UNQUIET LANDSCAPE: BRITISH ART POST -1945, A VIEW FROM SIX WESTCOUNTRY ARTISTS
ALLIN BRAUND (1915–2004) Royal Academy
PHILIP BULSON (1925-2021)C.B.E RSA
ARTHUR HOMESHAW (1933-2011)Royal West Academy. Royal Academy.
ROY RALPH (1931-2005) Royal College of Art
SONIA ROBINSON (1927- current) Royal Society Marine Artists, Society of Women Artists. Newlyn Society of Artists, St. Ives Society of Artists
RICHARD SLATER (1927-2023) Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour. St Ives Society of Artists.
Britain, in the aftermath of the Second World War, was a changed society. War had shown yet again that it was the great locomotive force of change. In terms of West Country artists who would come to prominence in this post- war period a number had fought and survived the war: Terry Frost, Sven Berlin, and Allin Braund all fall into this category.
The term ’Neo-romantic’ in the post -war period came to take on a specific meaning, referring to a revival of interest in landscape and pastoral scenes of simplicity. It was a movement fuelled by nostalgia and inclined towards the melodramatic. An attempt to reach escape velocity from pinched postwar austerity Britain. The artist John Craxton, and a wartime friend of Lucian Freud, claimed ‘Arcadian’ was a better description: primitive and innocent.
What is unique about this exhibition is that all six artists saw a West Country they wanted to preserve. It was silent and secret, hushed in twilight, sunk under hot afternoons. They were often places of accumulated history. In this process an edge has been sharpened, a river slightly redesigned and simplified. Many of the artists in this exhibition altered their landscapes away from the familiar logic by the influence of European abstract artists like Paul Klee. Something round became something sharp.
What these very different artists have in common is that they sum up their views by revealing their essential nature; the light, space, stoniness or blueness. These paintings make you want to walk to the next hill and drink in the view. Wildwood Arts moves us into Spring and delivers, as always, quality art.
Allin Braund (1915–2004)
Braund was an artist of exceptional talent. In addition, his influence on post 1945 art in Britain was profound, yet largely unacknowledged. He was able to work with equal merit in the mediums of oil, watercolour, lithography and stained glass. He was also a sculpture of some repute.
Braund was born in Devon and educated at Hornsey College of Art. Like many of his generation, he saw active service in the Second World War. He joined the Royal Marines and participated in operations in North Africa, Crete and the Indian Ocean.
He taught at Bideford Grammar School before World War II and returned to Hornsey thereafter to teach design and printmaking until his retirement in 1976. His key influence was Georges Braque.
He developed a style of cubist space in his lithographs. they were quick to find critical acclaim. In 1954 they were chosen to represent Great Britain at the famous Venice Biennale. He was ranked alongside his contemporaries such as Lucian Freud, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Ben Nicholson, Henry Cliffe and Eduardo Paolozzi. He became a major force in British art from the early 1950s and gained a following overseas.
Exhibitions with his contemporaries quickly followed in London galleries, such as the famous Redfern Gallery in Cork Street, St Georges Gallery, and the Zwemmer Gallery. He also exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Arts Council of Great Britain. His works are held in the collections of the British Government, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Boston Art Museum, the cumin Museum in Southwark and the British Council . He was also part of a BBC programme called The Artist at Work and was also featured by Andrew Lambirth in the Spectator and in the Arts review 1960 and 1963.
Allen Jones described his teacher’s work as ‘ Braque out of doors”. Braund himself, defines his point of view as ” dissect and assemble”. Since 1976 until his death in 2004 Braund presented images composed of receding planes parallel to the picture plane in a post- cubist idiom. They encapsulated a less formalised response to the West Country landscape and tended to focus on fixing a moment of the changing sky. Nature for Braund does not rest, it swirls and fights, but his later work seemed to return to the more romantic simplicity of his early work. The colour is subdued and the forms, whilst inventive are direct and bold. The work you see today reflects a man’s life’s journey- one of creativity, vitality and a unique talent.
From David Buchanan Artists in Britain since 1945
Allin Braund: Painter, printmaker and teacher, born in Northam, Devon, full name Ralph Allin Braund. Studied at Bideford School of Art, 1932–6, then Hornsey School of Art, 1936–9, Norman Janes his notable printmaking teacher. He went on to teach at Hornsey College of Art and was ultimately a lecturer at Middlesex Polytechnic, retiring early in 1976 to return to Bideford and painting. Showed widely, including RE, Redfern Gallery, St George’s Gallery, Zwemmer Gallery, RA and abroad. In the British section of the 1954 Venice Biennale, Braund was included with illustrious contemporaries, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Henry Moore, Eduardo Paolozzi, Ceri Richards and William Scott. Was a member of the Society of Industrial Artists. Arts Council, British Council, Victoria & Albert Museum and a number of provincial and foreign galleries bought his work.
Arthur Homeshaw:
Arthur Homeshaw was a Westcountry artist whose work tapped into the deep-rooted influences that represent the best in English art. These perspectives are discernible in both his linocuts and his pastels. He developed a stylized manner of rendering reality. His work can be placed in the English romantic tradition of Paul Nash (1889-1946) and his work also reveals the influence of the wood engravings of Eric Ravilious(1903 -1942).
He was a member of the Royal West of England Academy since 1964. He was a Senior Member of the Academy. His work has also been purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum (The Giles Bequest Linocut Competition).In addition, his linocuts have been selected for the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1964,1984, and 1985.His work has also been purchased by BP, Devon County Council, and Exeter University. Between 2006 and 2010 his work has been exhibited and sold at the Affordable Art fair in London. Homeshaw’s work whether it is in the medium of linocuts or pastels represents a rare and unique talent. His work is now highly collectable.
