Dorothy Mead - Provenance is everything !

When it comes to Art the Provence of a particular piece really is everything. It is so important that the authenticity can be proved and documented, so we are delighted that the 2 works by Dorothy Mead that we have just added to the website can be traced directly back to a key exhibition in 1964 .

In 1964 The Arts Council organised a touring exhibition of 6 young artists so that the public outside London could become more familiar with key artists who were making a name for themselves both in the capital and worldwide . So while I am sure many of you will be aware of Peter Blake, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, William Crozier and Euan Uglow you may not be as familiar with Dorothy Mead . Why ? Well sadly she died in her 40’s and like a number of female artists sank into obscurity while her young contemporaries rose to be some of the greats of their time and became household names .

So who was Dorothy Mead ?

Dorothy Mead was a loyal student to Bomberg and championed his work and methods even when the wider British art community was staunchly against Bomberg’s teaching methods and philosophy, leading to Mead being asked to leave the Slade before completing her studies there. It is difficult to know why the art-world failed to appreciate Bomberg’s works despite his students and friends being able to recognise his skills: perhaps they found his teaching style too unorthodox or were threatened by his approach and philosophy. Whatever the reasoning, the establishment was against Bomberg and the Borough Group as a result, which arguably hindered the flourishing of the group-members’ careers as galleries refused to exhibit their work. 

Also it seems Mead’s gender had a great deal to do with her career not finding the success it had the potential to. Female artists have had the odds stacked against them for as long as society itself has been patriarchal. Until recently, non-male artists were rarely commissioned to make work, and ratio of male to female artists in galleries always shows there are more male artists being exhibited, sold and critiqued. The men who were influenced by Bomberg and were closely aligned to him, such as Holden, still found more success than their female counterparts. And the men who were influenced by Bomberg and distanced themselves from his philosophy, such as Auerbach, found even greater success. Considering that Auerbach was three years younger than Mead, they were certainly contemporaries and so the comparison between their works is relevant, highlighting the distinct differences between their careers. If Mead had distanced herself from Bomberg and continued to study at the Slade, as Auerbach did, she might have been a considerably more well-known and successful artist; and yet, maybe her allegiance to Bomberg and her respect for his teachings made her the artist she became. 

Indeed it is interesting to note that Mead most often just used her initial ‘D’ in any advertising so as to hide her gender.

The image above is the list of works that were shown in the 1964 travelling exhibition and we are delighted to be able to offer 2 of these here at Blondes Fine Art in Hertfordshire , in fact we like them so much they currently hang in our home and it has to be said that they look so much better in real life than in the images attached at the end of this article. They really are ones to come a view first hand.

Both are fabulous examples of her work and were retained by the artists family after her death .

N0. 17 ‘View of river from Greenwich’ 1958 comes from the exact period when she was expelled from The Slade for refusing to take the module about perspective

In 1958 Mead won the Slade’s prize for Figure Painting and then the Steer Prize for Landscape Painting. Mead became the first woman president of the Slade’s student exhibiting society, the Young Contemporaries. The next year Mead became at loggerheads with the principle William Coldstream as she refused to take the Slade’s course on perspective, likely thinking it would damage her work and go against the teachings of Bomberg she said “perspective has no place in art” and wrote a thesis on that aim, but it was refused, so she was asked to leave the Slade. In 1960 a similar argument broke out at the Royal College of Art between Robin Darwin and student David Hockney over the latter’s refusal to complete the general studies course.

No. 21 ‘Still life- Flowers’ 1962

This piece is an oil on canvas that was a gift from the artist to her mother and bears a hand written label stating the fact , verso.

These 2 oils by Dorothy Mead retain their original gold exhibition frames and are ready to hang .

Do contact us for additional information or to arrange a viewing .

Jo Brocklehurst - Trailblazer Exhibition in Amsterdam

From October to December 2023 the Illustration Embassy presents the exhibition Trailblazers: 20th century illustrators and activism at the Meterhuis at the Westergas in Amsterdam. 

Jo Brocklehurst exhibited her work in Amsterdam in 1979,81 & 84 so its fitting that she is represented in this exhibition . Jo Brocklehurst is once again becoming a highly collected artist and here at Blondes FIne Art in Hertfordshire we will be running a parallel selling exhibition of her iconic work during the same period as the Trailblazers exhibition in Amsterdam.

The exhibition focuses on an exceptional generation of illustrators of the 20th century that were frustrated by the state of the world and engaged themselves​ around specific issues of their time (all of which are still relevant today). From racial discrimination, political memory, human and animal rights, economic rights, to gender, social and thinking norms, these illustrators cared and made images to make others care. For each illustrator, we focus on the strength of their unconventional gaze and the way they shaped our vision of society.

The impetus for this exhibition lies in research conducted by professor Emilie Sitzia and her master’s students at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Maastricht. They delved into a group of 13 influential illustrators and contemporaries of Fiep Westendorp; ranging from Pippi Longstocking’s illustrator Ingrid Vang Nyman, avant-gardist Tove Jansson, to Dadaist Hannah Höch. The researchers placed the significance and social impact of these illustrators in the international context of their time in a new way.

The exhibition Trailblazers, and its accompanying publication demonstrate how the medium of illustration challenged social and aesthetic norms of the time and had a lasting impact on society.

Joanna Carrington

Joanna Carrington is sadly a lesser known woman artist of the Modern British period, but here at Blondes Fine Art we love to champion female artists both contemporary and twentieth century.

Who is Joanna Carrington ?

Carrington comes with exemplary credentials and really should be an artist who is included in any collection. Perhaps her destiny was written from the day she was born in Hampstead in 1931 as her Aunt was Dora Carrington - yes that Dora Carrington of Bloomsbury group fame ! She went on to study under Cedric Morris at Benton End in Suffolk before travelling to Paris to train in Leger’s studio before returning to London where she attended the Central School of Art where bing taught by William Roberts, Passmore, Paolozzi and Turnbull to name a few. Joanna found Hugh McKinnon a generous tutor who introduced her to the artists who would influence her work for the rest of her career , particularly Bonnard and Gaugin .

