The Twentieth Century

17 September to 18 October 2008

The Fine Art Society

Dealers since 1876

148 New Bond Street, London w1s 2jt

Telephone +44 (0)20 7629 5116
Email alt@faslondon.com
www. faslondon.com

C20 text for DK.indd 1 18-08-2008 21:29:57

 2

C20 text for DK.indd 2 18-08-2008 21:29:58

 1910s
1920s
1930s
The Fine Art Society  The Twentieth Century  2008

1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
C20 text for DK.indd 3 18-08-2008 21:29:59
C20 text for DK.indd 4 18-08-2008 21:29:59
 Index of artists

Sybil Andrews  20

Peter Blake  46

F. C. B. Cadell  18

Keith Coventry  54

Terry Frost  36–8

Sir James Gunn  12

Alastair Morton  26

C. R. W. Nevinson  6

Ben Nicholson  40

Sir William Nicholson  14

Samuel Peploe  10

John Piper  30

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi  34–5, 48–53

Anne Redpath  32

Bridget Riley  42

William Scott  44

Graham Sutherland  8, 28

Julian Trevelyan  22

Christopher Wood  16

C20 text for DK.indd 5 18-08-2008 21:30:02

 1910s
Mezzotint, signed in pencil C.R.W. Nevinson
1918, lower right, printed on laid paper
9 x 6 inches (22.6 x 15.1 cm) sheet 101/2 x 73/8
inches (26.7 x 18.8 cm)
Reference: Richard Ingleby, Jonathan Black,
David Cohen, Gordon Cooke, C.R.W.Nevinson:
The Twentieth Century, London 1999 p.56, 128
no.71
C20 text for DK.indd 6
C. R. W. Nevinson 1889–1946
Limehouse 1918
At the end of the First World War Nevinson Nevinson was one of the greatest printmakers
took the virtually obsolete medium of mezzo- in the 20th century. Often subjects done previ-
tint and produced in it three powerful images, ously in paint become more powerful when he
Limehouse, Wind and From an Office Window. For translated them into a print, reduced in scale
a modernist and a former disciple of Futurism, and tone, distilled. He learned each technique
it was an unexpected departure to take up a thoroughly and was proud of the fact that he
printmaking technique associated with 18th- had sought an expert teacher for each one. It
century portraiture and still life. is not known who taught him the difficult and
labour-intensive medium of mezzotint, but it
Limehouse is as intense as the first drypoints of
was ideal for the subject he chose for Limehouse.
war subjects Nevinson made in 1916. The som-
The darks he achieved and the subtle grada-
bre air is enlivened by the decorative devices he
tions of lighter areas suggest shape rather than
used for the sail on the barge and the clouds.
describe it. It is an image of intense poetry and
London and the Thames became the source of
melancholy.
many of Nevinson’s subjects in the period after
the First World War, and this view of ware-
houses on the north bank of the Thames is one
of the first. There is a related oil Thameside in
the collection of Nottingham, Castle Museum
and Art Gallery which Nevinson mentions in
correspondence in 1942 as one of his favourites,
based on a drawing related to the mezzotint.
18-08-2008 21:30:02
C20 text for DK.indd 7 18-08-2008 21:30:03
 1920s
Drawing in black, pencil and white ink on
wove paper, signed and dated SUTHERLAND
MCMXXIV, lower left; preparatory drawing
for the etching, inscribed with dates Aug. 18th
21st 27th 28th Sept 1 2 3, left margin, Sept 1–2 3
and Nettles?, lower margin 63/4 x 97/8 inches
(17.1 x 25.1 cm) sheet 73/4 x 11 inches
(19.6 x 28 cm)
C20 text for DK.indd 8
Graham Sutherland 1903–1980
Number Forty-Nine 1924
A close study of an abandoned thatched cottage
with half of its rafters exposed and its windows
broken, in a neglected garden at 49 High Street,
Clapham, a village between Angmering and
Worthing, near Arundel in Sussex. Sutherland
made a number of visits to the area, often with
Paul Drury, a fellow student at Goldsmiths’
College, London. There is a small watercolour
of Clapham Church, dated 11 August 1924
in the Hussey Bequest to the Pallant House
Gallery, Chichester.
The drawing is a preparatory study for the
etching Number Forty-Nine, published in 1924,
which shows the building in reverse. Sutherland
generally made sketches in pencil or watercol-
our before making a print, and this is one of the
most finished examples. The etching follows
the study closely: he altered only the tree and
added a water butt and bucket by the front
door.
Sutherland achieved fame as an artist while
still a student and his first success came when
his etching Barn Interior was hung in the Royal
Academy Summer Exhibition in 1923. He had
his first exhibition the following year at the
Twenty-One Gallery. The early watercolours
of decaying barns by Samuel Palmer may have
been an influence on Sutherland’s choice of
subject, equally Whistler’s 1858 etching The
Unsafe Tenement. Whistler, Dürer, Rembrandt,
Meryon and Millet all provided inspiration to
the students at Goldsmiths’ both as draughts-
men and printmakers. This is one of the finest
drawings from this early period in Sutherland’s
career, demonstrating his romantic spirit,
distinctive draughtsmanship and the precision
of his line.
18-08-2008 21:30:04
C20 text for DK.indd 9 18-08-2008 21:30:05
 1920s
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 inches (61 x 51 cms)
Signed S J Peploe lower right
C20 text for DK.indd 10
Samuel Peploe 1871–1935
White Lilies c.1926
Peploe was born in Edinburgh, and one
of four artists that became known as the
Scottish Colourists. He moved to Paris in
1894 where he studied at the Académie Julian
under Bouguereau and later at the Académie
Colarossi. It was in Paris that he met fellow
Scottish Colourist J. D. Fergusson. Together
they traveled and painted throughout France
and the Western Isles of Scotland. The Scottish
Colourists were influenced by the bright, sun-
drenched colours and the immediate painting
technique they had experienced in France, and
Peploe incorporated these pure colours, thickly
painted and unvarnished, into his own work.
Peploe moved back to Edinburgh in 1912, and
his brilliant palette was well suited to painting
still life and the Atlantic light of the coastline
of western Scotland. This vase of lilies provided
Peploe with an ideal motif to show off his
compositional skills and also contrast the subtle
shading of white flowers with the colourful
flashes of the spiky leaves.
10
18-08-2008 21:30:05
C20 text for DK.indd 11 18-08-2008 21:30:07
 Sir Herbert James Gunn 1893–1964
Portrait of Sir William Oliphant Hutchison
c.1926

