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MARK BARROW FINE ART

MODERN BRITISH ART

Cover image

BEN NICHOLSON (1894-1982)

Pegtop (Feb 1963)

DETAIL

MARK BARROW FINE ARTSpecialising in Modern British Art

+44 (0)20 8286 1853+ 44 (0)7790 802146

[email protected]

ARTISTS

Michael AYRTONJohn BRATBY

Anthony CURTISJohn COPNALLJohn CRAXTON

Alan DAVIERoy Turner DURRANT

John FARNHAMElisabeth FRINK

Terry FROSTBryan KNEALE

Alexander MACKENZIEBernard MEADOWS

John MINTONChristopher Richard Wynne NEVINSON

Ben NICHOLSONJohn PIPER

Alan REYNOLDSGraham SUTHERLAND

Keith VAUGHANPatrick VENTONBryan WYNTER

2486, 16103142, 19, 22, 279, 135, 23117152811, 2018731294, 212512, 2630

September 2012

Paintings

Prints

Sculpture

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1TERRY FROST (1915-2003)Composition (1956)Oil on paper30" x 22" (760mm x 560mm)Signed and dated lower right

Exhibited: Terry Frost, Works on Paper, 25 Years 1947-72, Austin/Desmond, London (cat. no. 28 ill. pg 6)

Provenance: Private Collection, UK

"Seeing is a matter of looking and feeling, for things do not look exactly like you think they do. To look with preconceived

notions of visual experience is to destroy the possibility of creating again that experience in paint. If you know before you

look, then you cannot see for knowing."

Sir Terry Frost, RAPublished in 'Nine Abstract Artists' (1954)

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2ROY TURNER DURRANT (1925-98)Walberswickshire (1957)Oil on board32" x 47" (810mm x 1220mm)Signed and dated lower left(Signed, dated and inscribed verso)

Exhibited: Modern British Artists, London, 2006

Provenance: Private Collection, London (purchased from the above)

My Art Is MeMy art is me or nothing is my art;

And rob the circle over me of more than crooked handOr bludged thigh sizes under me before I reach the core

Or nothing left beyond but scrapes it dry and leaves a frond,A nothing of a me or never start

To make or cry the sullen room below;My art is me or nothing is my art.

I would not cry if all the skin were black,The tarry hide exposed under the preying birds,

Or never left it down without a belt of art;My sin is me or nothing is my soul.

If I cry once at worlds of word inside,If I am worth a jot (and damn the psalters on the shelf),

My art is me or nothing is my art.I am the justice of the signs that turvy in my cage,

I am my art or nothing I have left is worth a jot.

Roy Turner DurrantPublished in 'A Rag Book of Love' (1960)Mark Barrow Fine Art represents the artists' estate

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3JOHN CRAXTON (1922-2009)Portrait of a Tunisian (1971)Ink and gouache on board13" x 9½" (330mm x 240mm)Signed and dated lower right

Exhibited: Christopher Hull Gallery, London

Provenance: Private Collection, Ireland

"I can work best in an atmosphere where life is considered more important than art - where life is itself an Art. Then I find it's possible to feel a real person - real people, real elements,

real windows - real sun above all. In a life of reality my imagination really works."

John Craxton

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4GRAHAM SUTHERLAND (1903-80)Landscape with Vines (1949)Ink, gouache and pastel on paper6½" x 6½" (165mm x 165mm)Signed upper right

This work is accompanied by an inscribed photographauthenticating the painting, signed by Kathleen Sutherland

"I believe that a new vision must be grafted on reality - that the mysteriously intangible must be made immediate and tangible,

and vice versa. My forms are based on the principles of organic growth (with which I have always been preoccupied). I find these organic forms best for my purpose. They give me a

sense of the shock of surprise which direct evocation could not do. I am trying to return these forms, after drastic

rearrangement and formal modification, to a field of greater visual response - to throw them back, as it were, into the

original cradle of impact."

