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Updated 28 April 2008

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NEW TITLES

Art in Exile : Polish painters in Post-war Britain
Douglas Hall

This book is about a body of painters who have generally been marginalised by British art historians – the Polish exiles from war and persecution who made their homes and careers in Britain before or after 1939.  It takes ten of them, explores their origins, their often hazardous escape from occupied Europe, their reception and the development of their work.  Some who were personally known to the author, such as Herman and Ruszkowski, are, along with Gotlib and others, the subject of searching enquiry; a further group, perhaps better known, like Adler and Potworowski, are also covered.  The book has chapters on the Polish context from which they came, on the problems East European art has encountered in the West, and on the Polish artistic community in Britain as a whole.

The author Douglas Hall, who was the first Keeper of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and still lives in Scotland, is known for his sympathy with the underdog and his interest in unfashionable or belittled values and modes of expression in modern art.  He writes, as he says, himself from a marginal position relative to the art nexus, and therefore is an ideal exponent of marginalised art.

We believe the appearance of this book is timely.  Since the author first began to study the subject the perception of Poland in Britain has changed utterly.  Further integration of Poland into the European community should lead to further exchanges of art between the two countries.  If it does not, it may not be for economic reasons alone, but may be further evidence of the reluctance of Western art authorities to take East European art, as a whole, seriously. The book suggests a beginning in better understanding by starting with those Poles who became British, and whose work for the most part is still here, a part of British art that is for ever Polish.

244 x 172mm
400 pages, with 100 colour and 50 mono illustrations
ISBN 978-1-904537-66-3
Paperback £35
PUBLICATION: 22 April 2008

Change in the Midlands:
Urban and industrial watercolours by Arthur Lockwood

‘Probably the most searching examination in the visual arts of any urban landscape in Britain’

In this lavishly illustrated book, artist Arthur Lockwood celebrates 20 years of painting change in the industrial landscapes of Birmingham and the Black Country.  He has produced an elegy for a lost way of life, without pathos or bitterness but with realism.

Without making judgements, Arthur Lockwood has dedicated himself to recording the demolition of nineteenth-century buildings and the construction of new landmarks such as the Bull Ring Shopping Centre in Birmingham.  Alongside this, he set out to document the decline of the region’s manufacturing, painting working factories and foundries before many were closed down and some of them demolished.

In Oldbury he recorded the last line of working drop hammers and in Wolverhampton the last manufacturer of tacks and cut nails.  In Birmingham he painted the last drop forge in the city.

The book contains over 100 paintings selected from twenty years’ work.

Brendan Flynn, Curator of Fine Art at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, has written an introduction, noting that ‘In capturing the process of change, Lockwood slows it down for us and offers an overview of the economic and social forces at large in the urban landscape.  His drawings are probably the most searching examination in the visual arts of any urban landscape in Britain.’

Arthur Lockwood is a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and exhibits in the RBSA Gallery in Brook Street, Birmingham.  He also exhibits in London at the Mall Galleries, where he is a member of the Royal Society of British Artists and at the Bankside Gallery where he is an associate of the Royal Watercolour Society.

ISBN 978-1-904537-72-4 
240mm x 245mm 
96pp with more than 100 illustrations in colour
hardback £18.50

 
A Singular Vision: Dod Procter 1890-1972
Alison James

For a period in the 1920s Dod Procter was perhaps the most famous artist in Britain.  Her painting of a reclining young woman, Morning, caught the public imagination when the Daily Mail purchased it ‘for the nation’ from the Royal Academy annual show in 1927. 

Monumental figure paintings and sympathetic studies of the female form, from babies to young women, would be defining elements of her life’s work. But her unflinching nude paintings of pubescent girls proved problematical during her lifetime and are still controversial today. 

As a teenage girl in 1907, Dod  studied at the Forbes School of Painting, in Newlyn, where she met her future husband, Ernest Procter.  The author of  a Singular Vision sets their marriage against the background of having to paint for a living, a commission which took them to Burma and their return to Newlyn, where Dod enjoyed many artistic friendships. After Ernest’s early death in 1935, she travelled widely to Tenerife, the West Indies and Africa.  The tender and exquisite portraits of the local children she painted on these trips were later to fall foul of post-colonial sensitivities. She always returned to Newlyn, where she lived and painted for the rest of her life. 

