Rivers,Marshes & Estuaries
Open until 16 July 2018
This displays looks at the river landscape of East Anglia and how artists have attempted to capture their various elements - how man has utilised them, the detritus left by man as well as the beauty and meandering slowness they add to landscape.
The display includes works by : Alfred Munnings, Rowland Suddaby, Peter Coker, Harry Becker, Annie Turner, Peggy Somerville, Martin Hardie, Charles Baskett, Joyce Pallot, Alex Curry, Anthony Day & Hugh Cronyn.
All work is for sale. Please email or call for further information.
This is Munnings signature and his dating of the work on the reverse of the painting. 01 is the year - 1901 and the No. 3 denotes his third painting of the year.
Sir Alfred Munnings PRA. 1878-1959. A River Lock Gate, 1901. Oil on board.
Munnings was born at Mendham, Suffolk and studied at Framlingham College leaving at age 14 to become an apprentice to a lithographic artist in Norwich. He studied in the evenings at Norwich School of Art and had his first acceptance of work by the RA in 1899. This early painting dates from 1901 when he had returned to Mendham, and most probably depicts a lock gate at Mendham Mill. He was elected a member of the RA in 1925, was knighted in 1944 and became president of the RA in 1944-9. He was a vocal opponent of modern art, and yet this painting displays many modern techniques of its day. He has work in the Tate and many public collections internationally. There is also a museum dedicated solely to his work, The Munnings Museum, in Dedham.
Rowland Suddaby (1912-1972) Low Tide, Orwell Estuary, Suffolk.1947. Ink on watercolour paper. SOLD
Born in Yorkshire, Rowland Suddaby studied at Sheffield College of Art School from 1926. He moved to London in 1931 and whilst struggling to make ends meet he was 'discovered' by Rex Nan Kivell and given a show at the leading Wertheim Gallery in 1935 and later held regular shows at the Redfern Gallery. At the outbreak of war he moved to Suffolk, near Sudbury,
After his discovery by Kivell in the 1930s, Suddaby was feted as the young successor to Christopher Wood who tragically took his own life in 1930. Wood was celebrated for his assimilation of French modern art techniques and subjects in his images of sailors in Brittany and Cornwall.
In Low Tide, Orwell Estuary, Suffolk, Suddaby demonstrates why he was seen alongside Wood with the bright blue highlights of the sailor and the fascination with the rigging of the boat in front of a blank building, bringing a French feel to Suffolk.
The painting is presented in its original frame as exhibited at the Redfern Gallery in 1948(label to verso).