Graham Sutherland, OM

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5ELISABETH FRINK (1930-93)Falling Cat (1955)Pencil, ink and wash on paper30" x 18" (760mm x 455mm)Signed and dated lower right in red

Provenance: Private Collection, USA (purchased in 1956 as a wedding gift, thence by descent)

After the Second World War, a new generation of British sculptors emerged, including Lynn Chadwick, Reg Butler,

Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull, Bernard Meadows and Elisabeth Frink. These young artists, mainly still in their

thirties, sought to reflect something of the horror of war and the age of the atom bomb. Many used the imagery of animals,

insects and birds to depict the torments and trauma of the human condition in war, and it was Herbert Read, in his essay for the Venice Biennale catalogue, that first coined the phrase

'The Geometry of Fear', which would succinctly sum up the feelings and images of a post-war generation.

"These new images belong to the iconography of despair, or of defiance … here are images of flight, of ragged claws

'scuttling across the floors of silent seas', of excoriated flesh, frustrated sex, the geometry of fear … Their art is close to the

nerves, nervous, wiry.… these British sculptors have given sculpture what it never had before our time - a linear, cursive

quality.

Herbert ReadPublished in 'New Aspects of British Sculpture' (1952)

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6ANTHONY CURTIS (b.1928)Spring Painting (1957/60)Oil on masonite50" x 24½" (1220mm x 620mm)Signed and dated lower right(Signed, dated and inscibed verso)

Exhibited: Reading Exhibition, 1961

Provenance: Direct from the artist

"I regard our reality as ultimately a mystery. Our philosophies, religions, arts and sciences represent the seeker in us and I

feel that beauty is the aspect common to them all."

Anthony CurtisAnthony Curtis is represented by Mark Barrow Fine Art

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7BEN NICHOLSON (1894-1982)Pegtop (Feb 1963)Pencil, gouache and black crayon on paper12" x 8½" (304mm x 216mm)(Signed, dated and inscibed verso)Presented in the artists' original frame

Exhibited: Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York


Think of the [paintings], not as 'pictures' but as 'objects' - objects possessing a certain kind of life, objects absorbing

and giving back life. If you start hanging a few abstract Nicholsons in a room you will soon find how powerful this life is. They become parts of the space you live in. The "identitiy

between canvas and idea" has become absolute: [Nicholsons] painting[s] cross the conventional boundary between 'art' and

'life'.

Sir Kenneth ClarkPublished in Penguin Modern Painters

Anthony Curtis is represented by Mark Barrow Fine Art

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8JOHN BRATBY (1928-92)Self Portrait with Cat (1955)Oil on masonite44" x 48" (1120mm x 1220mm)Signed upper right

Exhibited: John Bratby, Beaux Arts Gallery, Dec 1956-Jan1957 (cat. No. 16)

1955/56 was a very important period in Bratby's career: his work was included in the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; he won the Daily Express

Young Artists' Exhibition; had two solo shows at Helen Lassore's celebrated Beaux Arts Gallery; represented Great Britain for the first time at the Venice Biennale; and was joint winner, along with Ben Nicholson, of the Peggy Guggenheim National Award for painting. The Tate also acquired their first

Bratby, 'Still Life with Chip Frier', in 1956.

'Self Portrait with Cat' is one in a series of major self portraits, completed in the evenings whilst lecturing at Carlisle School

of Art (1955-56). Bratby has depicted himself at the easel literally in the act of painting, surrounded by what has become

his celebrated trademark iconography, i.e. 'kitchen sink' detritus - empty bottles, matchboxes, rags and discarded

objets d'art - capturing perfectly the clutter and mood of urban domestic life in post-war fifties Britain.


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9JOHN FARNHAM (b.1942)Composition with Arms (1975)Bronze on Slate Base (ed. 1/7)22" high (560mm high)Inscribed, numbered and dated underneath


Growing up next door to Henry Moore in Perry Green, Much Hadham, it would have been surprising had the

impressionable and inquisitive young Farnham not been interested in all the comings and goings of Moore's garden.