What did she paint?

She loved these French artists with a passion and spent much of her life living in Brittney, Normandy and central France painting landscapes and still life work following the example of those post-impressionists and modernists who rejected classical perspective and local colour, and searched for new ways to represent the natural world while still retaining the convention of a window space. It is amazing that she she didn’t have a regular Gallery to represent her until 1987 when at the age of 56 Sue Rankin at the Fulham Road Gallery offered her an exhibition . She had exhibitions with The Portal Gallery and New Grafton Gallery but it was this relationship with Sue Rankin that lasted for the rest of her life and the gallery became the Thackeray Gallery where she enjoyed a number of shows until her death in 2003.

What works are currently available ?

We have recently acquired 3 fabulous works -shown below- that have great provenance having been purchased from the Thackeray Gallery . They are all oil pastels and studies for larger works. They offer wonderful value for money and are beautifully framed . Do contact us for more details .

Elizabeth Blackadder & John Houston - The IBM collection

The work shown below was purchased by John McCracken direct from his friend John Houston and initially hung is his office at IBM, Edinburgh.

This blog tells the story of how 3 paintings came to end up in Georgia , U.S.A. having been originally purchased in Scotland by John McCracken CBE who was a friend of the artists Elizabeth Blackadder and particularly her husband John Houston.

John McCracken was intimately involved in promoting Scottish arts, as a trustee of the National Museums of Scotland, 1985-1991; Society of Scottish Artists, 1984-1991; member of the Council of the Edinburgh Festival, 1985-1991; and supporter of the Scottish National Orchestra. So he was well placed to select the very best art available during these times. He was a friend of John Houston from an early age, as children they lived in neighbouring towns in Fife and were both keen sportsmen they were born a few months apart, both attended clubs together and went to Edinburgh University at the same time . John Houston grew up in Windygates Fife, where his father's family kept the hotel and village shop. His father himself was, as Houston put it, in more general business - sometime haulier, contractor, dealer of all kinds and of horses in particular. Until he grew too big, Houston would ride for his father at Musselburgh races and other local meetings.

Both men shared a love of golf. John McCracken, an all-round athlete, was a member of Muirfield, Prestwick, and Bruntsfield Links, and the MCC. Later in life he took up skiing and became an accomplished horse rider, so the men had a lot in common.

John McCracken started his 33-year-career with IBM in 1956 in Scotland, opening its first office in Edinburgh in 1958 and selling the first-ever computer system to both the Royal Bank and the Bank of Scotland. He held numerous successful positions during his career with IBM, beginning as a salesman and moving quickly through the sales management levels and positions to become a regional manager. John was named IBM’s Director of Scotland and Northern England in 1980 and held that position until 1985. He went on to become the Communications Director for IBM United Kingdom, Ltd in 1985, a position he held until his retirement in 1989. John was awarded a CBE in 1985 in recognition of Services to the Scottish Business Community, not only to IBM, but also for his non-executive directorships at Scott Lithgow, CR Smith, ScotBic, British Rail (Scotland) and Ewbank Preece, Ltd. He was also an active board member of the Scottish Development Agency, and other agencies, all to promote Scotland’s business environment.

He moved to the USA in 1990 and John spent his last 28 years living in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, breeding and raising Irish Sport Horses on a farm he carved out and loved dearly. His art collection was dear to his heart and he was not put off by the logistical challenge so decided to take it with him to the U.S. where it has remained until 3 of the collection were purchased by us for our personal collection .

The earliest of the pieces dates from 1967 and was sold by the Scottish Gallery in their Festival Exhibition. The work is mixed media gouache over watercolour fixed with PVA. Titled Lilies and the Garden the painting is from a period when both Houston and Elizabeth Blackadder lived in a flat above Anne Redpath and were clearly influenced by her work and subject matter.

This painting still retains the gallery label together with the purchase tag verso .

The next painting is another by John Houston - shown at the top of this blog- and it as travelled some miles in its time. It is a canvas that was originally painted in the USA when both John Houston and Elizabeth Blackadder where invited to Wisconsin by the Johnson family. On the stretcher to the rear is the original title and date showing it to be of Lake Michigan from 1970. Clearly the painting failed to sell or was no longer required because it was overpainted by the current piece in the mid 1970’s . The work is titled ‘Cornfields, Evening Kilconquhar Fife’ and very typical of a series of large landscapes the artist produced at that time. So the canvas was taken by the owner to the USA when he retired and we transported it back again to the UK in early 2023, so it has now been across the Atlantic at least 3 times during its life !

Elizabeth Blackadder

The final work is by Elizabeth Blackadder and dates from 1988, it was purchased direct from the artist and is again a typical piece from that period of her output . In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s Blackadder painted a series of works depicting Orchids, many were on this large scale 102 x 70 cm and she followed on with a series of prints also depicting various species of Orchids. This is a highly sought after piece and below is an image showing a little detail.

paula rego-The prince Pig series

In our previous blog Liorah Tchiprout was compared to Paula Rego, which is a real accolade for a young emerging British Jewish artist, but the comparison is well founded . Liorah paints with a passion and her imagery is , like Rego , often based on literature and myth . She like Rego is a fine print maker and she like Rego also creates narrative series that are full of mystery, and one image triggers a variation that turns into the next image. We are fans of both artists work but this blog now focuses on Rego and a wonderful print that we have recently acquired .

Paula Rego was born in 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal, and in 1952, moved to London to attend the Slade School of Fine Art. Rego launched her artistic career in 1962 when she began exhibiting with The London Group, which counted David Hockney and Frank Auerbach as members. Her early work, heavily influenced by Joan Miró and the Surrealists, verged on abstraction—in part, a reaction to her conservative training. In 1990, Rego was invited to become the first Associate Artist at London’s National Gallery. Around this time, her practice underwent a notable shift: favouring pastels over oils, Rego evolved toward the clear, linear representational style for which she is best known.

