I have long commented how Eric Ravilious reused his work, from painting to wood-engraving. But in this post I want to show his tutor Paul Nash also did the same.
The revival of wood engraving and the printmaking would mean that an artist could paint a beautiful image but also make some more money selling duplicates.
Katharine “Kitty” Church (1910–1999) was an English painter known for expressive works, particularly in watercolours and oil paintings. She was associated with the Neo-Romantic movement and a good friend of Ivon Hitchens and John Piper who both owned her work.
Born in Highgate, London, Church studied at the Brighton School of Art, Royal Academy Schools (1930-33), and the Slade School of Fine Art (1933-34).
Church had a close friendship with Ivon Hitchens, and for a time was his model. While staying with him in June 1934, at his Suffolk cottage, Hitchens invited John Piper for the weekend. Kitty invited her friend Myfanwy Evans, an Oxford English graduate whom Hitchens also wished to sketch. Piper agreed to meet Myfanwy at Leiston station and was immediately infatuated with Evans, sparking a romance that became a lifelong marriage.
From Kitty, Ivon cribbed her style of painting trees with sweeps of paint and over time he would extend this into his pictures of paintbrush motions of the landscapes. Kittys work had the feel of calligraphy in this way, with confident lines of black making up pictures of the landscape.
During the early phase of her career, Kitty exhibited regularly with the Royal Academy. In 1933, she had her first solo exhibition at the Wertheim Gallery run by Lucy Carrington Wertheim, patron of Christopher Wood and Frances Hodgkins.
Hodgkins painted a portrait of Kitty, Portrait of Kitty West, in 1939, which is now held by the Tate.
Church exhibited with the New English Art Club and showed regularly with The London Group. From 1937 to 1947, she exhibited her work at the Lefevre Gallery. In 1954, she was invited to take part in the exhibition Figures in their Setting at the Tate Gallery. She was invited to exhibit at the National Museum of Wales in 1982. In 1988, a retrospective of her work was held at the Duncalfe Galleries in Harrogate.
Church married Anthony West (son of writer Rebecca West & H. G. Wells) in 1937; the couple had one son (Edmund West) and one daughter (Caroline Frances West).
Among the couple’s close friends were the painter Julian Trevelyan, John Piper and the Bloomsbury writer Frances Partridge.
The Wests divorced in 1952 and Kitty moved to Sutton House in Dorset.
Thelma Annette Carstensen was born 6th September 1906, born to Norwegian parents in Edmonton, North London. Her father Anders Carsttensen (1876 – 1940) was a Norwegian timber agent in Great Winchester Street, London. Her mother was Olga Alice Carstensen nee Olsen (1878 – 1955).
Thelma was educated at Crouch End High School and Hornsey School of Art under John Charles Moody. She was admitted to the Slade School of Art studying under Randolph Schwabe. In 1933 she won the Slade Figure Painting Prize. She married Alastair Phillips but continued to use her maiden name to paint.
She Exhibited at the Royal Academy many times in: 1931, 1937, 1939, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1964, 1966, 1967. She was also a member of the Royal Society of British Artists. In 1957 she exhibited at Walker’s Art Gallery, Bond Street with Valerie Thornton 27th March – 16th April, 1957. Other exhibitions can be traced to the Goupil Gallery, London. She was also a member and exhibitor at the Women’s International Art Club.
In 1939 is living in 2 Gurney Drive, Hampstead Garden Suburb. In 1990 was living at 8 Monks Mead, Brightwell, Wallingford, Oxford where she died in 1992. Her work is in the collection of UCL Art Museum.
Thelma Carstensen showed drawings and gouaches of places as far apart as Norway and Tuscany.
Rather more naturalistic, but equally successful at extracting design from landscape, is Miss Thelma Carstensen, whose work is also to be seen at Walker’s Galleries. She is a plein-airiste, and a sense of immediacy is evident in the restless rhythms of her vegetation. A passionate admirer of Samuel Palmer, she shares his feeling for forms that curve and undulate, and although she does not disdain the starker wintry aspect of nature she somehow always manages to convey the sense of sap rising and roots stirring.
† Studio International, Volume 157, 1959 p189
‡ The Tablet – Volumes 209-210, 1957 p352
The Year’s Art, 1940 p309
‘By The Observer’ – Hendon & Finchley Times – Friday 05 May 1939 p20
In one of these collages by John Piper is a tiny little scrap of paper in the bottom left building. It’s a piece of Edward Bawden’s Curwen patterned paper.
Piper used all sorts of bits of paper in these works, there is a piece of musical score right in the middle of the hill with some shading. The clouds are made of blotting paper.