Many years later, and after a lengthy apprenticeship that included all aspects of sculpture, from building armatures and making enlargements, to patinating every size of bronze cast, Farnham became Moore's personal assitant in 1960, working

with the artist until his death in 1986.

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10JOHN COPNALL (1928-2007)Vertical Structure: Red & Yellow (1961)Oil on canvas36" x 24" (915mm x 610mm)Signed and dated upper left(Signed, dated and inscribed verso)

Exhibited: John Copnall: Landscape Forms, Modern British Artists, London, 2004

Provenance: Private Collection, London

"I want to make painting with a powerful impact from a distance and which draws you right into itself; will show you

more right up close, and later, when you are away, it will stay with you and make you want to come back to discover more.

I am tired of the over intellectualization of art. I am tired of public exhibition of personal neuroses. I am dubious about the

spirital content attributed to abstract art, often by the artist. Abstract art needs no justification. Abstract art simply is."

John CopnallMark Barrow Fine Art represents the artists' estate

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11JOHN MINTON (1917-57)Study of a Boy (c.1954)Ink and wash on paper8¼" x 11" (210mm x 280mm)


"No one mirrors his age clearer than the artist... for it's something to do with having real love for the subject, having a

real anxiety it will escape: not just tolerating it as a possible subject, but loving it. A man who paints puts his heart on the

wall, and in the painting is the man's life: he makes the subject his own, a love of certain things, people, moods,

atmosphere, shapes, forms, landscapes."

John MintonPublished in 'Dance Till the Stars Come Down', by Frances Spalding (1991)

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12PATRICK VENTON (1925-87)Studio Objects (with Pots) (1953)Oil on canvas12" x 14" (305mm x 355mm)

Exhibited: Patrick Venton - A Point of Departure, Modern British Artists, 2007

Provenance: The artists' estate

[Venton's] early 1950's works are painted thickly with vibrant colour. In this series of small studio still-lifes, partly inspired by Nicolas de Stael's paintings, we see him coming more into his

own. Large, pallete-knife-impastoed blocks of frayed-edged colour, through which painted under-layers are visible, are

juxtaposed with a rough precision. His subject here is haphazard studio clutter - abstracted into sublimely raw

compositions in highly varied palettes - and a viewer of these early 50s studio still-lifes might take them for landscapes, or

indeed abstracted inscapes. Venton's paintings transcend ordinary notions of time, space and subject matter, rooted

deeply as his inceasingly visionary creations are in the distilled imagination.

Philip VannWriter, critic and author

Mark Barrow Fine Art represents the artists' estate

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13JOHN FARNHAM (b.1942)Variation on a Female Form (1970)Bronze on slate base (ed. 2/7)22½" high (570mm high)Inscribed, numbered and dated underneath


Farnham has spent over forty years in travel and research that has taken him from one end of Europe to the other and

far beyond. First-hand observations of cultures Asiatic, European and American, both ancient and modern can be

found in his work, adding to it an unexpected quirkiness.

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14ALAN DAVIE (b.1920)For the Soul of a Bird (No.13) (1975)Oil on canvas48" x 60" (1220mm x 1525mm)(Signed, dated May 1975 and inscribed verso)

Exhibited: Galerie Faber, Brussels, Feb 1976

Provenance: Gimpel Fils, London Private Collection, Germany

"Self-expression is something contrary to art. Prehistoric and primitive art can be said to be an expression of philosophy, full of acknowledged beauty, and revealing aesthetic sensibility as

a thing common to man. Art is the evocation of the inexpressible by images, symbols, sounds, movements of

rituals. Sometimes I think I paint simply to find enlightenment and revelation."