Oil on canvas, 80 x 45 inches (203.2 x 114.3 cm)

Signed H. J. Gunn, inscribed W O Hutchison
Provenance: The Artist’s Family
Exhibited: Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1927
(no.303); Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh,
3 December 1994 to 26 February 1995, The FineArt
Society, London, 13 March to 21 April 1995, and the
Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, 15 May to
1 July 1995, Sir James Gunn, cat. 41 (illustrated).

Sir William Oliphant Hutchison (1889–1970) was born

in Kirkcaldy and in 1918 married Margery Walton, the
daughter of Scottish artist, E.A. Walton, who was an early
influence on Hutchison’s work.

He moved to London in 1921, where he was near

neighbours with James Pryde another Scottish artist in
exile. He was made Director of Glasgow School of Art
1933–1943 and among many other honours was President
of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1950 to 1959.

He was a well-known portrait painter whose sitters

included HM The Queen. Perhaps his finest male portrait
is of Sir Herbert James Gunn, his diploma picture for
the Royal Scottish Academy, which was gifted by Lady
Hutchison to the National Gallery of Scotland in 1977.
Hutchison and Gunn met in Edinburgh College of Art
in 1910. They remained close friends for the rest of their
lives. Gunn exhibited a second portrait of him, wearing
the robes and chains of that office, at the Royal Academy,
London in 1952.
12

C20 text for DK.indd 12 18-08-2008 21:30:09

C20 text for DK.indd 13 18-08-2008 21:30:11
 1920s Sir William Nicholson 1872–1949
Winter Anemones 1927

Oil on panel, 10 x 12 inches (25.5 x 30.5 cm) The qualities of William Nicholson’s paintings
Signed Nicholson bottom right escaped the ­attention of many in the art world
PROVENANCE: Beaux Arts Gallery, London; Sir through most of the second half of the twentieth
Hugh Walpole; Anthony Bushell, 1956; Thomas century. The reputation of the father declined
Agnew and Sons, London; Sale, Phillips London, as that of his son Ben grew. Recent publications
28 June 1982, lot 21; Browse and Darby, London; and the William Nicholson exhibition at the
Somerville & Simpson Ltd, sold 5 October 1983; Royal Academy in London, which opened in the
Catherine Gamble Curran autumn of 2004, have demonstrated the simple
EXHIBITED: London, Beaux Arts Gallery, Pictures beauty of his painting and his mastery of tech-
and Drawings by William Nicholson, 30 June–30 July nique, composition, and choice of subject. As
1927, no.67; Glasgow, Alex Reid & Lefevre Ltd., Richard Dorment commented in his exhibition
Exhibition of Paintings by William Nicholson, April review, ‘Nicholson was wholly original by being
1928, no.17; London, Beaux Arts Gallery, Exhibition wholly himself. Though it is hard to put your
of Recent Paintings by William Nicholson, 24 April– finger on the ­reason why, you would never mis-
31May 1929, no.34; London, Beaux Arts Gallery, take one of his paintings for a work by any other
Summer Exhibition, 1932, catalogue untraced; artist. It is, I suppose, Nicholson’s unique way of
Nottingham, Nottingham Castle Museum and looking at the world, his ability to stand amazed
Art Gallery, Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by at the beauty of the most ordinary things in life.’
William Nicholson, 10 March–24 April 1933, no.27;
London, Beaux Arts Gallery, Retrospective Exhibition
of Paintings by William Nicholson, 1 May–2 June
1933, no.14; London, Leicester Galleries, The Art
Collection of the late Hugh Walpole, 11 April–8 May
1945, no.71; London, Browse and Darby, William
Nicholson & Ben Nicholson: Paintings and Drawings
1919–1945, 29 June–30 July 1983, no.6, illustrated in
the catalogue.
LITERATURE: Creative Art, vol. 4, New York, June
1929, illustrated p.440; Lillian Browse, William
Nicholson, Hart-Davies, London 1956, no.383.
14