In 2009, a museum dedicated to her work, the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, was opened in Cascais, Portugal. The following year, Rego was named a Dame of the British Empire. Her work resides in numerous important public collections, including the British Museum, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and Tate Gallery in London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York; and the Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon. Rego currently lives and works in London.

Rego’s style has evolved from abstract towards representational, and she has favored pastels over oils for much of her career. Her work often reflects aspects of feminism and also inspired by literature, folk-themes, myths and fairytales from her native Portugal and from Britain as well as cartoons and religious texts; Rego creates narrative works that are imbued with mystery.

Paula Rego is drawn to subjects that are well known, drawing her imagery from sources as varied as Peter Pan and Mary Magdalene. Her first experiments with printmaking were tentative, but as she discovered the various techniques open to her, her work became liberated and extremely powerful. She commented: "I turn to etching, and lithography, with a sense of exuberance and relief. In printmaking you can give your imagination full-range and see the results almost immediately. So one image triggers the idea for the next one and so on."

The image above is available for sale artist proof 15/15 in perfect condition floating in a white box frame priced at £3,900 - Contact us for more details .

"The Prince Pig" series. The set illustrates the 16th century Italian tale by Giovanni Francesco Straparola " From Swine to Man". " The narrative verges on obscenity, it is erotic in a fantastic way and it is singularly violent, although, perhaps happily for the viewer's peace of mind, [Rego] eschews in her chosen images most of the extreme violence of the prose." Although "quite savagely violent, the tale has a happy ending in the best frog-into-prince tradition".

"As you scrutinise the odd couple[ in "Prince Pig Courtship"], Rego makes abundantly clear that no good will come of this , literally, bestial union. Here is another perfect Rego paradox that despite its happy ending, this is, like other Rego fairy stories drawn from literature, a grim and horrifying account of two beautiful women involuntarily sacrificed to a smelly, ugly, porcine monster."

"The psychologically acute image [in "Unhappy Courtship] is a subtle description of an impossibly unbearable situation. The flat, almost restricted, colours, while pictorially appropriate, are somehow reticent, leaving the viewer to disentangle what is going on in those inevitably separated minds."

"Seduction of Pig Prince" involves the third sister of the tale, the youngest and most beautiful one, who seduced the monstrous beast in such a way that he would not harm her, eventually bringing about his transformation. " In this image Rego emphasizes the disparity of size and weight between girl and pig. While she is trying to seduce him with kisses and caresses she has to beat the huge weight of the animal which would undoubtedly crush her. Her face is mournful, which suits the circumstances of a picture that is, in effect, a Pietà, an image that often recurs in Rego's works.

T. G. Rosenthal, Paula Rego: The Complete Graphic Work (London: Thames& Hudson, 2012), 208-215.

Liorah tchiprout - making modernism

‘Strive for the greatest simplicity by means of the most intimate observation. This is greatness.’ Extract from the journal of Paula Modersohn-Becker 1903

Oil painting - Liorah Tchiprout 2022

Liorah Tchiprout is an outstanding young artist who we have had the pleasure to know for the last 3 years and yesterday we had a day out together at the Royal Academy exhibition ‘Making Modernism’ . She draws inspiration from her Jewish heritage and her work navigates feelings about belonging, girlhood and the theatrical, particularly the lives and emotions of her own handmade puppets. In the catalogue for her most recent solo exhibition of new work the Director of the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum , Sarah MacDougall, wrote the following about Liorah.

‘ A contemporary artist working firmly within the figurative tradition of women artists including Kathe Kollwitz and particularly Paula Rego, Liorah Tchiprout’s contemplative portraits of women are powerful, potent meditations on unease. Her muted palette, sometimes shot through with blues, greens and oranges, provides a suitable backdrop to their unknown and seemingly unknowable narratives ( although she is also a skilful etcher, equally at home in monochrome). Indeed Tchiprout deliberately plays with our narrative expectations by juxtaposing her images with texts that occasionally illuminate, sometimes subvert, and almost always contribute to the prevailing disquiet. Hers is a distinctive voice conjuring up a memorable and unsettling vision.’

She was selected for the highly prestigious ‘New Contemporaries’ group in 2021 which has held a vital role in the development of young artists since 1949 and previous alumni include Frank Auerbach, Paula Rego, David Hockney, Frank Bowling and Damien Hurst . So lets be honest Liorah is in good company here!

Liorah is firmly establishing herself as ‘one to watch’ in the contemporary art scene and when the director of the Ben Uri mentions her in the same sentence at Paula Rego and Kathe Kollwitz it seemed like an opportunity not to be missed viewing the current exhibition together at the R.A.

All three of us found the exhibition inspiring, and the work by Kathe Kollwitz and Paula Modersohn-Becker to be particularly tender, honest and emotional. Below are 3 of my favourites by Kollwitz.

And here 3 of my favourites by Modersohn-Becker.

For me it was interesting to see the development of these women artists and how in a male dominated world they took inspiration from their adopted natural surroundings, often painting friends, still life and themselves . Modersohn-Becker died at the age of 31 years and we can only guess how her work would have developed but Kollwitz had a full life and married a doctor, moved to Berlin and both worked amongst the poor factory employees and their families. Kollwitz was able to record the harsh life these people led and the tragedy of mothers loosing children.

The last 3 years have, in a way through circumstance placed Liorah in a similar position to these artists, albeit a century on. When the COVID epidemic broke out in 2020, movement became restricted and access to her printing workshops hard. The result was that Liorah took inspiration from her own natural surroundings and began to paint what she had available in the same way that Kollwitz and Modersohn-Becker did all those years previous. Thankfully, during her printing course in Brighton she had taken one particular module that led her to construct a company of puppets . These were inspired by the Modicut Yiddish Theatre Company (1926-33) and during lockdown they became a form of extended family who Liorah could use as models and paint. It was during lock down that Liorah started to paint in oils on board and she has developed her craft in a short period of time as she, like Modersohn-Becker, strives for the greatest simplicity by means of the most intimate observation.

