MODERN BRITISH

PAINTINGS AND PRINTS

Edward BawdenBarbara Jones

Paul NashJohn Piper

Eric RaviliousMichael Rothenstein

Julian TrevelyanEdward Wadsworth

Edward Bawden, born at Braintree, Essex studied at the Cambridge School of Art and at the Royal College of Art, London (RCA). Here he met his fellow student and future collaborator, Eric Ravilious; the pair were described by their teacher, Paul Nash, as “an extraordinary outbreak of talent”.

By 1930 Bawden was working one day a week for the Curwen Press, producing illustra-tions for leading accounts such as London Transport, Westminster Bank, Twinings and Poole Potteries. In the late 1930’s Bawden moved to Great Bardfield, Essex, only a few miles from Braintree, where he was born. Following his move to the country he began to paint more, in addition to his commercial design work, developing his watercolour technique.

During the Second World War Bawden was nominated Official War Artist. He taught at the RCA from 1930 - 1963 (minus the War years) and in 1968, became a tutor at the Royal Academy Schools and Senior Lecturer at Leicester College of Art and Design.

During the late 1950's and the 1960's Bawden produced the linocut and lithographs for which he is perhaps best known. He produced large prints on Kew Gardens and Brighton; on Liverpool Street Station and a series on the London Markets.

Public Collections holding Bawden include:British Museum Print Rooms; Cecil Higgins Art Gallery; Chelmsford Museum; Fry Art Gallery; Victoria & Albert Museum

edward bawden (1903 – 1989)

Caerhays Castle, Cornwall – Portico Front, 1983Watercolour50 x 65 cmsSigned lower right; signed, titled and dated verso

ProvenanceMiss E StevensThe David Paul Gallery, ChichesterThe Fine Art Society

£8,500 framed

Barbara Jones was born in Croydon, Surrey, where her family ran a high street saddlery. She studied at the Croydon School of Art and the Royal College of Art, in the footsteps of Edward Bawden, John Piper and Eric Ravilious. Like them, she was interested in the architecture, landscape and the folk and decorative arts of Britain. During the Second World War she was commissioned by The Pilgrim Trust to document historic buildings at risk from war damage. The paintings she produced were included in the landmark publication Recording Britain (1946-1949) and are now held at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

In 1951 she curated the ‘Black Eyes and Lemonade’ exhibition at the Whitechapel Gal-lery, as part of the Festival of Britain. She also produced lithographs and was regularly commissioned to paint large murals, notably for Selfridges, the Commonwealth Insti-tute and for the Design Council’s ‘Britain Can Make It’ exhibition. She was a prolific illustrator of books, and wrote and illustrated several of her own, including The Isle of Wight, Follies and Grottoes, Twit and Howlett and Design for Death. Most of the works, because of the nature of where they were created, have now disappeared.

During the 1940s Barbara Jones set about documenting this everyday art throughout Britain, visiting fairgrounds, tattoo parlours, taxidermists, houseboats, high street shops, seaside piers and amusement arcades. She befriended people who lived afloat on redundant canalways and studied the way they decorated their boats. She spent day after day in workshops where roundabouts were made, and watched in awe as these laby-rinths of wire and painted wood were slotted into place at the fair. Her journey was an epic undertaking and her achievement remains groundbreaking.

BARBARA JONES (1912 – 1978)

The Fairground, c.1940'sLithograph 49.5 x 76 cms Signed in plate

From The School Prints series

£200 unframed

paul nash (1889 – 1946)

Paul Nash was born in London and moved, soon after, to Iver Heath in the Buckingham countryside. He attended Bolt Court Commercial Art School and The Slade School of Fine Art (1910-11), and subsequent to his training, he produced designs for Roger Fry's Omega Workshops. After the War, he taught in the Design School at the Royal College of Art where his students included Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. Nash worked in a wide variety of media: oil, watercolour and wood engraving, as well as ceramics and glass. He also designed book jackets and textiles.