C20 text for DK.indd 14 18-08-2008 21:30:11

C20 text for DK.indd 15 18-08-2008 21:30:13
 1920s
Oil on prepared board, 13¼ x 16 inches
(53.5 x 40.5 cms)
Provenance: Mr & Mrs H. Dalziel Smith;
Mr & Mrs Peto, purchased from the Redfern
Gallery in 1947; Private Collection
Exhibited: London, Redfern Gallery,
Christopher Wood, The Complete Works,
March–April 1938 (no.221); Redfern Gallery,
Christopher Wood, May 1947 (no.62); Redfern
Gallery, Christopher Wood, 1959 (no.74);
Plymouth City Art Gallery, French Impressionists
and English Painting and Sculpture from the Peto
Collection, 1960–61 (no.102)
Literature: E. Newton, Christopher Wood
1901–1930, London,1938 (no.430)
C20 text for DK.indd 16
Christopher Wood 1901–1930
Spring Flowers in a White Jar c.1928
Christopher Wood painted a number of Artistically as well as emotionally Wood and
small still lives in the course of his tragically the Nicholsons found much to share in 1928,
short career, usually favouring an informal both in their choice of subject and in their
arrangement of flowers dropped haphazardly methods. It was Wood who came up with the
into a little jug. Its date is probably after the technique, evident in this painting, of coating
spring of 1928 and Wood’s visit to Bankshead, the canvas or board with a thick layer of cover-
the Cumbrian home of his friends Ben and ine or rippolin, a white house paint that dried
Winifred Nicholson. fast and gave a rich and varied texture, as well
as an implied sense of history. This emphasis on
Wood’s friendship with the Nicholsons is at
the character of the picture surface underscored
the heart of English painting between the
a sense of the painting as an object and led to
wars. The weeks that they spent together at
Ben building up and scoring back the surface in
Bankshead in April and then at St Ives later in
such a way that prefigures the first white reliefs
the summer had a powerful effect on all three
of the early 1930s.
of their careers. The Nicholsons presented
Wood with an idealised image of English crea-
tive life – the truth of their relationship was of
course more complex, but what Wood saw was
a matched and mutually supportive partnership
that seemed in sharp contrast to his own lonely
isolation. He longed for something similar for
himself, but despite his search for this sort of
happiness Wood had neither the character nor
lifestyle to make such a relationship stick and
he was always drawn back to a life of opium-
fuelled bisexuality in Bohemian Paris. His
friendship with the Nicholsons though was one
of the few certainties of his short life.
16
18-08-2008 21:30:14
C20 text for DK.indd 17 18-08-2008 21:30:15
 1930s
Oil on canvas, 23½ x 19½ inches
(59.5 x 49.5 cm)
Signed lower left F. C. B. Cadell
provenance: Sotheby’s, Gleneagles,
29 August 1975, lot 362a; Private collection
C20 text for DK.indd 18
Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell 1883–1937
Still Life with a Lacquer Screen c.1930
Still Life with a Lacquer Screen was painted in
the early 1930s when Cadell painted a series
of striking still life’s and interiors at his
Edinburgh studio. In these pictures the art-
ist uses colour at its full strength and make
the case for Cadell being the artist who most
convincingly justifies the description Scottish
Colourist.
Here are objects recognizable from other
compositions, such as the blue jug, Chinese
bowl, and lacquer screen. The red chair, one of
several in his flat that he painted that colour,
draped with a printed scarf, became a favourite
abstracted motif in Cadell’s paintings of this
period.
18
18-08-2008 21:30:15
C20 text for DK.indd 19 18-08-2008 21:30:17
 1930s
Linocut, signed in pencil Sybil Andrews, titled
Racing and numbered 59 from the edition of
60, printed in colours on japan paper
113/4 x 15 inches (26 x 34.3 cm)
Reference: Stephen Coppel, Linocuts of the
Machine Age: Claude Flight and the Grosvenor
School, Aldershot 1995 p.114 no.SA 32
C20 text for DK.indd 20
Sybil Andrews 1898–1992
Racing 1934
The visual possibilities offered by sporting and emigrated to Canada in 1947. She settled
events appealed to Sybil Andrews. The col- in a remote logging township on Vancouver
ours and rhythms inherent in the action were Island, Campbell River where she spent the rest
particularly appropriate for the simplification of her life.
required for the medium of linocut. Stephen
The dynamic mix of colour and form in the
Coppel notes that Andrews and Cyril Power
linocuts of Sybil Andrews connect her to the
designed a poster in the 1930s for the London
Art Deco movement which flourished at the
Transport Passenger Board advertising the
same time. Her skills as designer, printmaker
Epsom Derby which shows a strong resem-
and printer produced a series of vibrant images
blance to Racing.
which reflect aspects of their period and are
Sybil Andrews produced her best work dur- now highly prized.
ing the period when she shared her studio
with Power in Brook Green, Hammersmith
from 1930 to 1938. Linocut was her principal
medium and sport inspired her most successful
subjects, such as In Full Cry, Speedway, Bringing
in the Boat, Racing, Football and Skaters. In 1938
she moved out of London to the New Forest
20
18-08-2008 21:30:17
C20 text for DK.indd 21 18-08-2008 21:30:18
 1930s
Oil on Canvas, signed and dated
Trevelyan 35 lower right, , and inscribed with
title on stretcher
253/4 x 32 inches (65 x 81.4 cm)
C20 text for DK.indd 22
Julian Trevelyan 1910–1988
London Scene 1935
In 1935 Trevelyan joined the English Surrealist
Group, and showed his work in the important
International Surrealist Exhibition in London
the following year. He had lived in Paris from
1931 to 1934, studying under the influential
S. W. Hayter, and travelled widely in Europe
during this period. In 1935 he returned to
London, where his home at Durham Wharf
in Hammersmith became a lively social and
artistic centre.
Trevelyan’s main concern in his Surrealist
work was the construction of a new collective
myth of the city, a theme that had fascinated
him from childhood. He described how he
‘had invented a sort of mythology of cities, of
fragile structures carrying here and there a few
waif-like inhabitants’. Trevelyan was engaged
by his old student friend Humphrey Jennings
to contribute to Mass Observation (1937–8), and
the urban images which resulted, utilised col-
lage and torn shreds of newspaper, an attempt
to express his personal myth of the gritty urban
working-class environment.
22
18-08-2008 21:30:18
C20 text for DK.indd 23 18-08-2008 21:30:20
 1930s John Cecil Stephenson 1889–1965
Painting I 1937

