board, 22 x 25 3⁄4 inches

The Cloud Forest, Gunung Api, Sarawak In 1984, Keith visited Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. Mount Api, known as Gunung Api in Malay, is one of the peaks in a limestone range.

99 Snow -12ºC Signed and inscribed with title and ‘Lofoten Series’ Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Lofoten Series’, ‘Gallery North no 6’ and dimensions in inches, and dated ‘May 87’ on original backboard Acrylic and bodycolour 8 1⁄2 x 14 1⁄4 inches 100 Rough Sea, Rain, Winter Light Signed, inscribed with title and dated 10/76 Watercolour, bodycolour and ink on board 14 1⁄2 x 14 1⁄2 inches

Be’ersheva Night Israel In 1988, Keith spent a week in Be’ersheva, Israel, as guest artist to the Ben Gurion University of the Negev and the British-Israel Art Foundation. The present painting is based on drawings that he made in a sketchbook now in the collection of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 101 Be’ersheva Night Israel Signed, inscribed with title and dated 89 Signed, inscribed with title, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated 89 on reverse Oil on board 34 x 26 inches Exhibited: ‘Keith Grant: Paintings of the Arctic and the Desert’, Crane Kalman Gallery, 27 February-17 March 1990

NEW PA INTINGS

102 Earthsong Signed, inscribed with title and dated ‘Aug 2014’ Signed, inscribed ‘“Earthsong” repainted August 2014 over existing drawing (work)’, ‘“Nature, Memory, Nature” repainted Aug 2014 “retitled”’, ‘for Andrew and Sarah Lambirth’ and with medium and size, and dated 8/9 2012 and ‘Nov 2012’ on reverse Oil on canvas 39 1⁄2 x 79 inches

‘The new painting I may designate as “The Song of the Earth” if only because I have introduced the image of a nightingale!!’ ––––– ‘Today I signed the painting “Earthsong” and dated it on this last day of August. I feel it is the culmination of the past 2 years’ work to forge a style waiting for spontaneous and initiative release which needed only the courage to relinquish the attachments of a previous life … I am now thinking of a sister work but removed from the intimacy of the forest to the intimate infinity of space.The theme will be of a marine nature – of the ocean and symbols of its denizens – some easy to identify but most of a specific identity.’ ––––– ‘The composition of Earthsong aims to portray the restless unfolding and presenting of nature, its advances … expressed by counterchanges in tone and colour.The more figuratively painted species of birds are like exclamation marks along the narrative way the painting takes. Elements are as if interwoven into the tapestry and pageantry of the natural world needing an abstraction of reality conforming to the special visual moments of the observer in the forest … Examining “Earthsong” as if it were a new-work produced by a different artist’s hand I can objectively see that work has all the nature philosophy such as philosophers from Hegel to Heidegger have striven to express in writing towards the ultimate definition of the being & meaning of nature.’ (Keith Grant, Journal, 25 August-1 September 2014)

103 Atlantis A Recreation of a Myth Signed, inscribed with title and dated 10/14 Signed twice, inscribed with title, medium and size, and dated ‘October 2014’ Oil on canvas 39 1⁄2 x 79 inches

‘The new canvas progresses.The provisional title is “Aphrodite” and it is I think this mythical, classical orientation which is responsible for the freedom of handling which compared to “Earthsong” is an act of pure liberation!!’ ––––– ‘The 3rd day of work on “Aphrodite” is a storm of marine incident in which fish and bird forms predominate.’ ––––– ‘I hope soon to have finalised the new “classical” marinescape which I may entitle “Atlantis”. Atlantis is a myth which may have some root in historical/geological fact. It is less plausible than Troy and I feel more suitable as a subject designate – if one were really needed – for the imaginative imagery of the new painting. Certainly, I have included images which relate at once to the classical world but purely from memory of museum visits and book sources. I have made no attempt to be historically accurate but have tried to infer something of the cult of the underworld and of the sky.The concept is derived from the mystery and romance of the maritime consciousness beginning with Homer and Thucydides.The works of the poet and the historian which I have read in translation have left an indelible legacy of imagery which I’m sure has influenced the new canvas.’ (Keith Grant, Journal, 3 September-3 October 2014)

104 The Rock Horse and the Mountain Signed and dated 6/2014 Signed, inscribed with title and dated ‘June 2014’ on reverse Oil and acrylic on prepared board 15 x 19 inches

