Join Head of Sale Chantal de Prez as she discusses her personal highlights from the forthcoming auction ‘The Art Edit’.
Millie Frood, Coffee Hour
Millie Frood’s long-overlooked brand of Scottish expressionism is finally attracting the attention it deserves with the opening of a retrospective at North Lanarkshire Heritage Centre. The Strange Horizons exhibition situates Frood at the heart of Glasgow’s art scene in the 1940s and ‘50s and celebrates the distinctive contribution she made to the city’s visual culture, both as an artist and educator (Frood taught at Belshill Academy). She was a founding member of the New Scottish Group alongside John Duncan Fergusson, Margaret Morris, Jankel Adler and Josef Herman, affording her unique exposure to European modernism and Scottish Colourism. These styles and ideas clearly inflect Frood’s social-realist depictions of West Lanarkshire life.
William Wilson, Church by Moonlight / Latton Priory, Essex - 1936
The Art Edit includes a group of prints and works on paper from the collection of the artist William Wilson (1905-72), and lot 51 is one of my favourites. Wilson and Edgar Holloway (1914-2008) first met in 1935, and by 1936 had rented a cottage in Essex where they set up a printing press. These two etchings appear to have been produced collaboratively during this period, with Wilson designing and etching each composition and Holloway responsible for their printing. Both artists made similar etchings of Latton Prior in 1936, possibly having worked from the same vantage point or preparatory drawing, with Holloway’s version in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Alexander Wellwood Rattray, Collecting Sticks
I can’t help but be charmed by this pair of woodland scenes. Wellwood Rattray trained at Glasgow University and Glasgow School of Art, but also travelled extensively throughout Europe, and these influences appear in complement in the artist’s impressionistic brushwork which brings to mind the Hague School or the Glasgow Boys.
Dame Ethel Walker, Nymphs Finding Narcissus
Ethel Walker resisted the early twentieth century vogue for abstraction, instead remaining firmly committed to figuration. This was usually usually in the form of direct, characterful portraiture or of densely populated compositions inspired by Greek or Roman mythology. Walker’s classical compositions invariably foreground female characters, but in Nymphs Finding Narcissus it’s possible the limp central figure represents Narcissus, whose androgynous form is being borne away by nymphs. The pool into which Narcissus fatally falls can be glimpsed to the lower right. Several works in the Tate collection exemplify Walker’s further essays in classical figure composition, including The Bathers (1910-20), Decoration: The Excursion of Nausicaa (1920), and The Zone of Love: Decoration (1930-2).
Lil Neilson, The Dark Path of the Guitar
Lil Neilson’s paintings generally interpret the Catterline landscape and evidence the influence of her relationship with Joan Eardley. Neilson’s printmaking, however, demonstrates a greater tendency towards symbolism and abstraction. This lithograph is a delight: fans of Neilson’s work will know that her prints appear on the market only infrequently, and I haven’t come across another example of a musically-inspired composition by Neilson.
Gyrth Russell, Worsborough Village, Nr Barnsley
This charming oil of Worsborough Village likely dates to the late 1940s or early ‘50s when Gyrth Russell fled bomb-ravaged London for Yorkshire, accepting a position as lecturer at Doncaster School of Art. A note indicates that this was a ‘demonstration painting’ likely executed for his students. The interest in local architecture and the rendering of bright, clear light are quintessential Russell.