Nash was important because, in his capacity of Official War Artist in both World Wars, he painted some of the most iconic images. He helped introduce the British art estab-lishment and public to the excitements and potentials of European Modernism, and he helped to create the Surrealist movement in Britain.

Nash’s travels between the wars took him to Paris and to Italy. Here he encountered the avant-garde works of Matisse and Picasso, and of Georgio de Chirico who would become a leading inspiration for the Surrealists. Each of these artists would influence Nash’s work. In a metaphorical sense Nash travelled towards the same ground as these artists: away, that is, from the representational characteristic of his early work, via the abstract and towards the symbolic as evidenced in his later work.

Public Collections holding works by Paul Nash include:Tate, London; Aberdeen Art Gallery; V&A; British Museum; Ashmolean Museum; Im-perial War Museum; Leeds Museums and Galleries (City Art Gallery).

Landscape at Rye, c.1932Watercolour on paper38 x 56 cmsSigned lower left, annotated Camber Castle by Paul Nash 1924 verso

ExhibitedRoland, Browse and Delbanco

£20,000 framed

john piper (1903 - 1992)

Piper, born in Epsom, Surrey, trained at the Richmond School of Art, followed by the Royal College of Art, London.

Piper was appointed an official war artist in World War II from 1940-1942. The morn-ing after the air raid that destroyed Coventry Cathedral, Piper produced his first paint-ing of bomb damage, Interior of Coventry Cathedral.

Sir Osbert Sitwell invited Piper to Renishaw Hall to paint the house and illustrate an autobiography he was writing and Piper made his first of many visits to the estate in 1942. The family retain 70 of his pictures and there is a display at the hall.

Along with Patrick Reyntiens, Piper designed the stained glass windows for the new Coventry Cathedral, and later for the Chapel of Robinson College, Cambridge. He designed windows for many smaller churches and created tapestries for Chichester Cathedral and Hereford Cathedral. He was a set designer for the theatre, including the Kenton Theatre in Henley and Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff. He designed many of the premiere productions of Benjamin Britten’s operas, as well as for some of the operas of Alun Hoddinott.

180 of his works are in the Tate collection, including etchings and some earlier abstrac-tions. Major retrospective exhibitions have been held at Tate Britain (1983–1984), the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, the River and Rowing Museum,and the Museum of Reading.

Cottage by the Mill, c.1940/41Ink, watercolour and gouache laid on paper18 x 19.5 cmsSigned in black ink lower rightTitled below image

ExhibitionsAspects of Modern British and Irish Art,Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London, 2004, Cat.no.16

£14,000 framed

John PiperNursery Frieze II, 1937Colour Lithograph46 x 121.4 cmsSigned in pencilPublished by Contemporary Lithographs Ltd. Printed by Waterlow and Sons on machine-made lithographic cartridge paper.

£6,500 framed

eric ravilious (1903 - 1942)

Ravilious was born in Acton but grew up in Eastbourne, Sussex, where he studied until receipt of a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Student in the Design School of the College, Ravilious was taught by Paul Nash and became friends, and sometime work companion, with Edward Bawden.

Ravilious went on to design for Wedgwood who, in 1937, brought out the George VI commemorative Coronation Mug, and in the same year the Alphabet Mug and Nursery Ware designs. In 1938 Country Life published the book High Street, by J. M. Richards, for which Ravilious supplied a series of lithographs documenting the charms of certain Victorian high street shops.

Ravilious was appointed Official War Artist in 1940. His watercolours during this period document the setting up of coastal defences at, amongst other places, Newhaven in Sussex; he also worked on a series of lithographs which record life as a submariner patrolling the Channel waters. In 1942, aged 39, Ravilious was posted to Iceland, and in September he participated in an air/sea rescue on board a Hudson plane in search of an aircraft that had disappeared on the previous day. The Hudson itself, however, was lost and Ravilious, along with four others, never returned from this mission.