105 Two Rock Horses with Pyramid Peak Signed, inscribed with title and dated 6/2014 on reverse Oil on canvas 11 x 15 inches

106 ‘Storm-Horse’ Emerging against a Window Signed and dated 7/14 Signed and inscribed with title, medium and dimensions in centimetres and inches on reverse Oil and acrylic with wax pencil on board 14 1⁄2 x 22 inches

107 The Horse, the Robin and Rainbow Signed and dated 2/15 Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in centimetres, and dated 31.1.2015 on reverse Oil on canvas 18 x 21 1⁄2 inches

108 The Sacred Grove Signed, inscribed with title and dated 7/14 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘In this work the garden at “Writers Block” Mallorca is of equal inspiration as the local forests in Norway and English woodland’, medium and dimensions in inches, and dated 7/2014 on reverse Oil and acrylic on board 12 x 17 1⁄2 inches

109 Transfiguration Signed and dated 12/14 - 2.1.2015 Signed, inscribed with title, dimensions in metres and dated ‘Jan/2015’ on reverse Oil on canvas 39 1⁄2 x 79 inches

110 Birth of the Phoenix Signed and dated 1/15 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Iceland ’66 and ’73’ and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘Jan: 2015’ on reverse Oil on board 29 x 36 1⁄4 inches

111 Predella to Birth of Phoenix Signed Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Gvarv’, ‘Triptych’ and dated ‘24/1/2015/ Jan: 2015’ on reverse Oil on canvas Three canvases, each measuring 11 3⁄4 x 11 3⁄4 inches

112 Seawards Signed Signed, inscribed with title, medium, and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘Jan: 2015’ on reverse Oil on canvas, 11 3⁄4 x 11 3⁄4 inches 113 Birth of the Phoenix II Signed Signed, inscribed with title and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘Jan: 2015’ on reverse Oil on canvas, 23 1⁄4 x 19 3⁄4 inches

114 Towards the Unknown Signed and dated 1/15 Signed, inscribed with title, ‘Diptych’ and dimensions in centimetres, and dated ‘Jan: 2015’ on reverse Oil on canvas Two canvases, each measuring 11 3⁄4 x 11 3⁄4 inches

ANTHONY GREEN Anthony Eric Sandall Green, RA HonRBA HonROI LG NEAC (born 1939) No visitor to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition can overlook the work of the painter and printmaker, Anthony Green. His large, irregularly shaped oils rehearse the experience of his life, and especially his marriage, with exuberance, humour and passion. Anthony Green was born in Luton, Bedfordshire, on 30 September 1939, the son of Frederick Sandall Green and his French wife, Marie Madeleine Dupont.

He was educated at Highgate School, where his art teacher, Kyffin Williams, proved to be a positive influence. He then studied at the Slade School of Art, London, from 1956 to 1960. While there, he exhibited in the Young Contemporaries exhibitions, and met both Ben Levene, who became a lifelong friend and fellow Royal Academician, and Mary Cozens-Walker, who became his fiancée and muse. A bursary from the French Government enabled him to spend the year 1960-61 in Paris. On his return to London, in 1961, he married Mary, and in the following year established himself with his first solo show, held at his then dealer, the Rowan Gallery. At the same time, he returned to the Slade as a teacher (1962-63, 1964-66), and became a member of the London Group (1964). His expressionistic early work displayed the influence of Chaïm Soutine and Jean Dubuffet.

On receipt of a Harkness Fellowship in 1967, Green spent two years in the United States, living in Leonia, New Jersey, and Altadena, California. During this time, he began to work from memory, a process that resulted in complex figurative works on a large scale. These soon became a regular feature of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, at which Green first showed in 1966. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1971, and a full Academician in 1977, the year in which he won the Exhibit of the Year Award at the Summer Exhibition. Then, in 1978, his work became the subject of a touring show that began at Rochdale Art Gallery. Many domestic and international solo exhibitions followed, including a tour of Japan in 1987, and a tour of British cathedrals in 2000. Elected a member of the New English Art Club in 2002, Green has also become an honorary member of both the RBA and ROI. Other honours include his election as a Fellow of University College (1991) and the award of an honorary doctorate by the University of Buckingham (2011). He lives in Little Eversden, in Cambridgeshire. His work is represented in numerous public collections, including Tate. Further reading Martin Bailey (ed), A Green Part of the World: Paintings by Anthony Green, London: Thames and Hudson, 1984