We have no doubt that Liorah Tchiprout will become a household name at some point in the future but for now she continues to develop her printing and oil painting side by side. We are very much looking forward to seeing her next body of work and to offering a selection for sale at Connect Art Fair in March 2023!

Do contact us if you would like to receive details of her new work.

Mel & Mark Ponting

The images above are from a 2022 visit to Liorah’s studio showing small oils on panels and larger monotypes.

Lucy kemp-welch major Retrospective

In Her Own Voice: The Art of Lucy Kemp-Welch

1 April – 1 October 2023 @ Russell-Cotes Art Gallery Bournemouth, before transferring to National Horse Racing Museum, Newmarket running until April 2024.

Lucy Kemp-Welch is one of Britain’s foremost equestrian painters in the tradition of British impressionism. She was an expert horsewoman with an innate understanding and love of her equine subjects, especially working horses. From the late 1890s to the mid-1940’s she was one of the country’s best-known female artists.

The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum has partnered with the National Horse Racing Museum to organise a major exhibition of works by Kemp-Welch (1869-1958), which will be hosted at both venues. Curated by art historian and curator, David Boyd Haycock, the exhibition will focus on key works and moments in Kemp-Welch’s illustrious career, as well as the influence of Hubert von Herkomer’s teaching. This exhibition is the first significant retrospective highlighting her work, in particular as a painter of horses, since her death.

What better reason can there be for a weekend at the seaside in the British Summer, Russell-Coates is such a flamboyantly interesting gallery/museum. In 1901 Merton Russell-Cotes gave his wife Annie a dream house on a cliff-top, overlooking the sea.It was an extraordinary, extravagant birthday present – lavish, splendid, and with a touch of fantasy.  They filled this exotic seaside villa with beautiful objects from their travels across the world, and lined the walls with a remarkable collection of British art, creating a unique atmosphere in a most dramatic setting. If you have never visited then now is your opportunity to do, its a step back in history a little bit of England that is like no other left today.

This exhibition will feature works from private collections , including our own , national and regional museums, including the Imperial War Museum, Bushey Museum and Southampton City Art Gallery. The exhibition will coincide with the launch of David Boyd Haycock’s new biography of the artist, due to be published in 2023.

Mel and I were delighted to host another meeting last week with both David Haycock and Sally Fletcher, the curator from the national Horse racing museum, to discuss the forthcoming exhibition and to finalise the works we are loaning to the retrospective. The piece shown below ‘ Harvesting of the Beech woods ‘ Lucy’s final Royal Academy Summer exhibition piece and a further 18 works will be going on tour for the next 15 months. These join the works featured from the national museums mentioned above and a number from other private collections. David, together with the teams from Russell-Cotes and the NHRM have done a wonderful job in selecting key works , many of which have either never previously been seen in public before or kept locked away for many years in the vaults and store rooms of National collections.

Lucy Kemp-Welch still has a loyal following of fans and collectors many of whom were introduced to her work through the book ‘Black Beauty’ which she illustrated, and we are all looking forward to reading David’s new book on the artist.

Russell-Coates Gallery have the very first R.A. Exhibition piece by Lucy in their collection and we are delighted that for the first time it will be reunited with the small preparatory sketches, watercolours and oils that Lucy produced before embarking on the massive oil painting of the same scene ‘Gypsy Horse Drovers’. It will be quite amazing to see them hanging together and appreciate how the artist went about her practice. This really is an exhibition not to be missed!

David Boyd Haycock is a British writer, curator and lecturer. He read 'Modern History' at St John's College, Oxford, and has an MA in the History of Art from the University of Sussex and a PhD in History from Birkbeck College, London. He is the author of a number of books, including William Stukeley: Science, Archaeology and Religion in Eighteenth Century England (2002) Paul Nash (2002, 2nd edition 2016), Mortal Coil: A Short History of Living Longer (2008) and A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War (2009), a group biography of the artists Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and C.R.W. Nevinson, all of whom were students together at the Slade School of Art in London.

A Crisis of Brilliance was nominated in the "Best Non-Fiction Book" category at the 2010 Writers' Guild of Great Britain awards. An exhibition based on the book was held at Dulwich Picture Gallery in the summer of 2013. His most recent book was I Am Spain: The Spanish Civil War and the Men and Women who went to Fight Fascism (2012).- Wikipedia entry.

Shown below is the exhibition work ‘Gypsy horse drovers’ with a watercolour preparatory sketch which was contained within an album of Lucy’s. The album was a gift to her cousin, had been kept by her extended family and stored in a drawer for over 100 years before coming to light 3 years ago.

Frank Auerbach - The 1954 Drypoints - Five for £5!

The early drypoint emerged from Frank Auerbach’s student work and they have a real sense of creative tension arising from reworking the plate and never being fully comfortable with the image . Indeed the artist himself acknowledges this as being a positive in his work and said

‘Most things I’ve done that might have any quality have been chewed up, worked over and redone; although I would not manufacture it, I quite like to see the traces of effort in things ‘

Well these early drypoints from 1954 are a case in point and were completed when he was still a student at the Royal college of Art. They are based on six life drawings chosen from several hundred that he made over the preceding years and they were executed by the most direct means possible . One ‘ Reclining nude’ is known to be based on the original drawing of 1952 in the collection of Leon Kossoff ; ‘seated nude with hands above her head’ is based on the drawing of January 1951 in the collection of Garda Boehm; ‘nude in a folding chair ’ is based on a drawing of November 1953 in the collection of Philip Holmes ; while ‘ nude in profile ‘ a 1953 drawing in the collection of Keith Critchlow.