Alan Davie

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15ALEXANDER MACKENZIE (1923-2002)St.Just, Penwith (c.1952)Oil on board21½" x 6¾" (550mm x 165mm)

Provenance: Fred Woodford Collection (purchased directly from the artist in 1953), thence by decent

Mackenzie's roots lie in a systematic, visual abstraction from nature. The landscape is a source for all his imagery. He is

drawn to an austere, rocky topography... [and] is fascinated by ancient contours. Mackenzie stated "all my painting has its

origins in visual experience." Herbert Read and Roland Penrose wrote about him as 'a painter who possesses great

sensibility for atmospheric and subtle gradiations of tone... [and through] his discrimination and well-ordered

arrangements of his canvases he is able to evoke that mysterious blossoming of colour from outcast skies and the

deep perspectives seen through haze that belong inevitably to his native landscape [of Cornwall].'

Peter DaviesPublished in 'St. Ives Revisited' (1994)


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16ANTHONY CURTIS (b.1928)Fragment of a City (1961/62)Oil on masonite51" x 30" (1295mm x 760mm)Initialled lower right(Signed, dated and inscribed verso)


"I regard our reality as ultimately a mystery. Our philosophies, religions, arts and sciences represent the seeker in us and I

feel that beauty is the aspect common to them all."

Anthony Curtis


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17BRYAN KNEALE (b.1930)Head (1980)Bronze on slate base (unique)9" high (230mm high)(Signed and inscribed underneath)


"I think all my work is about the problem of what one sees and what one knows and the attempt to fuse the two... and in a

special sense disrupt them."

Prof. Bryan Kneale, RA

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18CHRISTOPHER RICHARD WYNNE NEVINSON (1889-1946)City of London from Waterloo Bridge (c.1935)Photogravure on cream wove6¼" x 8¼" (160mm x 210mm)Signed lower right

This print is taken from an ink and oil study of thesame title, held in the collection of The Museum of London

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19ROY TURNER DURRANT (1925-98)Lavenham Landscape (1963)Mixed media on paper22" x 26" (560mm x 660mm)Signed and dated lower left(Signed, dated and inscribed verso)

Exhibited: Modern British Artists, London, 2008

Provenance: Private Collection, London (purchased from the above)

Love In The LandFrom the bubbles and bursts of the lively land

We come, we come.And the world is weird and womany and wild!

And I love the lush of the watery grave in the trees,Under the lemon blurble moon, and the skirts of leaves.

I love the murmur in the land and the birds' smilesFrom the yard, where the scarecrows wave and pitch the

black upside.

Roy Turner DurrantPublished in 'A Rag Book of Love' (1960)Mark Barrow Fine Art represents the artists' estate

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20JOHN MINTON (1917-57)Apple Orchard, Kent (1951)Lithograph on paper (Second series No. 8)19" x 29" (480mm x 735mm)

Commissioned by J. Lyons & Co Ltd, printed byChromoworks Ltd.

Although uneditioned, only 1500 copies of each printin the series was ever produced. The majority werepasted to the walls and mirrors of Lyons teashopsacross the UK and when the shops closed in the1960s/70s the prints were lost or destroyed. As aresult very few copies now remain intact. Even onesthat were framed at the time tend to have sufferedand are often faded, discoloured or stained.

This copy has never been stuck down or framed,making it an extremely rare example.

Although uneditioned, only 1500 copies of each print in the series was ever produced. The majority were pasted to the walls and mirrors in Lyons teashops across the UK and when the shops closed in the 1960s/70s the prints were lost or destroyed. As a result very few copies now remain intact. Even ones that were framed at the time tend to have suffered and are often faded, discoloured or stained.


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21GRAHAM SUTHERLAND (1903-80)Opencast Coal Production (1943)Pencil, chalk, watercolour, ink, gouache and oil stick on paper9½" x 8" (242mm x 205mm)

Between 1940-45, Sutherland was employed as anofficial war artist as part of the War Artists Scheme.