Public Collections holding Ravilious include:Aberdeen Art Gallery; Ashmolean Museum; British Museum; Imperial War Museum; London’s Transport Museum, Ministry of Defence Art Collection; Towner Art Gallery; Victoria & Albert Museum; Wedgwood Museum Trust.

Naturalist: Furrier: Plumassier, c. 1938 Lithograph 15 x 13.5 cmsUnsigned From the suite High Street. 24 coloured lithographs commissioned in 1938 by Country Life. Printed by the renowned Curwen Press

£450 framed

Letter Maker, c. 1938 Lithograph 15.3 x 13.5 cmsUnsigned From the suite High Street. 24 coloured lithographs commissioned in 1938 by Country Life. Printed by the renowned Curwen Press

£450 framed

Second Hand Furniture and Effects, c. 1938 Lithograph 20 x 14 cmsUnsigned From the suite High Street. 24 coloured lithographs commissioned in 1938 by Country Life. Printed by the renowned Curwen Press

£450 framed

Theatrical Properties, c. 1938 Lithograph17 x 14.8 cms Unsigned From the suite High Street. 24 coloured litho-graphs commissioned in 1938 by Country Life.

Printed by the renowned Curwen Press

£450 framed

michael rothenstein (1908 - 1993)

Born in Hampstead, London, was the youngest of four. He studied at Chelsea Poly-technic and Central School of Arts and Crafts, 1924-7. He had his first one-man show in 1938 and during World War II participated in the Pilgrim Trust Recording Britain project. In the early 1940s he moved to the north Essex village of Great Bardfield. After the War, he taught printmaking at Camberwell School of Art and was Art Fellow at Sheffield University in 1962. At Great Bardfield there was a small resident art commu-nity that included John Aldridge, Edward Bawden and Kenneth Rowntree. Rothenstein took an important role in organising the Great Bardfield Artists exhibitions during the 1950s. These exhibitions became nationally known and attracted thousands of visitors.

Rothenstein became one of the most experimental printmakers in Britain during the ‘50s and ’60s. As well as found objects such as wood offcuts and metal debris, he incorporated fresh 20th century imagery into his relief prints, combining photographic material with traditional woodcuts and linocuts. He illustrated several books including the first UK edition of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1937).

Numerous major galleries currently hold his work, including Tate Gallery, London and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He was made Hon. RE and elected a Royal Academician (RA) in 1983.

The Blue Window, 1943Watercolour, pen, ink and pencil25.4 x 33 cmsSigned top left

ExhibitedThe Redfern GalleryProvenanceW T Oliver Esq.

£6,000 framed

Timber Felling, c.1940'sLithograph 49.5 x 76 cmsSigned in plate

From The School Prints series

£200 unframed

julian trevelyan (1910 - 1988)

Julian Trevelyan, born in Surrey, was a renowned artist and printmaker. Trevelyan was educated at Bedales School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read English Lit-erature. He moved to Paris to become an artist, enrolling at Atelier Dix-Sept, Stanley William Hayter’s engraving school, where he learned about etching. He worked along-side famous artists including Max Ernst, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso.

In 1935, Trevelyan bought Durham Wharf, beside the River Thames in Hammersmith, London. This became his home and studio for the rest of his life and was a source of artistic inspiration to him. He became a confirmed Surrealist and exhibited at the Inter-national Surrealist Exhibition, held at the New Burlington Galleries in London.

During the Second World War Trevelyan served as a Camouflage Officer. From 1950 to 1955, he taught history of art and etching at the Chelsea School of Art. During 1955–63, he was tutor of engraving at the Royal College of Art, rising to Head of the Etching Department where he was influential to many younger printmakers, including David Hockney and Norman Ackroyd.

Trevelyan’s first solo exhibition was at the Lefevre Gallery in 1937. In July 1986, he was awarded a senior fellowship at the Royal College of Art and in September 1987 he was appointed a Royal Academician. Trevelyan married his second wife, painter Mary Fedden, in 1951.

