British Art News

The latest news in Modern and Contemporary British Art.

by Alex Leith

Artist Spotlight, Exhibition Ramsay Fairs Artist Spotlight, Exhibition Ramsay Fairs

A delicious country | John Craxton at Osborne Samuel

‘I can’t tell you how delicious this country is,’ wrote a 23-year-old John Craxton to his friend Elsie ‘EQ’ Nicholson, from Athens, on May 20, 1946. ‘…the lovely hot sun all day & at night tavernas: hot prawns in olive oil & great wine & the soft sweet smell of Greek pine trees. I shall never come home. How can I?’.

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A surrealist snap | Eileen Agar at Austin/Desmond

1936 was quite a year for Eileen Agar. In the spring she was visited in her studio by Roland Penrose and Herbert Read, who, to her surprise, declared her a surrealist and selected two paintings and five objects for inclusion in the International Surrealist Exhibition they were organising at the New Burlington Galleries in Mayfair, running from June 11 to July 4.

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Pop went the Easel | Derek Boshier at Whitford Fine Art

“I’m very interested in the whole set-up of the American influence in this country,” states the 24-year-old Derek Boshier, rather earnestly, in Ken Russell’s seminal BBC documentary Pop Goes the Easel, made and broadcast in 1962. “In the infiltration of the American way of life. It’s through advertising… that this infiltration has come through”.

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Her version of real | Chantal Joffe, Scarlett and Lola

“I don’t find men very interesting to look at,” Chantal Joffe told the Telegraph a few years ago. She doesn’t feel the same way about women: her subject matter is almost always portraiture of female figures. She paints her mother, she paints her daughter Esme, she paints herself, unflinchingly (in 2018 she produced a self-portrait every day of the year), and she paints friends, and friends’ children, such as Scarlett and Lola (pictured) who have featured in her work since they were toddlers…

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Naughty, but nice | Pop artist Deborah Azzopardi

Donald McGill… meet Roy Lichtenstein. Deborah Azzopardi paints sexy, saucy, cartoonish scenes in bright colours on large canvases.

Women pull their tops over their heads; louchely lean their long stiletto-tipped legs out of convertible sports cars, and put their fingers in front of their full lips, as if to whisper ‘Shhhh! Let’s keep this our little secret.’

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Ceri Richards | Feathers and Furnaces, Jonathan Clark Fine Art

To use the parlance of the time, the Welsh artist Ceri Richards (1903-1971) ‘had a good war’, though it didn’t start off terribly well.

Jonathan Clark Fine Art Gallery represent Richards’ estate, and studies made in situ in the foundry are displayed in their current exhibition, hence the ‘Furnaces’ in its title. The ‘Feathers’ refers to the garments worn by the costermonger Pearly Kings and Queens, who had inspired the artist when he was living in London: wartime sketches of these flamboyant figures, also on show.

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Image and Anxiety | Keith Vaughan at Osborne Samuel

Osborne Samuel have named their latest exhibition of the work of Keith Vaughan – their fifth since 2007 – Image and Anxiety.

The Mayfair gallery has gathered over 80 works from major private collections, and paintings from their own inventory, including all eight of his lithographs, and the show – which enjoyed a crowded private view on May 10 – is illustrated with two cabinets full of Vaughan’s notebooks, letters, photographs and journals.

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NIGEL HENDERSON | CORONATION KIDS

These four characterful East London kids, dressed in their best for the 1953 Coronation, posing patiently for the camera under a flurry of raggedy bunting, will now be in their mid-seventies, around the same age as King Charles. They will, no doubt, currently be preparing for Charles’ coronation, if they’re still with us.

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RB KITAJ | DOMINIE AT SAN FELÍU, 1978

RJ Kitaj was taught drawing by Percy Horton, who was taught by Walter Sickert, who was taught by Edgar Degas. Is it fanciful to see the connection between the French master and the American artist?

Kitaj, who spent his formative years in England, had a big influence on British pop art, and never stopped experimenting with style, form and medium, but he was, above all, an exceptional draftsman: the critic Robert Hughes called him ‘better than almost anyone else’.

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HOCKNEY: INSIDE THE CASTLE

In 1969, David Hockney was commissioned to produce 39 etchings for the series ‘Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm’; he worked on them from May to November of that year. They were published by the Petersburg Press, in association with the Kasmin Gallery, New York, in 1970.

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