115 Patisserie Venot, Argenton Sur Creuse before 1962 – A Memory Signed Signed, inscribed 'Patisserie Venot' and dated 2001 on reverse Oil on shaped board 41 x 48 inches overall

SYDNEY HARPLEY Sydney Charles Harpley, RA FRBS (1927-1992) The work of Sydney Harpley always surprised and delighted: dancers, acrobats, girls on swings were posed and executed with equal audacity and elegance. Establishing the single female as his favourite subject while still a student, he rose to become the most popular sculptor, not only among Royal Academicians but among all who exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions. Sydney Harpley was born in Fulham, London, on 9 April 1927. The son of an electrician and cabinet maker, he grew up in Dagenham, and spent the war years as an evacuee in Berkshire and Bedfordshire. Though talented in both art and music, he left school at the age of 14 to take up an apprenticeship as an electrician. He went on to work at an American air base, and would later cite aircraft as a formative influence on his artistic development, describing planes as ‘sculptures in space’. Even more instrumental in his decision to become a sculptor was his encounter with the carved head of Ramases II, in Cairo, during National Service with the Royal Engineers (1945-48). On his return home, he took evening classes in drawing while working at a factory in Roehampton making artificial limbs. In 1951, he became a full-time student of sculpture at Hammersmith School of Art, and two years later began to study under John Skeaping at the Royal College of Art.

116 Nude Reading 1984 Signed and numbered 7/9 Bronze 23 inches long Number seven from an edition of nine Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1984, no 1076

While still a student, Harpley established the single female figure as his favourite form; he exhibited examples at the Young Contemporaries and at the Royal Academy, and sold his first pieces to the National Gallery of New Zealand and the artist Fleur Cowles. In 1956, the year of his first marriage, he returned to Hammersmith as a part-time teacher and began to receive commissions for portrait busts and public figure groups. In 1963, he fully established himself, winning a competition to create a portrait memorial to Jan Smuts for Cape Town, and being elected to the fellowship of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. From 1972, he taught part-time at Leicester Polytechnic, and while there met his second wife, Jo, an art historian specialising in costume. Marrying in 1981, they moved to Radigan Farm, Somerset (1986) and then to Kilkenny, in Ireland (1989). At the height of his career, Harpley became a Royal Academician (ARA 1974, RA 1981) and had a number of successful international solo shows, including two at the Chris Beetles Gallery in 1987 and 1990. He died in Dublin on 9 March 1992. Chris Beetles Gallery represents the Estate of Sydney Harpley, and is currently preparing a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s sculpture for publication in the near future. We would be most grateful if anyone who owns a Sydney Harpley sculpture, purchased from any source over the years, could contact the gallery to provide edition numbers and details to help complete the Catalogue Raisonné.

117 Girl on a Swing Signed and numbered 1/9 Bronze 20 x 25 inches excluding base Number one from an edition of nine This is very similar to the life-size girl on a swing produced for the Singapore Botanical Gardens. The life size was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1984 with a medium size, which may be this one.

68 118 Conversation 1991 Signed and numbered 4/12 Bronze 6 inches high Number four from an edition of twelve

119 Girl on a Swing 1985 (left) Signed and numbered 7/9 Bronze 39 inches high Number seven from an edition of nine Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1985, no 1324 120 Girl on a Swing 1978 (opposite) Signed and numbered 1/6 Bronze 68 inches high Number one from an edition of six Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1978, no 981

SYDNEY HARPLEY

121 Raining 1986 Signed and numbered 7/9 Bronze 37 1â &#x201E;2 inches high Number seven from an edition of nine Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1986, no 1230

JAMES BUTLER James Walter Butler, MBE RA FRBS RWA (born 1931) One of Britain’s foremost figurative sculptors, James Butler is well known for both his public commissions, large and small, and his personal compositions. Having gained a thorough grounding in carving early in his career, he then developed equal mastery as a modeller. He has since created many cherished monuments in Britain and abroad that stand securely in a tradition that can be traced from Donatello through Charles Sargeant Jagger to Giacomo Manzù. James Butler was born in New Cross, London, on 25 July 1931, the second of three children of Walter Butler, a stevedore, and his wife, Rosina (née Kingman). He enjoyed drawing from an early age, and received encouragement from his parents. In early childhood, he moved with his family to West Malling, in Kent, about six miles west of Maidstone, where his father had built a house. During the Second World War, his father was conscripted to work on building projects. However, he sadly died of pneumonia when James was 10 years old, leaving his mother to support the family. She turned the house into a roadside café, called The Haven, and eventually remarried. During that time, she would try to persuade James to show his drawings to the customers, but he was reluctant to do so.