Tempera on canvas on board
21 x 17 inches (53.3 x 43.3 cm)
Inscribed verso John Stephenson 1937
Exhibited: London Gallery, Circle exhibition,
1937; Fischer Fine Art; Kunstmuseum
Winterthur, Switzerland, possibly 1959, no.51
Moving back to London after the First World
War Stephenson installed himself at the end of
March 1919 in no.6, The Mall, Parkhill Road,
Hampstead, which was to remain his home for
the rest of his life. Although during his early
years in the Mall Studios his finances were
dire and he was often lonely and despondent,
as time went by it was to prove a particularly
fortuitous choice.
In 1927, Barbara Hepworth and her then
husband, John Skeaping, moved into no.7 and
the following year Herbert Read joined them
at no.3. Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson
were also living nearby in Parkhill Road, and
during the following decade this ‘gentle nest
of artists’ as Read described it was joined by
Naum Gabo, Mondrian, Hans Erni and Hélion.
Also, by 1933 Nicholson had replaced Skeaping
as Hepworth’s husband and was ensconced
immediately next door at no.7. Stephenson’s
finances had also improved slightly due to his
appointment as Head of the Art Department
in the School of Surveying and Building at the
Northern Polytechnic in Holloway Road in
1922.
the series of simplified and stylised machine
paintings, of which Painting I is a fine example.
The hard, mechanical forms in these paintings
are refined and pared away to their constitu-
ent parts. The arrival of Ben Nicholson in the
adjacent studio at this time was particularly
fortuitous; they had each separately started
blurring the boundary between figuration and
abstraction, and were now engaged on explor-
ing the potential of pure form free of reference
to the tangible world. In Stephenson’s work, it
is tempting to see the first evidence of a neigh-
bourly exchange of views and cross-fertilisation
of ideas. The shapes are no longer either refer-
ential or structural but float freely in space.
The Circle exhibition was an important event
in the development of British 20th-century art.
Subtitled ‘an international survey of construc-
tivist art’, it accompanied the manifesto co-
edited by Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson.

By 1933 Stephenson had already turned his

back on the straightforward landscapes and
portraits, which had attracted his early patrons
from County Durham, and embarked on
24

C20 text for DK.indd 24 18-08-2008 21:30:20

C20 text for DK.indd 25 18-08-2008 21:30:23
 1930s Alastair Morton 1910–1963
Abstract 1940

Oil on canvas
26¼ x 35½ inches (67 x 90 cm)
Signed with initials and dated on the reverse
A.J.F.M. / Jun–Feb ’40
The achievements of Edinburgh Weavers, the a Mondrian and a Léger as well as a number by
family firm of which he became artistic director Nicholson and Hepworth. A year or two later
and ultimately chairman, have ensured Alastair Circle began to issue black and white postcards
Morton a permanent place in the history of illustrating the work of ‘approved’ artists: a
20th-century British design; Morton’s activ- gouache – Opus 14 – by Morton was included
ity as an abstract artist, however, has received in the second series of cards, together with
comparatively little attention. pictures by Lissitsky, Malevich, Moholy-Nagy,
Van Doesburg and the British abstract painters
Morton started painting in 1936. For a short
Arthur Jackson and John Cecil Stephenson.
time he alternated between abstract and social
realist work, the latter motivated by his radical
social and political views and his sympathy
for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil
War; his first exhibited work was shown at the
Spanish Medical Aid exhibition in 1937. This
social realist tendency manifested itself again
during the first months of the Second World
War but it was suppressed largely on the advice
of Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth who
felt it inferior to Morton’s abstract work.

In 1936 Morton commissioned a new house,

Brackenfell near Brampton, from Leslie Martin
who was at that time gathering ­material for
Circle, ‘the international survey of constructiv-
ist art’, with his co-editors Ben Nicholson and
Naum Gabo, first published in 1937. Morton
was certainly in full sympathy with the new
ideas in art, architecture and design expressed
in this extensively ­illustrated compilation. He
had begun buying modernist works in­cluding
26