When asked about the set the artist said

‘ These were all based on drawings at the Royal College of Art or Borough Polytechnic. I chose six drawings which were fairly fresh in my mind, out of several hundred…….These drypoint were scratched on to alloy six inches square , bought from Romany’s of Camden High Street for 6d. Each. They were all done with a nail, set into a pen holder with sealing wax, and printed by rubbing the back of a spoon over the back of the dampened paper. It was very laborious; there was a lot of burnishing. There was never a formal edition . I think there may be a dozen complete sets , they belong mostly to friends, often painters ‘

The marks of rubbing with a spoon are clearly visible on the backgrounds on the images , they were all achieved by trial and error with much polishing to polish away unwanted lines and in some places the actual prints have suffered cuts from the pressure of the spoon on the rough burred edges of the scratched line. There is also variation between sets as some prints exist in different states and Auerbach made up some sets with earlier proofs that he had made before burnishing away or adding to the plate.

So who had these sets gifted to them , who were the friends ? Well we do not know where all of them are, but we do know that James Kirkham had a set of six , which are now with the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, as did Leon Kossoff and R. B. Kitaj . We can speculate who the other friends were but I am unaware of a record of exactly who had them and how they came to be gifted to them. However we do know about the set of 5 that we hold in our personal collection . These were gifted to the beautiful life model June Furlong and this is her story of how she came to own a set of 5 drypoints as shown below .

June came from a wealthy family in Liverpool and was born in 1930. She came to London in the 1950’s and modelled at the RA and RCA for many famous artists . In her book ‘June - a life study’ she explains how she was a close friend of Lucien Freud, but first met Frank Auerbach at the RCA in a life class. They became closer over the following months after a night in the Studio Club in Swallow Street, off Piccadilly.

June recalls his studio as being ‘a bit of a dump, the floor squelched as you walked as it had paint all over it’. She explains how Frank never had much money and she always kept an eye on him as they were good friends.

June was such a beauty that she was a well known to all sections of the London scene including the more criminal element . She recalls being given a box of £5 notes to look after by a ‘car dealer’ and told she could spend whatever she wanted . She said it paid for her rent and Harrods shopping!

“Frank Auerbach saw all this money constantly carried around by me in a brown bag for emergencies. I offered him £5 to help him out, a lot of money then. He said he could not possibly take it, so I quickly offered to buy some of his etchings as a fair exchange. Frank agreed that he could accept the £5 in return for his work, so I got the (5) etchings and he got the £5. He went straight out to buy bread, tea and more paint! I went off with the etchings and had them all identically framed at the Royal Academy where I was working and have cherished them ever since.”

Well we still cherish them and they have pride of place in our collection . They have retained the original frames and still look as beautiful as June did when she sat for the artist.

Thank you June for ensuring the story of these 5 etchings will not be forgotten !

June Furlong (3 June 1930 – 20 November 2020)

Harry Becker - Going Dutch.

Harry Becker was actually christened Henry Otto Becker but interestingly enrolled in the 3 year course at Antwerps national Academy as Hendrick Becker when he was just 14 years old. It was his time in Antwerp that seems to have instilled a love of the Dutch and particularly the farm labourer , and this was a theme he returned to time and time again in the following years. Becker completed his formal art training with a period at Bushey School of Art in Hertfordshire and an apprenticeship at the studio of Carolus Duran in Paris, before returning home for a period in Colchester where his family lived. It was this period in the late 1880’s that he started to make a name for himself and had work accepted for the R.A . In 1894 Becker moved to London but continued to make excursions to rural areas to paint. Time and time again he returned particularly to Holland in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s. He concentrated on the field work of the potato picking and bean harvest undertaken by women as well as men and captured a time when a national dress still existed with aprons , bonnets and clogs the attire of the day for the women.

Becker’s love affair with the Dutch matured his work and inspired a series of lithographs and a cluster of successful exhibitions and appearances at the Royal Academy summer exhibition. He completed a series of lithographs depicting Dutch farming scenes in 1908 and 1909 and exhibited them that same year in his London studio and the commercial gallery at Queens Gate . At the end of the year Becker held another exhibition in his studio titled ‘Field labour in Holland’ and comprised of 33 watercolours which were greeted with acclaim by the Illustrated London News. They welcomed Becker as “a rare painter “ and they said of the subject “new to watercolour, the austere figures of young women a-field, full of vital angularity and splendidly fresh and unexpected beauty. “

It is interesting that when I showed the watercolour shown below to a very good friend she commented on how it had something of the ‘Soviet realism’ style about it and while I had not considered that myself I have to agree with her view .

So here at Blondes Fine Art we are delighted to have acquired one of those 33 watercolours - illustrated above- painted on Milburn board - a favourite of Becker - the watercolour wash is over pencil giving a wonderful feeling of fluidity and movement.

Further research has resulted in even more interesting facts about this painting . We are privileged to be the custodians of the personal archive of art historian David Thompson, who was the author of the definitive book about Becker , and tucked away in an old photo album we found an annotated image which shows the preliminary sketches for this watercolour . Interestingly , David does not reference the watercolour but does reference the fact that the work became an oil painting that was exhibited the year after Beckers watercolour exhibition at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1911. We can not find an image of the work but it was exhibition number 380 and titled Dutch peasant women gathering potatoes. Shown below are the page from the R.A. Exhibition and the notes from David Thompson’s archive .

So it is interesting to see the genesis of the work and how it was scaled up and developed into our watercolour and finally became a exhibited oil painting . If you have this oil or know where it is we would love to see it so do please get in contact with us here at Blondes Fine Art.

Jo Brocklehurst

Jo Brocklehurst and The Jo Brocklehurst Prize

Jo Brocklehurst is an artist of amazing talent, who was born to draw . She was compelled to draw on a daily basis and she has left us with an amazing record of the social history of the 1970’s - 2000’s.

