CAREL WEIGHT R.A (BRITISH 1908-1997)
FOXWOOD
£10,000
Auction: 2 June 2011 at 19:00 BST
Description
Signed, oil on canvas
Dimensions
89.5cm x 94.5cm (35in x 37in)
Footnote
Provenance:Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London 1968
Garvey Collection
Exhibited:Newport Museum and Art Gallery, 1993, 'Strange Happenings in the Common Place: A retrospective exhibition of the work of Carel Weight C.B.E., R.A.'
Literature:Carel Weight R.A. - A retrospective Exhibition, Belmont Press 1982
Carel Weight's work is imbued with a unique atmosphere at once comfortingly familiar, and strangely unsettling. Born in Paddington in 1908, the artist spent much of his childhood with his godmother in the then working-class district of Fulham, and running like a refrain throughout his work are motifs of everyday British experiences such as this scene, The Village Cup Tie. An eternal image of rural life, the painting nevertheless captures a very specific and tense moment in time; the ball forever suspended in mid-air, never to meet the ready embrace of the goalkeeper's outstretched hands, while the referee's whistle rings without cease to a collective intake of breath. With its inclusive crowd of men and women, children and grandparents, the focus of the painting is nevertheless the isolated figure of a player, head bowed in shame as all point accusingly towards his fallen opponent. Anchoring the whole is the unwavering mass of the local church, its age-old stone solid against a forbidding sky, amidst branches bent beneath buffeting winds.
Writing about his life-long friend in an introduction to the Royal Academy's 1982 retrospective of Weight's works, Ruskin Spears describes how 'Carel at this time was a great mine of information; he seemed to have read Art History from the cradle, and his knowledge of the technique of oil painting was extensive.' Indeed, while his oeuvre is clearly of his time, in dialogue with the works of Stanley Spencer in its surreal undercurrents and evocative, in his love of narrative detail, of Lowry's northern crowd scenes, The Village Cup Tie also manifests Weight's interest in the work of Pieter Brueghel. His villagers, gleefully cheering on their yellow striped or azure champions, their characters skilfully rendered through the idiosyncrasies of dress, echo their distant Dutch counterparts, taking equal joy in a sporting activity shared as Brueghel's winter skaters.
In contrast to the rural setting of The Village Cup Tie, Weight's Foxwood is typical of another strong strain running through his oeuvre, namely suburban scenes of 'strange happenings in the common place' which gave rise to the epithet of 'the Alfred Hitchcock of English painting.' In a seemingly unremarkable London street of Victorian homes, something quite out of the ordinary is indeed taking place: a screaming lady clutches at her hair, which stands on end with fright; a boy rushes from his doorstep and another stands frozen with shock. The figures which people this surreal world serve, like the chorus of a Greek tragedy, to communicate through their exaggerated expressions the fear inspired in them by whichever unseen horror is taking place beyond the picture-plane. Our anticipation of impending doom is heightened by the contrast between the work's quotidian backdrop and its characters' uncustomary response, and, as in a horror film, by the artist's decision not to describe the object of their fear, but rather to allow our imaginations to conjure our own monsters. Nevertheless, underpinning the scene is an element of humour present in much of Weight's work, only enhanced by the almost anthropomorphic house which surveys the scene, combined with the blithe indifference of the girl calmly continuing with her day on the right of the canvas.
Weight first trained at Hammersmith School of Art, winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art which, however, he sacrificed for the sake of economy, enrolling instead at Goldsmith's College. During World War II he became an official War Artist, travelling through Italy and later Vienna and Greece, where he recorded the scars of war upon great art historical sites. In the post-war years, he became a tutor at the Royal College of Art, nurturing a generation of great British talent including Peter Blake, David Hockney, and John Bratby. In 1965 he was elected to the Royal Academy, having been awarded the CBE in 1962. His work is now included in the Tate Collection.