WILLIAM WILKINS
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Calle Widmann, Venice, 2013, oil on canvas, 25 x 32cm, Courtesy of the artist.
CONTENTS
Title: William Wilkins Author: David Fraser Jenkins ISBN: 9781905582891 Publication date: October 2014 Publisher: Graffeg Size: 300 x 300mm
Introduction by Geraint Talfan Davies
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Illustrations: Over 100 colour Price: ÂŁ35
The Paintings of William Wilkins by David Fraser Jenkins
Format: Hardback 160 pages
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William Wilkins: Professional Artist and Creator of Gardens by David Moore
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Early drawings 1968-1974
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Paintings 1974-1980
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Paintings 1981-1990
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Paintings 1991-2004
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Recent drawings
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Recent paintings
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Biography: William Wilkins
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Biographies: David Fraser Jenkins, David Moore, Geraint Talfan Davies
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William Wilkins, a monograph of drawings and paintings, publication Autumn 2014
The paintings of William Wilkins, one of Wales leading fine artists.
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William Wilkins CBE
Focusing upon the remarkable pointillist technique of the artist, this exhibition represents the long and celebrated career of the artist together with the slow maturation of his style.
William Wilkins was born in 1938. On his mother’s side, he is descended from the Physicians of Myddfai of Welsh legend and on his father’s side is the great great grandson of the architect of the National Gallery in London.
The work of William Wilkins is unique, both at the level of skill it displays and the length of time it occupies. Born of months, even years, of painstaking creation each picture exudes both artistry and joy; a celebration of perception which merits exposure to a wide audience.
Brought up in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, he trained at Swansea College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he had a series of sensationally successful exhibitions in leading New York and London galleries.
The pictures themselves are accessible both in terms of content and composition and will therefore appeal to a wide audience of art lovers.
William was also the founder chairman of the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust, Project Director of National Botanic Garden of Wales, founder and former director of the Aberglasney Restoration Trust, and founder and chairman of the Artes Mundi Prize. He was awarded the CBE in 2003 for services to the environment.
About the book The author David Fraser Jenkins examines both the early work of the ‘70s and the most recent. The book looks at the changes in subject matter and the development of William’s distinctive post pointillist technique. David Moore, curator and writer, charts the artist’s career, both as an artist and as a cultural promoter involved in both contemporary projects including the Artes Mundi arts prize and heritage landmarks National Botanic Gardens and restoration projects of Aberglasney House and Gardens and Llanelli House. The large format book is illustrated with over 100 drawings and paintings in a hardback bound edition size 300 x 300mm, with essays by David Fraser Jenkins, David Moore and introduction by Geraint Talfan Davies. The book is published October 2014.
This large format monograph book about the art of William Wilkins is published alongside a major exhibition of his work at the Martin Tinney Gallery Cardiff 6 – 29 November 2014. The publication coincides with William’s celebration of his long career of over 50 years as an artist.
Cover image: Sunlight, Cornus Florida, 2014 86 x 92cm, Courtesy of the artist.
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‘The paintings of William Wilkins are some of the most beautiful things that I have seen that have been made in my lifetime. What he has done is to slowly construct out of patches a kind of coloured veil or cloud. And as you look into it you can feel the long, long period of its making, and you re-imagine that slow time as a sequence of deliberate transformations of the material blobs of paint into a shimmering presence of the things he has been staring at.’ David Fraser Jenkins, former Senior Curator, Tate Gallery
Introduction by Geraint Talfan Davies Geraint Talfan Davies is Chairman of Welsh National Opera and the Institute of Welsh Affairs, and a Trustee of the Media Standards Trust. His media career in newspapers and broadcasting culminated in ten years as Controller of BBC Wales (1990-2000). Following his retirement from the BBC he became closely involved in the arts in Wales. He has been Chairman of CBAT, the Arts and Regeneration Agency, a board member of the Artes Mundi International Visual Arts Prize and the Wales Millennium Centre, and a Governor of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. From 2003-2006 he was Chairman of the Arts Council of Wales.
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Essay by David Fraser Jenkins David Fraser Jenkins was a curator at National Museum Wales in the 1970s, at a time when this collection was actively acquiring modern art. He then met William Wilkins at William’s first exhibitions. In 1980 he moved to the Tate Gallery, where he curated many exhibitions of modern British art including John Piper, Merlyn Evans, Gwen and Augustus John, Whistler Sargent and Steer, and Paul Nash for Dulwich Picture Gallery. He has written on art appreciation for many publications including the London Magazine. He recently completed for publication a monograph on John Piper, and has curated exhibitions of Piper at Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Imperial War Museum.
Essay by David Moore David Moore was born in 1958 and brought up in Brentwood, Essex. He worked in a housing department, read geography at Keble College, Oxford, and researched historic landscapes at Aberystwyth University. He worked for twenty years as a curator in Welsh museums and galleries. In Brecon he established a public art gallery and developed the regional art collection. He is currently an independent curator, consultant, publisher and writer with an interest in the visual arts. In 2012 he wrote A Taste of the Avant-Garde: 56 Group Wales, 56 Years. He is a trustee and former chair of a regional mental health charity.
San Giorgio and the Zitelle, Venice, 1999, oil on canvas, 60 x 70cm, Private collection.