She is best known for the Punk drawings she made of the occupants of a squat close to where she lived in West Hampstead . These images were exhibited in London , Amsterdam and New York and have become iconic, highly sought after works that visually articulate the subversion of the time . But Jo spent a period of time in New York drawing those frequenting the night clubs and capturing them using fluorescent pens to enable her to see her mark making in the dark surroundings . She used the same technique in England when she became a regular at Torture Garden in the early days of the fetish club scene , where she was to be found in the corner of the club with her drawing paraphernalia capturing the fashion students in their recent creations . This has become an iconic record of the time and Jo Brocklehurst is starting to become known to the wider collecting fraternity .

By way of recognition for the amazing work that Jo produced we here at Blondes Fine Art are proud to support Central St Martins in London by funding a prize in the name of Jo Brocklehurst

We are delighted to confirm the inaugural winner of the Jo Brocklehurst prize for 2021 is Maryam ADAM . Programme Director for Graphic Communication Design, Rebecca Ross, chose Maryam for the following reasons:
The panel of academic staff felt that Maryam’s Unit 10 projects, “From My Mother’s Hands” and “Where Are You Really from?” demonstrated an exciting present-day development of Brocklehurst’s interest in identity, and counter-culture, particularly for the way Maryam used the exploration of Gujarati craft-based processes to challenge dominant hierarchies and narratives of South Asian craft. Brocklehurst’s interest in subversion is seen in the way Maryam has recorded and illustrated environments and personal stories which encourage people to question Design boundaries and challenge empires.You can take a look at Maryam’s graduating work here in the online showcase:

https://graduateshowcase.arts.ac.uk/projects/269312/cover

We hope to be able to exhibit Jo’s work in the coming years and while the last 2 years have proved challenging to us all we are determined to continue to highlight the work of the great artist .

We are also interested in purchasing work by Jo Brocklehurst so do contact us is you are considering selling .

Mark & Melanie

Blondes Fine Art

William Gear - The art of nature

William Gear is one of the most recognisable artists but one that few understand well . His work is rooted in his humble beginnings , influenced by his times in Paris and working with the Cobra group, but above all his output needs to be seen as he intended ………

‘statements of kinship with the natural world’.

Summer morning 1952 - Please Equire

William Gear was born into a mining family in Scotland , studied together with Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Margaret Mellis at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1930’s before travelling to Paris to work with Fernand Leger . He also attended a summer school with ‘The Two Roberts’ so really was at the heart of the Modern Scottish Art movement of the pre war years .

He was called up for military service serving in the Middle and Far East where he met the artist Merlyn Evans and at the end of the war became one of ‘The Monument Men’ being signed up to the Allied Forces’ Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) section, during and immediately after the war. The group of approximately 400 service members and civilians worked with military forces to safeguard historic and cultural monuments from war damage, and as the conflict came to a close, to find and return works of art and other items of cultural importance that had been stolen by the Nazis or hidden for safekeeping. Some of them are portrayed and honored in the 2014 film The monuments men .

Post war Gear became heavily involved in the Cobra group and was one of just two British artists accepted into the group. Gear was invited by Constant and Jorn to exhibit at CoBrA shows in Amsterdam and Copenhagen in 1949, alongside Corneille and Appel. In the same year, he exhibited alongside Jackson Pollock at Betty Parson’s Gallery in New York. So lets be honest at this point Gear has some of the very best credentials in the Modern British and Avant Garde Art groups of the post war world.

The 1950’s

Gear moved back to the UK from Paris in 1950 . He was living with his young family in Loosley Row near Princess Risborough , Bucks and said about his work

‘There was always a link with nature, I never denied nature really. Even in those extreme abstract themes we have been looking at, there is an equivalence to, observable form.

I don’t say nature in the naturalistic sense but of observable forms. They may be telegraph poles or stakes or trees or structures or, as I am looking out the window now, I mean, I can see, I can see my painting in two or three different ways.

There is the severe architectural modern structure over there and at the same time trees and foliage and blossom and light through the tree. I mean, there is my painting you see. This is where it comes from. I don’t necessarily sit down and paint that, but I am aware of it.’

We only have to look at the titles of his works from this period to see that they are deeply rooted in nature and the seasons much like the work of Alan Reynolds from the same time. The two works pictured within this blog are companion works from 1952 and titled Summer morning ( shown above )and Summer afternoon (shown below). A close examination shows the exact same palette being used in varying proportions . The colours are vibrant but the morning work has more of a subtle subdued feel about it . Summer Afternoon sold a few years ago at Christies but Summer Morning is currently available here at Blondes Fine Art in Hertfordshire, so do get in touch if you would like to view the work.

The Festival of Britain

The festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that attracted millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan claimed that the Festival was a “triumphant success” during which people, “flocked to the South Bank site (in London).

As part of the event the Arts Council of Great Britain organised an exhibition, “60 Paintings for ‘51”, showing from 1st January to 1st December 1951 at the Suffolk Galleries, Suffolk Street, London W1. They invited 60 important contemporary painters to exhibit, even providing some with canvases for them to paint on as art materials were in short supply after the war. It was stipulated that paintings were to be not less than 45 x 60 inches (114 x 152 cms). It was an opportune moment for Gear who, out of sixty artists invited to submit, was one of five artists awarded a Festival of Britain Purchase Prize. Gear’s painting was a huge canvas – Autumn Landscape – and the only abstract work selected. The Arts Council purchased the five prize-winning paintings for £500 each, a considerable sum in the 1950s. The winners were Lucian Freud, William Gear, Ivon Hitchens , Robert Medley and Claude Rogers .

Only three paintings in the entire exhibition were abstracts, those by Peter Lanyon, Victor Pasmore and William Gear. Gear’s prize-winning abstract “Autumn Landscape” caused quite a furore and some of the narrow minded British press led a call for all of its readers to challenge the decision with local Members of Parliament. Gear was undeterred and continued to paint his abstract work and to challenge the traditional art world . I think that his output from this period is some of his very , very best . Innovative , bold and new . The use of vibrant colour was to show the way forward for many of the Modern British Art greats that we love to collect and appreciate today .

