Mary Fedden O.B.E. R.A. R.W.A. (British 1915-2012) §
Fisherwoman, 1947
£14,375
Auction: 30 April 2021 from 10:00 BST
Description
signed and dated (lower left), oil on canvas
Dimensions
49.5cm x 60cm (19.5in x 23.6in)
Footnote
Having returned to London in 1946, after the war, Mary Fedden began to paint with a new seriousness developing her own individual style that owed considerable influence to Russian and French modernists. By 1947, the same year as this painting, she held her first one-person exhibition at The Mansard Gallery in Heal’s Department Store. Her still life paintings proved so popular after the exhibition that it led to a three-year commission from Woman magazine to paint the journal covers.
Landscape paintings of this period by Fedden are rare to appear, and the current work is perhaps closest to Distress Signal that appears to depict the same coastal village on a stormy evening. These early works mixed her Slade School training, with the low-key colours and emphasis on fact, with an increasing sense of pattern and form that would become a signature characteristic of her more mature work.