£525
Contemporary & Post-War Art | 595
Auction: 16 April 2020 at 12:00 BST
Lithograph, signed in pencil to margin, numbered 61/150, embossed with Curwen Chilford Studio stamp
Biography:
Over her long career Mary Fedden has become one of the nation's most-treasured artists. Writing about Fedden's enduring appeal, Christopher Andreae declared, ‘Her work can become something of an addiction. More than one collector has been known to sleep on the pavement outside a gallery all night so as not to miss the opportunity of buying a favourite.’
Perhaps part of the appeal of her work lies in its apparent simplicity coupled with its exquisite execution, anchored in the long pictorial tradition of Dutch still life and underpinned by her early formation at the Slade School of Art. Indeed, Fedden's is an oeuvre that merits close inspection, and while her concise and effective compositions provide immediate pleasure (demonstrated by their popularity in reproduction as prints and postcards, china and textiles), our delight can only be enhanced by a lingering gaze and appreciation of her painterly skill, her brush strokes as easily identifiable as a signature.
After a war spent in the Land Army and as a staff driver in France and finally Germany, Fedden was quick to build on the foundations of her Slade training. Her work was profoundly influenced by the seismic shifts which shook painting in the post-war years and her style moved beyond the muted naturalism of her Slade years. Perhaps the most significant influence on Fedden's artistic and personal development, however, was her relationship with artist and poet Julian Trevelyan, with whom she lived for many happy years at Durham Wharf, on the Thames at Chiswick, and to whom she was married in 1951.
Mary Fedden was elected to the Royal Academy and received the OBE in the 1990's. Her work is included in numerous public collections including The Tate Collection, HM The Queen's Collection, and National Gallery of New Zealand.