To celebrate the centenary of his birth, an exhibition of his prints was held at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester in 2010. 105 of his artworks are now held in the collection of the Tate Gallery.

julian trevelyan (1910 - 1988)

Harbour, c.1940'sLithograph 49.5 x 76 cmsSigned in plate

From The School Prints series

£350 unframed

EDWARD WADSWORTH (1889 - 1949)Wadsworth was born in Cleckheaton, Yorkshire. After schooling in Edinburgh, he wanted instead to study art. His father sent him to study machine draughtsmanship at the Knirr School of Art, Munich. In Munich, Wadsworth spent as much time exploring non-technical drawing, printmaking and painting as attending to the subject for which he was enrolled. His desire to study painting was only strengthened, and he returned to England, not to take up work as a draughtsman, but to enrol at the Bradford School of Art, before winning a scholarship to attend the Slade School of Art, London (1909-1912).

During the war he was contracted to work as a camouflage artist painting the supply ships departing from British ports. After the war, however, he left for the Black Country, for ex-tended excursions to capture coal- quarries, furnaces and slag heaps in a series of ink and wash works which met, when exhibited in the Leicester Galleries 1920, with considerable acclaim. In the following year, Wadsworth travelled to Italy where he discovered the me-dium of tempera. Using tempera he produced a series of paintings of ports and harbours, one of which, Regalia (1928) was bought by the Tate Gallery. Wadsworth would continue to use tempera from this point on in his work.

In the early thirties, he joined the International Abstraction-Creation group and Paul Nash’s Unit One. His work whilst affiliated with these groups is characterised by more purely abstract depictions. At the end of his life, from 1945 till his death, he would again explore more purely abstract forms. But in the mid-thirties he returned to his maritime subject matter, to semi-abstract images of shipping, quaysides and port facilities, and these paintings are the ones for which Wadsworth is now, perhaps, best known.

Public Collections holding works by Wadsworth:Tate Gallery, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; London’s Transport Museum; Royal Pavilion of Art, Brighton.

Signals, 1942Colour lithograph101 x 76 cmsSigned in the stone, also with the artists name and the title within the decorative border.Published by the Council for Enlightenment of Music and the Arts (C.E.M.A.)

£4,000 framed

School Prints - A Brief History

Towards the end of the Second World War Brenda Rawnsley and her husband Derek had the idea of bringing contemporary art to young children who would otherwise not have had the opportunity to see ‘good’ work. Within a few years Brenda had set up School Prints Ltd to sell original litho-graphs to schools and had commissioned several of the most important living artists for her scheme.

The printing was undertaken by the Baynard Press from plates drawn by the artists, who were asked to use no more than six colours. The prints, being original lithographs, were often the first real art seen by young people of that period and

The Great Bardfield Artists

The Great Bardfield Artists were a community of artists who lived in Great Bardfield, a village in North-West Essex, England, during the middle years of the 20th century. The principal artists who lived there between 1932 and 1970 were John Aldridge, Edward Bawden, George Chapman, Stanley Clifford-Smith, Audrey Cruddas, Walter Hoyle, Eric Ravilious, Sheila Robinson, Michael Rothenstein, Kenneth Rowntree and Marianne Straub. The early 1960s saw the majority of the Great Bardfield artists leave the village.

Biographies sourced from:www.austindesmond.com

www.goldmarkart.comwww.bookroomartpress.co.uk

Artist portraits sourced from:www.littletoller.co.uk

www.nicholassinclair.comwww.bookroomartpress.co.uk

Above - Top: Some members of the Great Bardfield art community in 1958(L to R) Edward Bawden, George Chapman, Lawrence Scarfe (guest artist), Chloe Cheese (child), Sheila Robinson, Michael Rothenstein, Stanley Clifford-Smith & Walter Hoyle. Sourced from: creativeeffortsydney.blogspot.co.ukBottom: Eric and Tirzah Ravilious painting the Morecambe mural, 1933. Sourced from theibtaurisblog.com.