C20 text for DK.indd 26 18-08-2008 21:30:23

C20 text for DK.indd 27 18-08-2008 21:30:25
 1930s
Ink and wash on gesso primed panel, signed
and dated with initials GS 39, lower right: part
of another subject painted in oil verso, signed,
dated and inscribed Marsh below Hills 1939
Graham Sutherland
81/2 x 57/8 inches (21.2 x 15 cm)
Provenance: Milner Gray and by descent
Exhibited: London, The Leicester Galleries
* Quoted in Roger Berthoud Graham
Sutherland: A Biography London 1982, p.60
C20 text for DK.indd 28
Graham Sutherland 1903–1980
Marsh below Hills 1939
The period between the Wall Street Crash and
the outbreak of the Second World War, the
1930s, was the most important of Sutherland’s
career. It saw a precocious student etcher
mature into the greatest British landscape
painter of the 20th century. This small panel,
which belonged to a close lifelong friend,
Milner Gray, illustrates the transition. Its scale
is similar to that of his earlier etchings and it
relates closely to Clegyr-Boia, the etching and
aquatint published as frontispiece to Signature
no.9 in July 1938. The back of the panel is
its own commentary on the artist’s journey
from printmaker to painter. It was cut from a
rejected oil painting which still reveals enough
of its subject to connect it to such works as
Tree Forms in Estuary 1939, a watercolour in the
collection of Doncaster Metropolitan Borough
Council, included in the recent Sutherland
show at Dulwich Picture Gallery (no.22).
The landscape of Wales was the inspiration
for Sutherland to become a painter. It was
a struggle to suppress his natural gifts for
draughtsmanship and to adopt the brush. The
muted colours and twisted shapes he found in
Pembrokeshire provided the visual stimulus
which culminated in his masterpiece, Entrance
to a Lane 1939 (Tate). Marsh below Hills shares
many characteristics with Entrance to a Lane, but
28
it still refers back to the intensity of his earlier
etchings.
Milner Gray, who owned this painting, left
Goldsmiths’ College at the end of 1921, the
year Graham Sutherland started. They shared
digs in Blackheath while Sutherland was still at
the College: Gray had set up a design consul-
tancy, Bassett Gray. When Sutherland married
Kathleen Barry and moved out of their digs, he
wrote a letter:
My dear Milner, I called this afternoon to turn out
my ‘things’ upstairs and most reluctantly (from some
points of view!) to fetch my Palmers and the brass
rubbing. I hope in a week or two to be able to let you
have the duplicate of the one we took at Fordwich. Also
the three proofs of my own I promised you (if you could
put up with them!). I put Bouverie’s Hedging and
Ditching up again, but the cord requires lengthening.
My acids and dishes, as well as the drawing boards etc.,
I will call for next week. I do hope you will get your
plate done – do not hesitate to use my press or any acids,
etc. that you require …*
Milner Gray showed Sutherland’s work to Jack
Beddington, who conceived the Shell advertising
campaign, commissioning work from many of
the best contemporary artists. Gray later lodged
with Graham and Kathleen and in 1980, he sat
for one of the last portraits Sutherland painted.
18-08-2008 21:30:25
C20 text for DK.indd 29 18-08-2008 21:30:27
 1940s
Ink, pen, watercolour and bodycolour
29½ x 39 inches (75 x 99 cm)
Signed and inscribed on a card attached to the
backboard This is to certify that the big
watercolour of Cotterstock Church is by me, John
Piper. 29 9 68
C20 text for DK.indd 30
John Piper 1903–1992
Cotterstock Church c.1940
Piper trained at the Royal College of Art, and
during the war supplemented his income from
paintings by writing art reviews and magazine
columns. He would later found the art maga-
zine Axis with his wife Myfanwy.
30
Piper had been asked to join a group of artists
that called themselves The Seven and Five
and to exhibit with them. Included in the
group were Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore,
Ivon Hitchens, Frances Hodgkins, Barbara
Hepworth, and Winifred Nicholson, plac-
ing Piper at the heart of the English modern
movement of painting. This was to change
with the outbreak of the Second World War,
when Piper was selected, together with artists
such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and
Stanley Spencer, for the War Artists Scheme.
The scheme was initiated by Sir Kenneth Clark
in the early days of the war, and encouraged the
depiction of all aspects of the war both at home
and abroad. Rather than in foreign theatres
of war, Piper discovered his own dramas as he
recorded derelict buildings or those that were in
danger of being bombed. Piper would continue
his interest in the English landscape and archi-
tecture throughout his career, using texture and
perspective to heighten dramatic effect.
The church of St Andrew stands on a tranquil
spot by the river Nene in Cotterstock, a mile
north of Oundle, Northamptonshire. Ancient
monuments such as this held particular signifi-
cance to the national psyche during the war.
Piper places the church – resolute and seem-
ingly unshakeable – against a characteristically
dark dramatic sky.
18-08-2008 21:30:28
C20 text for DK.indd 31 18-08-2008 21:30:30
 1940s
Oil on board, 25 x 30 inches (64.5 x 78 cm)
Signed lower left Anne Redpath
provenance: Aitken Dott & Son,
Edinburgh; Mrs David McC. Hunter,
Edinburgh; Private Collection
exhibited: Edinburgh, Royal Scottish
Academy, 1949, no. 173; Edinburgh, Aitken
Dott & Son, Anne Redpath Exhibition, October
1950, no. 25 Edinburgh, The Arts Council
of Great Britain–Scottish Committee, Anne
Redpath Memorial Exhibition, no. 34
C20 text for DK.indd 32
Anne Redpath 1895–1965
Greys c.1949
Redpath’s still lifes of the late 1940s represent
some of her best work. They have balance,
authority and inventiveness.
She titled this painting Greys, and it is a natural
extension of her studies in painting various
shades of white. In an interview with the poet
George Bruce for a BBC film in 1961 Redpath
comments on ‘this love of whites, and greys,
and as far back as I can remember I have loved
painting white … you use black because it
makes the white more intensified, or gives it
more quality’.
Redpath’s love of the manipulation of sur-
face texture is also demonstrated in this
painting. This she had developed from her
Mediterranean trips, starting with her stay
on her travelling scholarship in 1919 in
Siena, where she had so admired the Italian
Primitives. The old plastered walls that she had
seen there also fascinated her and she devel-
oped a modern approach to achieving different
textures in her surfaces - even scraping the
canvas with a small piece of chain-mail that she
kept in her studio.
This is one of the best examples of her vision of
still life, with its white on white aesthetic and
superbly subtle paint surface.
32
18-08-2008 21:30:30
C20 text for DK.indd 33 18-08-2008 21:30:32
 1940s Sir Eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005
‘For George Melly my dear friend’ 1948

Gouache, pastel and charcoal

71/2 x 11½ inches (19 x 28 cm)
Signed Eduardo Paolozzi Paris 1948 upper
right and inscribed For George Melly my dear
friend upper left

1948 was in important year for Paolozzi,

and was at the heart of his embracing of
the Surrealist movement. Nigel Henderson
was a fellow student at the Slade School
of Art, and through him he met a number
of people central to Surrealism in Britain,
including E.L.T. Mesens, who ran the
London Gallery, the only gallery dealing in
Surrealism. George Melly’s first job after
leaving the navy was to work as an assist-
ant to Mesens at the London Gallery, and
this is surely how Paolozzi and Melly came
to know each other – both fascinated by
Surrealism. His first one-man exhibition
was held at the Mayor Gallery in 1947, and
with the proceeds he left to live and work
in Paris. It was a rich period of production
for Paolozzi, his output included some of
his best known bronzes and a stunning
body of Surrealist inspired collage work.
This humorous sketch is a fascinating snap-
shot of camaraderie at a fiercely creative
time in Paolozzi’s life.

34

C20 text for DK.indd 34 18-08-2008 21:30:33

 1950s Sir Eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005
Aquarium 1953

Coloured crayons, pastels, gouache and

black ink, 18.9 x 23 inches (48 x 58.4 cm)

Paolozzi took up a post teaching textile

design at at Central School of Art and
Design from 1949 until 1955, and other
members of staff at the time included,
Nigel Henderson, Richard Hamilton,
William Turnbull, Alan Davie and Victor
Pasmore. He made many drawings there
destined to be made into screenprints, and
he would later found the firm Hammer
Prints with Henderson for the manufac-
ture of textiles, wallpaper, tapestries and
ceramics. This painting is an incredibly
rare, and excellent example of the motifs
and style that inform many aspects of
his work from this period. The Gallery
of Modern Art Edinburgh has a compa-
rable ink and watercolour drawing in its
permanent collection titled London Zoo
Aquarium, and dated 1951 which was made
into a screen print. However Paolozzi after
reviewing the Venice Biennale of 1952
went to Naples where the aquarium there
was a highlight of his visit, and this paint-
ing may be inspired by this trip.