Gear was amongst the pioneers in Britain to produce prints using the silk screen technique. He moved to Littlebourne in Kent (1953), was elected a member of the London Group and began receiving commissions for fabric and wallpaper designs in the same way that Alan Reynolds also did with Edinburgh Weavers. Gear producing about 100 designs over the following nine years.

He was curator of the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne from 1958 to 1964, and then head of the Faculty of Fine Art at Birmingham collage of Art , a post from which he retired in 1975. It was while he was at the Towner that he managed to change the local authority’s collection policy from Victorian and local views to securing them the foundation of a major collection of post-war British art. He was still happy to ‘rock the boat’ and while in this role famously curated the first solo exhibition of Mockford's work in 1959 and also bought Mockford's 1958 painting, Eastbourne, for the gallery, a decision that caused another public outcry at the time. The painting was considered politically subversive and became the subject of a council meeting about why the gallery had paid for such a thing.
The Eastbourne painting features an aerial view of the town with line drawn houses surrounded by chalk and the Long Man, a giant emerging from the chalk, seemingly about to step on the town. Its a fabulous work and well worth viewing if you are ever in Eastbourne . It is now considered to be the star of the collection , how times change !

It really shows how our world needs people to stand up for what they truly believe and be prepared to turn a back on the well trodden path to seek a new way to walk .

Summer afternoon 1952

Summer morning 1952 ( the image at the top of this post ) is completely original , signed and dated , in its original frame and is 40 x 28 inches in dimensions . It is simply the best work by William Gear that I have personally seen . Its only on very few occasions that a piece of art comes into our possession that feels very, very special and this is one of those .

You are welcome to view the work in our gallery by appointment .

Mark & Mel

Blondes Fine Art

Robert Colquhoun and Fred urquhart

Robert Colquhoun was one half of ‘The Two Roberts’. He was well known in Soho and Fitzrovia for his hard drinking and relationships with many other Bohemians stranded in London during World War II. But, who is Fred Urquhart I hear you ask and how does he fit in ?

Its a very good question, and one that I would have been unable to answer until quite recently. I purchased a wonderful oil monotype of a head which was signed and dated but incorrectly attributed to a work that post dated this particular piece, so I began to research it. The frame, and the frame of a second work, was in poor condition but had removal company labels verso with two surnames hand written on them . The only other clue I had was that they were from a house clearance in Musselburgh, Scotland and found in a pile of other ‘worthless’ paintings. I began by doing my usual checks without much luck until I pursued the surname Urquhart and the story began to unravel.

Fred Urquhart had died in Musselburgh in 1995 , having moved back to Scotland from East Sussex, but the question was how did his surname come to be on the back of the artwork , what was the correct title of the work and how does he link to Robert Colquhoun? This is what my research revealed .

Frederick Burrows Urquhart was born on 12 July 1912 in Edinburgh. He became a writer and he wrote a number of novels. Fred Urquhart's strength was the short story in which his characters did the talking. He had an ear for all forms of accent and dialect and took ungrammatical yet creative liberties with the language. Although he spent many years in southern England after the war, his creative impulses were rooted in Lowland Scotland: on the Firth of Forth and Clydeside; in coastal Wigtownshire where he was at school for a while; and on Tayside, where he also spent some of his childhood . His stories generally dealt with the lives of ordinary people, and the cruelty and violence of such lives was a constant theme. He was particularly sensitive to the violence dealt out to women, and was able to portray the female psyche with insight and tenderness. The ugliness of war (he was a pacifist) was an extension of these concerns. On leaving school at the age of fifteen he worked for some years in a bookshop in Edinburgh. At the same time he began to write, and from the early 1930s onwards had stories published in periodicals as well as broadcast on the radio. He left the bookshop in 1935 to concentrate on writing. His first published novel was Time Will Knit (1938), the story of working-class Edinburgh life. When war came in 1939 Urquhart, as a declared conscientious objector, was sent to work on the land. It was at this point that his first collection of short stories appeared, I fell for a Sailor (1940).

In 1944 Urquhart was working in England at Woburn Abbey, the estate of the Duke of Bedford, which made a good base for contacting artistic and literary circles in London. It was as a result of working there that Fred was introduced to the Roberts by the Scottish poet Tom Scott during one of his weekend trips from Woburn to London and I gather that he also met George Orwell because of a connection to the magazine "Tribune". He became part of the Scottish contingent of painters, poets and novelist who would erupted into Soho and Fitzrovia on binge drinking evenings at The Wheatsheaf pub in Rathbone place . I am told by his friend Colin Affleck that Fred often reminisced about the Roberts and other figures from his Soho days. Others included W.S. Graham , the Two Roberts, David Archer , Julian Orde and Robert Frame. After the war Urquart lived with his lover and companion, the dancer Peter Wyndham Allen, and had moved into a house in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex in 1958, but when Wyndham Allen died in 1990 Urquhart moved back to Scotland and settled in Musselburgh where he died a few years later.

So that had solved part of my question as to how Urquhart and Colquhoun were linked but I then wanted to find out the true identity of the artwork I had purchased . Working on the presumption that Urquhart had been gifted or purchased the work in the 1940’s I started to trawl the exhibitions . After a good deal of research I was able to track down the exact title ‘Man’s Head’ and dimensions of the piece and the fact that it was lent by Fred Urquhart for the major exhibition of Colquhoun work at The Whitechapel Gallery March - May 1958 and is number 232 in the catalogue .I love the social history wrapped up in the artists lives and the artwork themselves as they are integrally linked , it was a joy to find out the true identity of the artwork and to understand how treasured it must have been as Urquhart had it in every home he lived until the day he died.