Philip Bulson
Philip Bulson’s artwork demonstrates a mastery of mark making and subtle colour palettes across a range of subjects and mediums.
Bulson, Philip Stanley was born on April 21, 1925 in Yeovil, Somerset, England.
Philip Stanley Bulson, British structural engineer, consultant. Decorated Commander Order of British Empire. Lieutenant Royal Engineers, 1946-1948. Fellow Royal Academy Engineering, Institution Civil Engineers, Institution Mechanical Engineers, Institution Structural Engineers, Royal Society Arts; member Athenaeum Club.Lecturer memorial lecturer music, nature and structural form. Philip never exhibited his art works during his lifetime, preferring to keep them to himself. Wildwood Arts has exclusive access to his lifetime’s body of work.
Richard Slater
Richard Slater was born in London in 1927. He attended the Hornsey School of Art, which led to a long and distinguished artistic career. He moved to East Cornwall in 1973 and continued to develop and evolve as a painter in his own right.
Recognition of his prodigious talent was acknowledged by his election to the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in 1999. He is also a full member of the St Ives Society of Artists and exhibited with the Royal Academy and the Federation of British Artists. Throughout this period he continually exhibited his work both in the West Country and London.
Throughout his career he has developed a well crafted, poetic and often allegorical style which places him at the centre of the British Neo–romantic movement. He portrays landscapes as abstracts with a narrative through the medium of vibrant colours. Working with equal dexterity across the mediums of pastel, oil and watercolour, Richard Slater creates complex images of rural scenes, villages, buildings, wildlife and flora
Richard Slater’s paintings are in the permanent art collection of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. Furthermore, his work is in the art collection of the BBC. In summary his paintings represent the art of a master of his craft. They are both an enduring joy and an investment for the future.
From Buckman: Painter, draughtsman, print maker, collagists, illustrator, teacher, born in London who attended Hornsey School of Art 1944-51, part- time 1951-4. After nine years teaching art at Dagenham and London schools, and printmaking at the Working Men’;s College, he was appointed to the College of St Mark and St John 1960, transferring with it from Chelsea to Plymouth in 1973, retiring as head of department in 1980 to paint full-time.
During the 1960s, Slater did book illustrations for Cambridge University Press; made several lithographic editions at Curwen Press for Consolidated fine Arts, New York; and completed mural and ceramic commissions. A romantic dreamlike quality pervaded much of Slater’s work, which often involved figures in landscape. He participated in numerous mixed shows, including RA,RI, to which he was elected in 1999; RSMA; Alresford Gallery, Cowfold Gallery,Savage,St George’s and John Whibley Galleries and elsewhere.
Awards included first prize in the Drake 400 competition sponsored by Plymouth City council, 1980; first prize in the watercolour completion sponsored by Becton Dickinson, Plymouth 1982; first prize, South West Open Figurative Art Competition, sponsored by the Western Morning News, 1991; and Royal Institute Medal for the most outstanding painting by a non-member, Mall Galleries 1992.
Showed solo with John Whaley, 1974, later exhibitions including Streets art centre, Cornwall, 1992. In 2001, he shared a show with Roland Collins at Duncan Campbell Fine Art. Prince Albert Museum in Exeter, Nuffield Foundation and several local authorities hold examples. Lived in Landrake, Saltash.
Roy Ralph
“I hope people will look deeper. I hope people will detect the quiet confidence I have about the future of mankind” Roy Ralph.
Roy Ralph trained at the Royal College of Art and Epsom School of Art which he attended from the age of fourteen. He went on to work for the British Museum in the departments of Prints & Drawings and Oriental Antiquities and taught and lectured extensively. He later moved to Devon settling in Lydford on the edge of Dartmoor where he continued working for two more decades.
Roy approached his art with an intellectual playfulness but much of his subject matter carried a deeper social and political meaning. With a diverse body of work he cannot easily be categorised as his styles and subject matter developed and flowed with the times from Post War through to Post Modernism.
He had the ability to combine spontaneity and quirkiness, often with humour but always with a strong sense of design and colour. This immediately sets him apart, making his unique style recognisably his own
Sonia Robinson
Born 1927 in Manchester. Trained at the Manchester School of Art and in London at the Hornsey School of Art. From 1947, worked as a freelance mural painter and then as a landscape painter exhibiting in London galleries. In the late 1960s, she moved from Hampstead, London to Mousehole in Cornwall, where she still lives and works.
She was elected a member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists in 1978 and acted as their Hon Secretary from 1994 to 1999. Her election to membership of the Society of Women Artists was in 1991. She was also a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists and of the St Ives Society, the latter culminating after many years of membership in a very successful spell as their Chairman. She resigned from Newlyn at the beginning of the century and from St Ives in 2006.
Sonia Robinson works in oil and in watercolour/gouache, finding inspiration both in her beloved Cornwall coast and abroad, especially in small French towns, always looking for the harmony of pattern, tone and light for her subjects. She was the first recipient of the highly-regarded Donald F Blake Award at the RI. In addition to being a regular exhibitor at RSMA, SWA and RI shows, she has exhibited widely both within and outside the UK.
Her work is mentioned in several publications: in A Celebration of Marine Art; in James Taylor’s Marine Painting; and in Tony Paul’s Great Textures in Painting. The artist herself contributed two thoughtful well-illustrated articles to the Leisure Painter magazines of September 2003 and April 2004.
In October 2018 she was made a Life Member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists.
Sonia Robinson’s passion for drawing is most important for a thorough understanding of her subject matter. Pattern, negative shapes and the overall composition are thus realised – and convey why she wants to paint a particular scene. Inspiration comes from Giotto’s, Renaissance drawings and also Cezanne and The Glasgow Boys.