The fame, even notoriety, of her nude studies have tended to obscure the importance of Dod’s other great pre-occupation – the painting of still lifes.  Drawing on the flora in and around her Newlyn cottage, she painted exquisite flower studies, many of which are reproduced in this book.

Elected an RA, Dod’s great ambition was to have a major Royal Academy retrospective.  This was not to be, as by the time of her death in 1972 artistic fashion had changed and Dod Procter’s work was out of favour.  Only now is critical attention focussing again on her work, a process which will be accelerated by the publication of this timely book and the exhibition it accompanies at Penlee House Gallery, Penzance.

ISBN 13: 978-1-904537-78-6
270mm x 210mm, 144pp
Softback £19.95

PUBLISHED: 14 September 2007

Where the Sea Meets the Land: Artists on the Coast in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Christiana Payne

The coastline of Great Britain was a powerful magnet for artists in the nineteenth century. Itsstrong light created ideal conditions for experiments in open-air sketching and photography, and the difficulties of painting the endlessly moving waves presented a constant challenge.

It also occupied a crucial place in important debates of the time. Napoleon’s planned invasion in the early years of the century focused attention on the coast as a defensive boundary. Coastal geology and marine biology provided much of the evidence used in the disputes over theories of evolution which led to the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. Meanwhile, the British invention of the seaside holiday gradually worked its way down the social scale. 

The author explores artists’ responses to the coast and looks at the different ways politicians,  tourists, theologians, poets and scientists would have viewed the coast. She shows how the images fit into the wider  responses to social change and the transformation of religious belief. Special attention is paid to the development of lighthouses and lifeboats, and to the interest in the social organisation of fishing villages, both of which provided important subject matter for artists.

 Cartoons, photography and book illustrations are considered alongside significant oil paintings and watercolours. Their themes range from satirical humour to the most serious philosophical reflections. The book discusses the work of well-known artists, including  J M W Turner, John Constable, William Powell Frith and Winslow Homer, as well as others, such as James Clarke Hook and Henry Moore, whose contributions have been little studied in modern times.

ISBN 13: 978-1-904537-64-9
270mm x 210mm, 224pp, approx 100 colour and 15 b & w illustrations
Softback £24.95

Published: April 2007

In Field and Stable: The Life and Work of Richard Weatherby
David Bradfield

‘Seal’ Weatherby (1881-1953) spent most of his active life as an artist in the Cornish countryside. And yet, until now, he has been an underrated, relatively unknown and unrecorded member of the Newlyn and Lamorna artist societies. Although gregarious and ‘a favourite with the ladies’, he was essential a very private man who left few documentary records of his life.

Best known for his depiction of animals, particularly horses – his family business was horse racing  – his work was compared with Alfred Munnings’, from whose studio he worked for a time.  He had a keen interest in fox-hunting and at one stage had stables and a pack of hounds above Mullion Cove.  He was also a prolific portraitist of exceptional quality and regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy and London galleries. Among his best known portraits is one of fellow-artist Stanley Gardiner on the Lamorna Cove quayside.

Publication coincides with a major exhibition of the artist’s work at Penlee House Gallery, Penzance March–June 2007.

ISBN 13: 1-904537-65-6
265mm x 210mm, 96pp, approx 65 colour and 15 b & w illustrations
Price £12.95
Softback 

Published: March 2007

FORTHCOMING TITLES

 

A Village Industry: Arts & Crafts Copper Work in Newlyn 1890-1915
Daryl Bennett and Colin Pill


The book provides the first major study of the Newlyn Industrial Class, a small but very important part of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Victorian Britain which was established in Cornwall in 1890. With help from the Home Arts Industries Association, and teaching from John Pearson of the Guild of Handicraft, the Newlyn Class was started largely as a philanthropic gesture.  Aimed at improving the quality of life for the young men of this small fishing village, the Industrial Class represented an almost unique partnership between the artist and craftsmen.  

 The copperwork produced at Newlyn was in the fashionable ‘artistic’ style drawing on mediaeval imagery and honest construction ‘by hammer and by hand’. Apart from the social benefits which the Class brought to the village, Newlyn copperwork has provided a heritage of useful and beautiful objects.  The decoration of Newlyn work with repousse designs of sea creatures or scenes from the fishing village shows the consistent influence of artist/designer John Mackenzie who gave the work of the Class its character and visual appeal. The quality of construction of the Newlyn copper pieces, its durability and the range of object and designs created by the craftsmen  make the copperwork of Newlyn a joy for collectors.

