Lot 52
FRA HENRY NEWBERY R.W.A., A.R.C.A. (SCOTTISH 1855-1946)
BRIDPORT WEAVING
Auction: 26 September 2024 from 18:00 BST
Description
Signed, oil on canvas
Dimensions
82cm x 152.5cm (32.5in x 60in)
Provenance
Presented by W. Lang, Esq., 1928.
Footnote
Exhibited:
Glasgow School of Art, Fra Newbery, Artist and Art Educationist, August 1996, p.33, no.43.
Literature:
Rawson, George Mansell. Francis Henry Newbery and the Glasgow School of Art. PhD thesis, Glasgow School of Art, 1996, pp.278-279;
Rawson, George. Fra Newbery, Artist and Art Educationalist, 1855-1946. The Fouilis Press of Glasgow School of Art, 1996. p.33, cat.no. 43, where titled ‘An Old Bridport Weaving Shop’.
Bridport Weaving dates to the mid-1920s. It relates to a mural Newbery created for Bridport Town Hall in 1924. The mural comprised four scenes illustrating local traditional industry, including sailcloth weaving, twine spinning, yarn bleaching and net braiding, with the allegorical figure ‘The Spirit of Bridport’ represented by a young woman in a fifth central panel.
The oil on canvas offered here for sale is a fine example of the sophisticated compositional arrangements Newbery was capable of achieving. In his 1996 PhD thesis, Dr. George Rawson records that Bridport Weaving was ‘a reconstruction of one which Newbery had known and had as the workers' foreman a Scot, William Rathbone, who Newbery remembered had been one of the last handloom weavers in Bridport.’ A complex interior of criss-crossing beams and loom equipment serves as a device to lead the viewer’s eye back and forth across the composition, resting finally on Rathbone’s face. As Rawson notes, ‘[the] scene is one of hard concentrated work and contains a strong sense of movement. Three of the four figures are seen straining over their machinery. Immersed in their labour they offer no personal contact with, or acknowledgement of, the spectator’.