MARY FEDDEN | OH-SO ENGLISH STILL LIFES
Mary Fedden didn’t arrive at the style she is now most recognised for – calm, colourful, studiously naïve still lifes, recalling Braque and Matisse, but very English – until she was in her 50s.
Mary Fedden (1915 - 2012), Sleeping Cat, Oil on board, 61 x 81cm
Before that, she lived quite a life. She went to Slade Art School before the war, and during it served as a Land Girl, before being called up to drive ambulances on the European Front. She fell in love with the artist Julian Trevelyan (who she had met at the Slade) on a holiday in Sicily in 1951, and then moved into his Thames-side home at Durham Wharf, near Hammersmith Bridge. In 1956 she became the first female tutor at the Royal College of art; her students included David Hockney and Allen Jones.
In the first half of her career, she was largely a muralist, and a set painter, but under Trevelyan’s influence she turned to painting domestic scenes, and then she came into her own. Like Matisse, she adored cats, and she frequently incorporated them into her paintings. Sleeping Cat (pictured) is typical of her work in the latter period of her life, a splendid mix of matt planes, clashing patterns, and interesting perspective. It’s a playful painting; like most of her work, its balancing act of colour and form and rhythm place it firmly on the right side of twee.
Trevelyan died in 1988; Fedden stayed on living and working in the same home until her death, aged 96, in 2012.
She was latterly represented by the Portland Gallery, who will be showing her work at Stand 3 on the Ground Floor of the Fair, alongside pieces from other Mod Brit luminaries such as Samuel Peploe, Adrian Heath, John Minton, her friend John Piper, John Hoyland and William Turnbull.