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.