Shortly after Mark Rothko’s tragic death in 1970, the art writer, lecturer and broadcaster Bryan Robertson gathered together artists who had known Rothko and held him in high regard, proposing that something should be done to honour his life and work.
As a result the Mark Rothko Memorial Trust was established in 1973 to raise money to enable artists working in the UK to travel to the US. The portfolio contains thirteen prints by thirteen artists: Patrick Caulfield, Merlyn Evans, Adrian Heath, Patrick Heron, John Hoyland, John Hubbard, Paul Huxley, Allen Jones, Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore, Bridget Riley, William Scott and Richard Smith.
It is always interesting to me to see how people interpret an artists work, so this portfolio of prints is a wonderful resource and moment in time.
All these prints are nice enough but then it comes to the contribution from Allen Jones, what the hell is it? The colours are of a Rothko painting but I can not imagine who would want this on their wall.
This Sunday I will be selling some pictures and studio pottery at the Newmarket Antiques Fair at the Rowley Mile Racecourse Newmarket. September 8th. 8AM to 4PM.
On September 11th I shall be giving a talk on Edward Bawden and my book Looking at Life in an English Village. The event will take place in Cambridge at the David Parr House Study Centre on Gwydir Street.
For more information please see their website here.
I thought it would be interesting to look at a set of studies at different stages to make up the Mill in Essex Contemporary Lithographs print by John Aldridge in 1938,
Below is another view of the mill painted in Oil by Aldridge as a plein air sketch.
Here is also another study of the mill with the same trees in the print. It might even have a swimming in the ground, or just some mud banks. I find the abstraction of the lithograph to be so controlled and the balance of colours is so charming.
Jean Marchand was born in Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1902 through 1906. He had supported his artistic ambitions by designing fabrics and jewellery as well as opera sets and book illustrations.
Marchand had met Roger Fry in Paris. Fry had an active social life in the Parisian artistic sets through the friends he made there like Picasso and Andre Derain, the latter who with his wife Alice held court in the cafes with a group of artists known as la bande a Derain; These included George Braques, Andrew Salmon, Joan Oberle along with Jean Marchand, Moise Kisling and Louise Marcoussis.
Marchand’s style was plain air and naturalistic in the post-impressionistic circle of Cezanne. In Paris he came to the attention of Roger Fry who invited him to submit work to Fry’s now famous 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism and the Second show in 1912. He later had an exhibition at the Carfax Gallery in 1915.
Fry intended to show the ways in which impressionism had expanded from its French origins and taken root in other countries, specifically Russia and England. In the second exhibition, the French works of art by Cézanne, Bonnard, Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Marchand, and others that Ottoline, Desmond, and Duncan had helped Roger select in Paris were juxtaposed with Russian and English paintings. The Russian paintings were chosen by the mosaicist Boris Anrep, husband of Helen.
Mary Ann Caws – Bloomsbury and France
From his exhibitions in London Marchand became respected by a series of artists, including Frances Hodgkins, St. John and Mary Hutchinson, Hilton Young, and Percy Moore Turner and the members of the Camden Group who invited him as a guest exhibitor.
In Paris Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell got to know Marchand too, buying his pictures that still hang in Charleston Farmhouse today and visiting Jean and his wife in Cagnes. Later Quentin Bell would study under Marchand at the Academie Moderne in Paris in 1928. Jacques and Gwen Ravarat hosted Marchand at their home in Vence in 1924 where Roger Fry would visit and paint alongside him. Marchand stayed with the Ravarats supporting Gwen when Jacques died.
Jacques died in the early hours of 6 March 1925. It was a Friday morning. Gwen rested a little, then broke the news to the children when they woke, Marchand stayed all day and by degrees made Gwen feel sane again. … Markhand together with the town Mayor, as was then the custom, signed the death certificate.
Frances Spalding – Gwen Raverat
Roger Fry and Clive Bells respect for his work also bought him to the attention of Samuel Courthauld who bought and collectors like Frank Hindley Smith, the mill owner who left a painting to the Tate, and prints and drawings to the British Museum.
Marchand was renowned for his still lifes, but his “tight modelling” impressed Duncan, and Roger liked him for his simple and serious character.
Mary Ann Caws – Bloomsbury and France
His work is represented by the Crane Kalman Gallery who also held his memorial exhibition in 1967.
Also, if you want drawings etc. an art representative. Lewis, Wadsworth, John, Roberts, Sickert ought to be glad to have their drawings used. There are of course important people in Paris too: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, Marchand etc.- T S Eliot to Scofield Thayeron artists to feature in Dial.
Letters of T. S. Eliot