C20 text for DK.indd 35 18-08-2008 21:30:35

 1950s
Oil on canvas
15¾ x 20 inches (40 x 51 cm)
Provenance: Peter Lanyon,
private collection
C20 text for DK.indd 36
Terry Frost 1915–2003
Black and White Sea Movement 1951
The years 1951–2 were important in the devel-
opment of Frost’s work. For years he had been
hitch-hiking back and forth between London
and St Ives, and in 1950 on Ben Nicholson’s
recommendation, he moved into one of the
Arts Council supported studios in St Ives. He
occupied the studio next to Nicholson. It was
here that he began to develop the abstraction
he had started with two series: the ‘Movement’
and ‘Walk along the Quay’ paintings. Paintings
inspired by his experience of walking along
the quay at St Ives Harbour and studying
with pleasure the curved hulls, masts at angles
and ropes – whether slack, looping or taut.
Sometimes when the tide was in, ropes lay
below the surface as well as above, and the
reflections of the hulls made it difficult to
discern what was above and below. The boats
rocking at their moorings would disturb the
water and send out shimmering ripples. This
painting is an example of his response to this
environment, and he gave it to his friend and
fellow artist Peter Lanyon.
36
18-08-2008 21:30:35
C20 text for DK.indd 37 18-08-2008 21:30:36
 1950s
Oil in canvas, 43¾ x 30 inches (111 x 76.2 cm)
Signed and dated Frost 53, lower right
Provenance: Roger Mayne; National
Westminster Bank Plc; Private Collection
Exhibited: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Laing Art
Gallery (Arts Council of Great Britain touring
exhibition), Terry Frost, 1964 (no.12); Bath
Festival, (Arts Council of Great Britain touring
exhibition), Corsham Painters & Sculptors, 1965
(no.54); London, New Art Centre, Cornwall
1945–55, 1977 (no.26); London, Michael Parkin
Gallery, Bath, Victoria Art Gallery, Brighton
Polytechnic Gallery, Corsham: A Celebration, The
Bath Academy of Art 1946–72, 1988 (no.45)
Literature: David Brown (introduction)
and Tamsyn Woollcombe, Corsham: A Cele­
bration, The Bath Academy of Art 1946–72,
1988 no.45, illustrated; David Lewis and
Elizabeth Knowles, Terry Frost, 1994 p.60–61,
illustrated
C20 text for DK.indd 38
Terry Frost 1915–2003
Corsham Black Silver and White 1953
Also known as Corsham Blue and Silver and Terry Frost was the only artist then resident in
Corsham Silver and White; this painting is St Ives to appear in the influential study Nine
recorded by the artist as being painted after Abstract Artists by Laurence Alloway, published
a walk at night, ice crunching under foot, tall in 1954. This shows his significance in the new
trees and a blue moon. generation of young artists who had connec-
tions in London, Corsham and St Ives.
The strength and energy of Terry Frost’s paint-
ings from this period quickly established him This painting belonged to Roger Mayne, who
as a new talent with a distinctive voice. His photographed many St Ives artists in the early
work included recognisable elements which 1950s, including Terry Frost, Patrick Heron,
had their origins in what he saw and sensed. Roger Hilton and Peter Lanyon. He also taught
This he combined with his instinct for line, at Corsham 1966–69.
colour, shape and texture, and produced a series
of important abstract paintings in the period
1950 to 1955, of which Corsham Black, Silver and
White is a major example.
The Bath Academy of Art in Corsham,
Witshire, provided Terry Frost with vital con-
tacts at the start of his careers as a painter and
it was his first teaching post. His appointment
coincided with his first one-man show at the
Leicester Galleries in 1952. He had been work-
ing as Barbara Hepworth’s assistant in St Ives
and had a studio next to Ben Nicholson, and
produced much of his best work in Cornwall
and Corsham during the early 1950s.
38
18-08-2008 21:30:36
C20 text for DK.indd 39 18-08-2008 21:30:37
 1950s
Pencil drawing, signed in pencil Ben Nicholson
and inscribed Still Life Torre del Grillo Rome Oct
55, verso, on Reeves Bristol Board; also signed
and inscribed on backboard
141/2 x 183/4 inches (37 x 47.5 cm)
Provenance: Alan E. Oliver
Exhibited: Sao Paulo, Fourth International
Biennial Exhibition, 1957 (31)
C20 text for DK.indd 40
Ben Nicholson 1894–1982
Still Life 1955
In 1950 Nicholson began visiting Mediter–
ranean countries where he drew landscapes,
architecture and still lifes. Nicholson stayed at
Torre del Grillo, Piazza del Grillo, Rome, on
two occasions, in 1954 and 1955 as the guest
of Jenny Nicholson, the eldest child of Robert
Graves and Nancy Nicholson.
In this drawing the precision with which
Nicholson transcribed his motifs is summed
up: with the simple subjects of decanter and jug
he expresses the elegance in his line.
40
18-08-2008 21:30:37
C20 text for DK.indd 41 18-08-2008 21:30:39
 1960s
Screenprint, signed and dated in pencil ’62
B. Riley, lower right, printed in black ink on
wove paper, numbered 14 from the edition
of 35, lower left
61/4 x 61/4 inches (16 x 16 cm) sheet 105/8 x 105/8
inches (27.2 x 27.3 cm)
Literature: Karsten Schubert, Bridget Riley:
Complete Prints, London 2002 no.2
C20 text for DK.indd 42
Bridget Riley b.1931
Untitled (Circular Movement) 1962
In addition to her paintings, Riley is one of the
most successful printmakers of her generation.
She produced her first screenprint in 1961, and
this was produced the following year.
The part played by the printer made screen-
print less dependent on the touch of the artist,
which increased its appeal for the new genera-
tion of artists in the 1960s, such as Richard
Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi. In Riley’s
case, the participation of a printer brought the
process closer to her experience as a painter.
To realise her paintings she employs studio
assistants to lay the flat areas of paint with
a brush according to her models, just as the
printer works with stencils and ink according
to her painted study. In both cases it is the art-
ist’s precisely calculated intentions that shape
the work of art. (Craig Hartley, Screenprint and
Painter, 2002)
42
18-08-2008 21:30:39
C20 text for DK.indd 43 18-08-2008 21:30:40
 1970s William Scott 1913–1989
Blue and White 1971

Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches (101 x 101 cm)
Exhibited: Tate Gallery, 1972, William Scott
(no.124)
From 1969 Scott developed his painting style
from the luxurious and textured paint sur-
faces of the 1950s to a new language in which
individual objects were abstracted to their most
pure flat silhouettes. Pots, pans and bowls were
reduced to the simplest of lines, and contextual
surfaces removed. The ‘objects’ seem weight-
less, somehow rejecting references to their
physicality, but still have a softly vibrating
resonance. These paintings are never mechani-
cal, but are sensual in atmosphere, and herald a
simple and classical aesthetic.

In the run up to his 1972 Tate retrospective,

this group of paintings, of which twenty were
included in this show, aptly express his sub-
tle and mature originality. This painting is a
perfect example of the timelessness embodied
in his late work.

44

C20 text for DK.indd 44 18-08-2008 21:30:40

C20 text for DK.indd 45 18-08-2008 21:30:42
 1970s Peter Blake b.1932
Two Girls c.1979

Oil on board
6½ x 7¾ inches (16.5 x 19.7 cm)
Provenance: Private collection, Paris;
Private collection, London
In 1969 Peter Blake and his young family
moved to a small village near Bath. He left
behind the Pop Art movement and in 1975
founded The Brotherhood of Ruralists with a
group of locally based artists. Although indi-
vidual in style, each artist desired to understand
and paint elements of nature, combined with
literary and musical influences. Summarising
the Ruralist mission, Blake said:
Portraiture, real or imaginary, is central to
Blake’s work. In this series there is often an
awkward, compelling directness in his images,
the faces combining innocence and a certain
knowingness. Blake in this painting combines
consummate draughtsmanship and restrained
painterly surfaces, to create an image that is
entirely of its time.

Simply, our aims are the continuation of a certain

kind of English painting; we admire Samuel Palmer,
Stanley Spencer, Thomas Hardy, Elgar, cricket,
English landscape, the Pre-Raphaelites, etc … Our
aims are to paint about love, beauty, joy, sentiment
and magic.

Blake’s Ruralist paintings are dominated by

English literary subjects, often the works of
William Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, and images of Titania
and Ophelia became some of his most famous.
These fairies were not ethereal beings, but very
real people based on contemporary figures.
Blake, who later commented that ‘I didn’t ever
stop being an Urbanist really,’ returned to
London in 1979.

46

C20 text for DK.indd 46 18-08-2008 21:30:42

C20 text for DK.indd 47 18-08-2008 21:30:44
 1990s Eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005
Newton after Blake 1993

Bronze
Height 17 inches (43.2cm); base 123⁄4 x 23
inches (32.4 x 58.4cm)
Signed Newton After Blake and dated 1993, also
impressed with founders stamp
LITERATURE: Fiona Pearson, Eduardo Paolozzi,
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
1999, pp.72–3; Colin St John Wilson,
‘Paolozzi’s Monument to Isaac Newton (and
Blake)’, Eduardo Paolozzi, Projects 1975–2000,
exh.cat., Flowers East, London 2005, pp.36–9.
Conceived in 1987–8, Paolozzi’s Newton derives
from William Blake’s iconic colour print of
1795, showing the scientist mapping out the
universe with a pair of calipers (Tate, London).
For a description of the theme, see Robin
Spencer, Paolozzi Portraits, National Portrait
Gallery, 1988). Paolozzi first adapted the theme
for his Master of the Universe bronze in 1989
(National Galleries of Scotland), character-
istically updating Blake’s image with various
mechanised features. When, in 1993 Paolozzi
was commissioned to make a public monument
for the forecourt of the new British Library in
London, he explored the theme further, making
a number of variants of the subject in plaster
and bronze, of which this is one. (The commis-
sion is the subject of an essay by the architect
of the British Library, Colin St John Wilson,
in Eduardo Paolozzi Projects 1975–2000, London,
Flowers, 2005).
as the ultimate human exponenent of scientific
achievement. In keeping with Paolozzi’s ongo-
ing accumulation and manipulation of sources
and imagery, where Master of the Universe was
blind, the present work and the final Newton
(British Library, London) have appropriated
the eyes of Michaelangelo’s David, the defini-
tive Renaissance image of human perfection.
Unveiled in September 1997, Paolozzi’s
Newton at the British Library is fittingly ori-
entated towards the wing housing its scientific
collections.
We are grateful to Robin Spencer, author of the
forthcoming Eduardo Paolozzi catalogue raisonné,
for his assistance in cataloguing this work.