The artwork is now looking very well indeed housed in its original period frame but with a new none acidic mount so that it can be enjoyed for another 75 years , or more!

Adrian george

Adrian George 1944-2021 , was a fine artist and illustrator who sadly died in his London studio earlier this year. He was essentially a London lad living above is fathers chemist shop in North West London , schooled at the local grammar school and took evening classes at Harrow Art School . As a teenager he hitchhiked across Europe and from that point on he was a wondering soul, travelling and living across the world for most of his life .

His more formal art training began when at 19 he attended the Royal College of art studying illustration, where he took particularly to Peter Blake, then just beginning to make his way as a pioneer of Pop Art. Perhaps his early, hedonistic life in the swinging 60’s and kaleidoscopic 70’s is best left to his own account below.

‘I think it was the artist, Peter Blake, who first introduced me to the enchantments of Notting Hill in the 1960's. He had taught me at Harrow Art School and he used to meet with his friends like Patrick Caulfield and Derek Boshier in a pub on the Portobello Road on Saturdays. When I went to the Royal College of Art in 1964, Notting Hill was an obvious place to live. In those sensual days shades of grey were brightly illuminated by an unusual combination of time and place and people. I seemed to spend my time in Rolls Royces being driven to slum basements. In 1967 I made some drawings in Tangier, which were published in Queen magazine, Kit Lambert, the manager, involved in a 'Who' record sleeve, I worked on a film for 20th Century Fox. There were drawings for magazines like the Sunday Times under Harold Evans and Nova for Molly Parkin and also 'underground' magazines like Oz through Felix Dennis and also radical theatre with Philip Prowse at the Glasgow Citizens. Everything seemed to happen at once. And then there was travel, always when there was enough money; travels in Europe and travels around America.

The 1960's kaleidoscoped into the 1970's my indistinct memories reveal gangsters and fey pop stars, Joe Boyd a record producer of Jimi Hendrix, playing games of poker with people on the run. Fashion designers and boutiques, Zandra Rhodes and her sponsor Vanessa Redgrave, embryonic pop stars like Mark Bolan or Brian Ferry or Nick Drake always seemed to be in the corners of rooms at parties and night clubs. The best night club was Mo McDermotts. It was an entirely amateur affair. Mo was David Hockney's assistant and occupied the basement flat underneath Hockney's studio in Powis Terrace. Through a Baudelairian haze I can see Mo as a master of ceremonies to a nocturnal parade of artists, designers, musicians, models, hustlers, minor aristrocrats and major talents. There people who should have known better and some who had known a lot worse, met and drank and danced the night away. Some I still know, many are dead. Here a Beatle, there a Rolling Stone. The lovely orchidacious Patrick Proctor and amongst the catamites and their masters, pretty girls like sweet Marinka and the charming Celia Birtwell. There was forbidden fruit for every taste and much work to be done.’

George’s illustrations of Hockney (sold at Christies in 2008) and Bowie ( Christies 2018) are amount his best known together with that on Lady Diana. He also produced a number of stamps for the post office and worked extensively for Times and Telegraph newspapers being send round the world to illustrate and write .

He has exhibited extensively around the world and had many solo exhibitions in London, at Francis Kyle Gallery and at Chris Beetles Gallery in 2005. ‘ George’s work is included in important private collections worldwide and is also represented in both the National Portrait Gallery and V& A. We are delighted that we are able to offer 3 large works by Adrian George so do contact us if you are interested in his work and would like more details .

Connect Art Fair - Boutique Art Fairs & 10 years of Blondes Fine Art

Connect Art Fair runs from 29th January - 2nd February 2020 and it is now in its second year . Here at Blondes Fine Art in Hertfordshire we are proud to be celebrating 10 years of trading this year and just as proud to have a strong association with this boutique fair.

Mark Hearld - Connect Art Fair

Over the past 10 years we have mainly operated from our website with the additional bonus of having a large gallery open by appointment - this was converted from a stable block in the grounds of our home. Over the years we have taken various stands at a number of fairs including ones in provincial and central London locations, with 20/21 International at Royal College of Art and Works on Paper in Knightsbridge to name but two. We have also maintained strong links with public galleries and schools of art sourcing rare works for the Ben Uri collection and we are currently working closely with Central St Martins School of Art and Design on a new project for later this year.

So, there is always something going on here at Blondes Fine Art but Melanie and I are delighted to be making final preparations for Connect Art Fair . I was recently asked by another gallery owner why we like Connect so much and having given him an answer I thought I would blog it so that everyone can read why.

Lets start with the facts first

Fairs are not cheap to attend with central London high profile events costing upwards from £10,000 for 5 days depending on the size of the stand, so it is an expensive outlay for any business. Additionally, there are the logistics, with a great deal of time, expense and effort going into the planning, transport and manning of the stand.

So why do we like Connect Art Fair so much ? This is most easily answered by referring to comments from last years visitors .

‘I have never been to a more friendly fair , and I go to all the London events’
’ There is such a great range of paintings I could buy them all ‘
’ Everything is such good value , and the galleries are genuinely friendly’
’ I came to see what a fair would be like here at Mall Galleries as I was not sure how it would look . I have to say it is wonderful’
’ Love the venue, love the galleries, love the space - I do hope this becomes a regular event ‘

These are actual comments from a few people that attended the 2019 fair and we would have to agree with them all. It really is a Boutique fair , where you will find something to suit every collectors interest and every budget . Connect Art Fair is unique in that it is run by the dealers with no other organisation taking a profit from the event - like a cooperative . This means overheads are low and these savings can be passed onto the collectors. If collectors keep attending then I am sure it will be around for many years to come as I hope Blondes Fine Art is too. We look forward to the next 10 years and to meeting lots of new and existing clients at this years event .

The event is at Mall Galleries in London 29th January - 2nd February 2020 and if you need tickets just ask.

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Source: Connect Art Fair