became friendly with James and invited him to become an apprentice carver. Once he had completed his National Diploma at St Martin’s, James left Giudici temporarily in order to undertake two years of National Service. He served in the Army, working on codes with the Royal Signals, mostly in Germany. When on leave, he stayed with his mother, who had settled in West Norwood, South London. On completing National Service, James worked again with Giudici as a full-time carver. During this period, he was involved in the carving of many architectural sculptures by William McMillan, Charles Wheeler and James Woodford, including the Queen’s Beasts at Kew Gardens. At the time that he returned to the employ of Giudici, he followed the advice of colleagues and enrolled in evening classes at the City and Guilds of London Art School. As a former Rome Scholar, his teacher, Bernard Sindall, directed him to the work of the Italian sculptors in the modelling tradition – Giacomo Manzù, Marino Marini and Medardo Rosso – and they would prove to be most influential in his development.

While at West Malling, James attended Maidstone Grammar School. He got on particularly well with one teacher, who was both his art master and the careers adviser. When he reached the age of 16, James told him that he wanted to go to art school, and was encouraged to do so. James went to Maidstone School of Arts and Crafts, with the intention of becoming a painter. However, the foundation course introduced him to a wide range of artistic techniques and practices, and the opportunity to model clay proved a revelatory experience, soon sparking an obsession with sculpture. While at Maidstone, James studied sculpture under Sydney Birnie Stewart, known as Jock. When Stewart moved to St Martin’s School of Art, he encouraged James to join him there, and persuaded his mother to fund his further study. In moving back to London, he stayed with an aunt in Camberwell. At St Martin’s, James studied under Sydney Stewart and the Head of Sculpture, Walter Marsden, and had high regard for both of them. During James’s last term at St Martin’s, Marsden decided that his students had had no practical experience. As a result, he employed the stone carver, Gerald Giudici, to show them how to use a pointing machine to copy a plaster cast into stone. Though Giudici’s demonstration did not go well, he

James Butler in his Studio

James was awarded the Beckwith Scholarship, and Sindall arranged for him to stay at the British School in Rome for about a month. While there, he was able to look closely at the work of Manzù and Marini, and also at the ancient art that had inspired them, especially that of the Etruscans. When David McFall took over from Bernard Sindall at the City and Guilds, in 1956, Butler was offered a job teaching there. At first he refused, and took up a scholarship at the Royal College of Art. However, after being at the RCA for some time, he found that he lacked the freedom that he had had at the City and Guilds. So, in 1960, he returned and took up the teaching job. In order to focus on this new position, he also left the employ of Giudici. Creating the atmosphere of an atelier, in which he and his students worked together in parity, James particularly enjoyed his early years of teaching. At the same time, he established himself as a sculptor, carving a reclining figure for a position outside the City and Guilds, in Cleaver Square, and beginning to exhibit at the Royal Academy. His success was marked, in 1964, by his election as an Associate of the Royal Academy, making him the youngest Academician at the time. For a while, James lived alongside other artists, at the Abbey Art Centre, Barnet, and Digswell Arts Trust, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. Then, in 1966, he moved to Greenfield, Bedfordshire, and, for the next 20 years, lived and worked in the Victorian former village schoolhouse.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, James created stage sculptures for productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, including Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, and at English National Opera in London. He also produced waxworks for Madame Tussauds, including one of The Beatles for its London premises and others of Rembrandt and his family for Amsterdam, in association with the designer, Timothy O’Brien. Elected a full Royal Academician in 1972, James began to receive significant international commissions, including one of Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenyan President. The majestic 12 foot seated figure, placed in the centre of Nairobi, proved a turning point in his career. Most immediately, it led to a commission from Zambia for a Monument to Freedom Fighters to stand outside Freedom House, in Lusaka.