Paolozzi’s versions of the theme are infused

with a subtle irony. Well aware of Blake’s disap-
proval of Newton and his fixation with order-
ing the universe, Paolozzi champions the latter

48

C20 text for DK.indd 48 18-08-2008 21:30:44

C20 text for DK.indd 49 18-08-2008 21:30:46
 1990s Eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005
Wealth of Nations 1993

Bronze
Height 10 inches (25.4cm), base 24 x 11 inches
(61 x 28cm)
Signed Eduardo Paolozzi, 1993
LITERATURE: Fiona Pearson, Eduardo Paolozzi,
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
1999, pp.68–71
The Wealth of Nations was commissioned by rectangular shapes linking the head and limbs
the Royal Bank of Scotland for their former together. The full scale sculpture is set on a
headquarters, Drummond House at the South plinth and carries a quote of Albert Einstein’s;
Gyle, Edinburgh. Standing at 3.5 metres high ‘Knowledge is wonderful, but imagination is
and 5.5 metres wide it was probably the largest even better’.
bronze sculpture to be commissioned in Britain
This quotation expressed the artist’s perennial
since the Second World War. Cast by Morris
question as to whether man was the monster of
Singer Art Foundry in London, it was unveiled
science, or science was becoming the monster
by HM The Queen in June 1993. The title of the
of man. The quotation of Albert Einstein sug-
sculpture derives from the the Scottish econo-
gests his answer. Paolozzi also wanted to pose
mist Adam Smith’s most influential book An
the question against the backdrop of a major
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of
banking building demonstrating the contrast of
Nations.
the talents of men and the forces of money.
Paolozzi sought to express in sculpture inspira-
tion he found in totemic signs, symbols and
images; echoes of pre-history, and of a tech-
nological world running amok. The Wealth of
Nations suggests a reclining figure consisting
of a number of separate body parts; two hands
grasping rods which look back not only to the
insignia for Hammer Prints but also to antique
sculpture fragments in the Munich Glyptotek,
a large cubist head on its side, and two realisti-
cally modelled feet. The area where the main
part of the body should be is taken up by

50

C20 text for DK.indd 50 18-08-2008 21:30:46

C20 text for DK.indd 51 18-08-2008 21:30:48
 1990s Sir Eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005
Head 1992

Bronze, unique, height 15 inches (38.1cm),

base 7¾ x 8¼ inches (19.7 x 18.5cm)
Signed and dated Eduardo Paolozzi 1992,
inscribed 1/1

Paolozzi’s output was often monumental, ful-

filling many public commissions in his lifetime,
however another favourite theme was smaller
heads, in bronze or plaster and often made for
his own pleasure. They are often unique.

He had an obsession with metamorphosing the

human figure, and by 1984 had created a series
of fragmented heads, which blended geometry
with nature. Robin Spencer notes ‘by using the
surrealist technique of the “cut” he is able to
explore expression beyond physiognomy’.

52

C20 text for DK.indd 52 18-08-2008 21:30:50

 Sir Eduardo Paolozzi 1924–2005
Head 1999

Bronze, probably unique,

height 14½ inches (36.8cm),
base 7 x 10¼ inches (17.8 x 26cm)
Signed Eduardo Paolozzi

Throughout Paolozzi’s life he was an avid col-

lector of magazines, and as with his collages of
the 1950s and throughout his career, he used
these as inspiration to deconstruct and recon-
struct the human head. Horizontal and vertical
cuts were filled with geometrical fragments
suggesting mechanisation. It has been suggest-
ed that he never lost the child’s ability to play,
with the result that a freshness of vision and
spontaneity informs all of his work.

In the mid-1990s Paolozzi developed a cubist

head. This new departure was inspired by a
schematized head taken from computer graph-
ics. The shape was paired down to a series of
geometric facets. These were often then sawn
through vertically and horizontally and pegs
inserted.

C20 text for DK.indd 53 18-08-2008 21:30:51

 1990s Keith Coventry b.1958
Brockmoor Tower 1996

Oil on canvas, wood and glass
33 x 29 inches (83.8 x 73.7 cm)
Coventry studied at Chelsea School of Art, and
has exhibited widely including the now famous
Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in
1998. His work is included in public collections
including the Museum of Modern Art, New
York, British Council, Arts Council of England
and the Walker Art Center, ­Minneapolis.
Matt Colllings, the artist and writer comments
on this series of paintings:
The key to understanding everything Coventry does
can be found in his Estate Paintings, which he
embarked on in 1992. Geometric shapes in black or
red within a white field (the paint surface neither
heavy nor light, neither ‘hard won’ nor careless) turn
out to be simplified replicas of the ground plan signs
outside housing estates, which show how the buildings
are arranged and named. He hand-makes angular,
chunky frames for these paintings, possibly because
that’s what artists like Mondrian and Malevich did,
or alternatively because he wants to say that this isn’t
just a painting, it’s a constructed thing – or maybe
a bit of both. In any case the visual effect is that the
work becomes very object-like.
These paintings capture the moment when modernist
Utopian dreams – the well-meant belief that peoples’
lives would be bettered by living in clean, modern,
high rise buildings, with lifts, way up above the
street with plenty of fresh air – evaporated. Because
instead of being the touted New Jerusalem, homes for
heroes, the estates spawned new problems, vandal-
ism, violence, social isolation, drug dealing and
addiction, prostitution and racism, recurring themes
in Coventry’s work. He creates a visual analogy to
connect these pariahs through clean, geometric forms.
This convincing, seductive visual element is what
distinguishes him from a lot of other artists – he isn’t
just sampling an idea or assuming that ‘referring’
to an idea is actually an idea. Form and content are
mutually complementary.

54

C20 text for DK.indd 54 18-08-2008 21:30:53

C20 text for DK.indd 55 18-08-2008 21:30:57
 Published by The Fine Art Society
for the exhibition The Twentieth Century,
17 September to 18 October 2008
© all rights reserved

isbn 978 0 905062 53 5

Designed by Dalrymple
Typeset in Helvetica and Indigo
Photography by A. C. Cooper
Printed in Belgium by Die Keure

Cover design:
derived from Alastair Morton Abstract 1940

Frontispiece:
Julian Trevelyan London Scene 1935

Page 4: Bridget Riley

Untitled (Circular Movement) 1962

C20 text for DK.indd 56 18-08-2008 21:30:57