This work was executed at the opencast coal minesat Pwll-du near Abergavenny, Wales in late 1943.

"In the quarries the chaos of form was bewildering. I had to find for my pictures an ordered chaos, which still retained

characteristics of chaos... it was the idea of a quarry and what it stands for transcending nature, and formed in my mind and

emotions, which interested me."

Graham Sutherland, OM


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22ROY TURNER DURRANT (1925-98)Bole Forms (1953)Gouache on paper27" x 19" (685mm x 480mm)Signed and dated lower left

Literature: Roy Turner Durrant by Peter Davies, Sansom & Co Ltd, 2011 (ill. pl. 15)

Provenance: Direct from the artists' estate

"In my work I am more concerned with contemplation and sensational reality than with representation and the merely visual... even so, I sometimes arrive in the end at a design

which is partially, if not quite, representational; designs such as these, however, are to me by-products of an inquisition

primarily concerned not with what the eye sees, but with what the intellect and emotion experience."

Roy Turner DurrantMark Barrow Fine Art represents the artists' estate

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23ELISABETH FRINK (1930-93)Bird (1965)Bronze (unique)9" high (228mm high)Signed on the base

Exhibited: Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York

Literature: Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture - Catalogue Raisonne, Harpvale, 1984 (no. 143, ill. pg. 167)

Provenance: Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above exhibition)

Sarah Kent observed in her essay for the catalogue to accompany a major exhibition of Frink's work in 1985 that 'the birds soon took on more overt military references, their wings

and bodies armoured with metallic plates to resemble invincible fighting machines and to epitomise the ruthless

savagery of conquest. They stalk their prey on long legs, their hunched backs, slit-open mouths and armoured heads

suggesting a malicious, almost human intelligence.' Frink herself described the series as "really expressionistic in

feeling, in the emphasis on beak, claws and wings. The birds were really vehicles for strong feelings of panic, tension,

aggression and predatoriness. [Although] specifically based on the forms of ravens and crows... they were indeed implying

more than the generalized physical body of a bird."

Elisabeth Frink, CH, DBE, RA


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24MICHAEL AYRTON (1921-75)Study on the theme of Temptation of St. Anthony (1943)Gouache, ink, pastel and wash on paper22½" x 13½" (570mm x 345mm)Signed and dated lower left

Peter Cannon-Brookes comments that 'Ayrton painted his own arms and legs to shadow the muscles and emphasize the

veins before executing, with the use of mirrors, the figure of St Anthony from himself. This was exceptional, marking his deep

emotional relationship with [the subject], since Ayrton very rarely worked from posed models'.

"The prime conscious purpose I have in painting is to celebrate the splendour of visual appearances and so to affirm

what are to me the noble and tragic implications of human existance. In doing so I am vitally aware of the continuous

extension of my own experience. Nevertheless, my experience is often inadequate, and I need and cherish a

sense of history, of continuity and of parallels."

Michael Ayrton

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25KEITH VAUGHAN (1912-77)Figure Holding a Shirt (1945)Gouache, pen and ink wash on paper8¾" x 5¾" (222mm x 145mm)Signed and dated Dec 25/45 lower right(Inscribed and dated on label verso)

Provenance: Hamet Gallery, London, where purchased by Peter Bowles

Vaughan's male figures are, in David Thompson's words, 'unintellectual atheletes, men not gods, idealized labourers

rather than kings. One of his most powerful and most beautifully developed gifts is an ability to inform a stylized

sequence of forms with a precise knowledge of how bodies and limbs articulate... concentrated in the silouette, in the

long, sprung arcs that are so typical of his drawing. The contour is all boldly unequivocal linear statement, but as in only the finest drawing, the line powerfully suggests, even

defines, the type of volume it encircles.'