122 The Pensive Ballerina Signed, inscribed with title, numbered ‘VII/X’ and dated ’87 Bronze 31 1⁄2 inches high Number seven from an edition of ten Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1989, no 854

In 1975, James gave up teaching at City and Guilds to concentrate full time on sculpture. In the same year, he began a lasting marriage to Angie Berry, who would become a journalist and author. They settled at Valley Farm, Radway, Warwickshire, and there brought up their four daughters, and James’s daughter by a previous marriage.

James was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1981. Demand for public commissions has continued both in the United Kingdom and abroad, with notable achievements including: King Richard III in the Castle Gardens, Leicester, commissioned by the Richard III Society (1977); the Cippico Fountain, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, commissioned by the Constance Fund and awarded the Otto Beit Medal (1982); Field Marshall Earl Alexander of Tunis, at the Wellington Barracks, London, awarded the Silver Medal of the Royal Society of British Sculptors for the ‘Best Work Exhibited to the Public’ (1985); Sir John Moore, with attendant figures of Rifleman and Bugler, at the Sir John Moore Barracks, Winchester (1986); the Memorial to the Green Howards, a seated figure of a contemplative soldier, at Crépon, near the Normandy Landings (1996); and the Memorial to the Fleet Air Arm, the winged figure of Daedalus, which stands in the Embankment Gardens in London (2000).

In contrast to the towering figures for which he is so well known, James has made designs for the Royal Mint: the Royal Seal of the Realm (2001); the 50 pence piece, commemorating Roger Bannister’s 4 minute mile (2004); and the £5 coin to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar (2005). Honours have included election as a Senior Royal Academician (2006) and the award of an MBE (2009). He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy Schools. His recent monumental figurative sculptures include the Rainbow Division Memorial, a pietà placed, on 12 November 2011, at the site of the Battle of the Croix Rouge Farm in Picardy, France. On 14 June 2015, his statue of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in full garter robes will be unveiled at Runnymede, Surrey, in celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. James continues to work on commissions with undiminished enthusiasm and, on a much smaller scale, also spends much of his time producing sculptures of children, dancers and female nudes.

123 Little Dancer in Leotard Signed, numbered ‘A/C II’ and dated ’88 Bronze 25 1⁄2 inches high From an edition of ten Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1987, no 32

124 Young Ballerina Signed, numbered ‘VIII/X’ and dated ’85 Bronze, 28 3⁄4 inches high Number eight from an edition of ten Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1985, no 1366, as ‘Young Dancer’

125 Seated Dancer Signed and numbered ‘II/X’ Bronze 17 1⁄4 inches high Number two from an edition of ten Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 2009, no 564, as ‘Dancer Holding her Shoes, 2009’

127 Girl in an Armchair Signed and numbered ‘VII/VIII’ Bronze 7 1⁄2 inches high Number seven from an edition of eight

126 A E J Collins Signed, inscribed with title and numbered ‘VII/X’ Bronze 13 inches high Number seven from an edition of ten Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1998, no 683 A E J Collins (1885-1914), cricketer and soldier, made the highest ever recorded score in cricket: 628 not out, in June 1899 at Clifton School, Bristol.

128 Nude in Armchair with Legs Crossed Signed, numbered ‘I/X’ and dated 2011 Bronze 15 inches high Number one from an edition of ten

129 Girl Drying Her Hair (Bather Series) Signed, numbered ‘I/X’ and dated ’09 Bronze 24 1⁄2 inches high Number one from an edition of ten

130 Dance Spirit Signed and numbered ‘I/XII’ Bronze 21 inches high Number one from an edition of twelve Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 2006, no 128A

132 Daedalus Fleet Air Arm Memorial Signed, numbered ‘III/X’ and dated 2009 Bronze 17 3⁄4 inches high Number three from an edition of ten The life-size Memorial Statue was unveiled by The Prince of Wales at The Victoria Embankment Gardens, in London, on 1 June 2000.

131 Maquette for Rainbow Division Memorial (opposite) Signed, numbered ‘VI/X’ and dated 2011 Bronze 28 inches high Number six from an edition of ten Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 2011, no 1002 The life-size Memorial Statue was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 2011, as no 2. It was inaugurated at the Croix Rouge Farm, in Chateau-Thierry, Picardy, on 12 November 2011.

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY 8 & 10 Ryder Street, St Jamesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com