ISBN: 978-1-904537-84-7
270 x 210mm
128pp, profusely illustrated with colour and black and white illustrations
Paperback £19.95
PUBLICATION: AUGUST 2008


Pristine Perceptions: The Art of Tessa Newcomb
Philip Vann

Tessa Newcomb’s art arises from piercingly clear, pristine perceptions of the everyday and natural worlds. The drawings she continually makes – such as on riotously weedy Suffolk allotments, observing curious, even bizarre happenings in manicured Parisian squares or alongside Venetian canals, and while ambling or cycling among the clear light and spacious landscapes of East Anglia – are a rich imaginative source for her paintings.

Born in Suffolk in 1955, daughter of the painter Mary Newcomb, Tessa sees her art as inseparable from ordinary life. Each of her paintings seems to tell a secret story. Their eerily beautiful atmospheres and curiously juxtaposed imagery recall  the art of Christopher Wood (1901-1930).  Among her sources of inspiration, she counts ‘watching slow, atmospheric films’, early 20th-century urban photography, ‘going places and rail journeys’ and reading poetry.

This well-illustrated book – partly based on the author’s conversations with Tessa Newcomb – is the first survey of this artist of singular vision, with a keen, popular following. It reveals how her subtly multi-layered paintings are illuminated by an interior radiance, an awareness of what she calls ‘Spaces and Silences’, and a rare, magical poignancy.

ISBN: 978-1-904537-94-6
270 x 210mm
144pp, profusely illustrated with colour and black and white illustrations
Hardback £24.95
PUBLICATION: SEPTEMBER 2008

THE WOMEN'S LAND ARMY: A PORTRAIT
Gill Clarke

Using  both words and images author Gill Clarke  tracks the  genesis of the Women’s Land Army in the First World War through to its re-formation in the Second World War and final disbandment in 1950. This is the first study to make extensive use of paintings by distinguished and lesser-known artists, together with recruitment posters, cartoons and photographs from both World Wars to portray the life and work of the Women’s Land Army.

Theirs is something of a forgotten history. Yet, the work these women did on the land often in terrible conditions was vital to the success of the war effort. They played a crucial part in increasing levels of productivity from the land in both World Wars. Drawing on published autobiographies and recent interviews by the author with Land Girls in the Second World War this book tells their story and those of the artists and illustrators who recorded their heroic work.                                                                                                                                                        

The book is divided into three illustrated sections:

Holding the Home Front: The Women’s Land Army in the First World War
Back to the Land: The Women’s Land Army in the Second World War
Recording Life on the Land: Portraits of the Artists and Illustrators

Artists featured include:

Cecil Aldin, Edmund Dulac, Randolph Schwabe, James Bateman, Evelyn Dunbar, Thomas Hennell, Nora Lavrin, Mona Moore, Laura Knight, Ethel Gabain,  Fougasse, Clive Uptton.

This book will appeal not only to former Land Army Girls and their families, but  to a varied audience including students, researchers and scholars of art, social and cultural history and biographical studies. In addition it will appeal to those with an interest in the connections between biography and art.

ISBN: 978-1-904537-87-8
270 x 210mm
176pp, profusely illustrated with colour and black and white illustrations
Softback £19.95
PUBLICATION: OCTOBER 2008

There was a Young Artist Called …
Sebastian Smith and Andrew Birch 

Everyone recognises a limerick when they hear or see one.  Popularised by Edward Lear, this five-line humorous jingle actually goes back centuries. Mostly associated with Lear, limericks have also been coined to some effect by such moderns as W H Auden and Ogden Nash. 

Now, in a sparkling twist to this popular verse form, artist and writer Sebastian Smith teams up with top cartoonist Andrew Birch to bring us 50 ‘Greats’ of the art world – amusingly, wickedly portrayed in words and pictures – as they’ve never been seen before.

ISBN 978-1-906593-05-6
A5
48 pages
section sewn softback
£4.99

PUBLICATION OCTOBER 2008

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