Andrew LambirthPublished in 'Keith Vaughan Paintings & Drawings' (Osborne Samuel, 2007)

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26PATRICK VENTON (1925-87)Studio Still Life (1956/7)Oil on masonite48" x 36" (1220mm x 915mm)

Exhibited: Modern British Artists, 2007 (works from the artists' estate)

Provenance: Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above)

Venton's 'subject' was the large Victorian mahogany table in his studio, which, says Zena (his wife), "was covered in jars,

tins, saucepans... anything which contained anything. He would never arrange the objects... things would just

accumulate and get dustier and dustier."

Published in 'Patrick Venton: A Point of Departure'

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27ROY TURNER DURRANT (1925-98)Sea Form (1952)Gouache on paper20" x 16" (685mm x 480mm)Signed and dated lower leftInscribed with title lower right

Provenance: Direct from the artists' estate

"I work instinctively. I am not at all analytical. I rarely look at others' work. I look at nature. I look at women. I look at God's

wonderful world."

Roy Turner DurrantMark Barrow Fine Art represents the artists' estate

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28BERNARD MEADOWS (1915-2005)Fallen Bird (1958)Bronze on shaped wooden base10" x 6¼" (255mm x 160mm)Stamped with monogramCat. No. BM 51

Literature: Bernard Meadows: Sculpture & Drawings, Alan Bowness, Lund Humphries, 1995 (pg. 140)


Alan Bowness observed that 'Meadows animal sculptures carry an emotional charge that is immediately translatable into

human terms'. Describing his own series of bird sculptures, the artist stated "birds can express a whole range of tragic

emotion, they have a vulnerability which makes it easy to use them as vehicles for people."

Published in Bernard Meadows by Alan Bowness (Lund Humphries,1995)

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29ALAN REYNOLDS (b. 1926)Late October Hop Garden (1957)Watercolour on paper9¾" x 12¼" (235mm x 310mm)Signed and dated lower right(Inscribed with title on label verso)

Exhibited: Redfern Gallery, London


"Painting a picture is, for me, a problem of solving equations; tonal, linear and so on. The subject or motif must be

transformed and become an organic whole. Poetry is never absent from Nature, but alone it cannot constitute a work of

art. It must be reconciled with the elements of design and composition."

Alan Reynolds

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30BRYAN WYNTER (1915-75)Landscape with Cottages (1947)Oil on panel11¾" x 22¼" (325mm x 565mm)Signed and dated lower right(Inscribed and signed in pencil verso)


Wynter arrived in Cornwall in 1945 and was immediately struck by the landscape around Zennor, where he was to

make a derelict farmhouse called 'The Carn' his home, describing it as "stone walls bursting with ferns and rock

plants honeycomb the country into tiny fields and out of this mosaic rise the moors with great round hills covered with

braken and gorse and capped with huge granite boulders. Great stone chimney stacks stride like giants up the hill [and]

the field patterns go down to the steep ravine with a little stream cascading over the rocks among orange water flowers

and red fuchsia bushes".

Published in Bryan Wynter by Chris Stephens (Tate Publishing, 1992)

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31JOHN PIPER (1903-92)Llantrisant Church, Anglesey (c.1948)Ink, chalk and watercolour heightened with bodycolour14¾" x 20" (375mm x 505mm)Signed lower left

Provenance: Dr. John Birch Collection, UK (purchased from Sotheby's 17/03/76, Lot 123)

"Walls [are] made largely of the igneous rock of the Snowdon area[...] and only walls which have been built of stone that was lying in the open for thousands of years before it was

appropriated is there a neatness. The walls are richly mossed, and small-leaved ivy is thrown over them here and there, its stalks, self-coloured brownish grey like some of the stones,

knotting in the crevices. There's one very odd thing about painters who like drawing architecture. They hardly ever like

drawing the architecture of their own time. I know perfectly well I would rather paint a ruined abbey half-covered with ivy

and standing among long grass than I would paint it after it has been taken over by the Office of Works, when they have

taken all the ivy off and mown all the grass."

John Piper

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