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‘The quality which all the paintings have in common, whatever their ostensible subject matter, is that each is an epiphany of some kind. What they celebrate is complex. They are, obviously, very much concerned with the act of looking. It is a certain puritanism about this which gives them their astringency. The artist’s concern for how things really look, as opposed to the way that accepted artistic convention tell us they ought to look, is, as I have said, one of his major reasons for making them. But in addition, he is fascinated by the element of artifice inherent in all picture making. The real triumph of William Wilkins’ painting is that, for all their underlying complexities, our first sensation on encountering one of them is always a shock of delight. Their truest function is to communicate efficiently the very things that words cannot convey.’ Edward Lucie-Smith
‘There is something very original in his work – a purity of tone that sets his paintings apart from anything else that they may seem at first glance to resemble. His eye is utterly flawless in its analysis of the light that forms his principal subject matter, and his hand is unfaltering in rendering it. The result is a series of small pictures that add up to a triumph of the painter’s art.’ Hilton Kramer, The New York Times
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September Evening, 2010, oil on canvas, 29 x 43cm, Private collection.
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‘It is, above all, a visual authority – an eye that is expert in its analysis of light. The interiors with figures, especially those glimpsed in the vivid contrasts of lamplight, show us this authority in its most obvious and dramatic form. The “Woman Lying on Her Back” is one among several splendid examples. But even subtler and more beautiful are the “Gray Light” pictures of French architectural subjects. These remind one less of Seurat than of Pissarro in pearl-like purity of vision. And a similar pictorial authority is to be found in the sun-drenched landscapes. There is something both very modest and very courageous in the art Mr. Wilkins has given us in these pictures. And something very refreshing, too. Against all the emptyheaded injunctions of modernist ideology, he has dared to be himself, and go his own way. Bravo!’ Hilton Kramer, The New York Times
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‘William Wilkins was at once recognized as an artist of a certain distinction – small in scale, perhaps, but exquisite in sensibility. His subjects were then landscapes and figures, which he painted in a highly refined style that owned much to Seurat. To paint in this somewhat modified Pointillist manner represented a considerable challenge, of course, but Mr. Wilkins proved to have the requisite gifts. But in everything that Mr. Wilkins does there is a uniform quality – a delicacy of feeling that elevates a very fastidious technique to the level of poetry.’ Hilton Kramer, The New York Times
‘I can think of few modern painters who can paint a group of bowls or pots on a polished wood surface to such ravishing effect.’ John Russell Taylor, The Times
Two Lucie Rie Bowls, 2011, oil on canvas, 51 x 51cm, Courtesy of the artist.
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Sacca della Misericordia, Venice, 1974, pencil on paper, 54 x 74cm, Courtesy of the artist.
Château de Trèmazan, 1971, pencil on paper, 59 x 80cm, National Museum Wales.
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Mair Griffiths, 1974, pencil on paper, 30 x 43cm, Private collection.
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Two Figures in the Corner of a Room, 1979, oil on canvas, 50 x 56cm, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection.
Nude, 1978, oil on canvas, 35 x 35cm, Private collection.
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The Stucky, Venice, 1988, oil on canvas, 20 x 25cm, Private collection.
Rio de Noale, Venice, 1988, oil on canvas, 48 x 60cm, Private collection.
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The Guidecca Canal, Venice, 2006, oil on canvas, 28 x 42cm, Private collection.
Sotoportego Panada, Venice, 2011, oil on canvas, 35 x 50cm, Courtesy of the artist.
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Landscape, Light Leaving, 2007, oil on canvas, 45 x 60cm, Private collection.
Autumn Landscape, Rain, 2007, oil on canvas, 44 x 60cm, Private collection.
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Still Life Two Tables, 1986, oil on canvas, 71 x 101cm, Courtesy of the artist.
Still Life: Three Lucie Rie Bowls, 1985, oil on canvas, 94 x 126cm, Private collection.
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Still Life, Lucie Rie Bowl, 2013, oil on canvas, 60 x 76cm, Courtesy of the artist.
Still Life, Koyama Vessels, 2014, oil on canvas, 27 x 36cm, Courtesy of the artist.
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WILLIAM WILKINS The work of William Wilkins is unique, both at the level of skill it displays and the length of time it occupies. Born of months, even years, of painstaking creation each picture exudes both artistry and joy; a celebration of perception which merits exposure to a wide audience. Focusing upon his remarkable pointillist technique this book represents the long and celebrated career of the artist together with the slow maturation of his style.
‘I can think of few modern painters who can paint a group of bowls or pots on a polished wood surface to such ravishing effect.’ John Russell Taylor, The Times
‘The real triumph of William Wilkins’ painting is that, for all their underlying complexities, our first sensation on encountering one of them is always a shock of delight. Their truest function is to communicate efficiently the very things that words cannot convey.’ Edward Lucie-Smith
www.graffeg.com £35
‘The paintings of William Wilkins are some of the most beautiful things that I have seen that have been made in my lifetime.’ David Fraser Jenkins
‘There is something very original in his work – a purity of tone that sets his paintings apart from anything else that they may seem at first glance to resemble. His eye is utterly flawless in its analysis of the light that forms his principal subject matter, and his hand is unfaltering in rendering it. The result is a series of small pictures that add up to a triumph of the painter’s art.’ Hilton Kramer, The New York Times
www.graffeg.com
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