John Swarbrooke Fine Art is delighted to announce an exhibition exploring the close relationship between artists and writers across a century.
The exhibition begins in the first half of the 20th-Century, which saw a flourishing of illustration by artists including John Minton and Keith Vaughan. Lucian Freud’s 1940 drawing of Stephen Spender, completed at the age of 17, reflects the complexity of their relationship.
Later in the century we see the work of Sir Francis Rose, who studied with Francis Picabia and painted set designs for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. His painting of a harlequin, recalling the Rose Period works of Picasso, is displayed alongside his influential illustration work for Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas.
In pairing images of reading by Gwen John and Celia Paul, we are able to contemplate the relationship between two artists who, despite having a century between them, are drawn together in Paul’s imagined letters to her fellow artist.
A selection of artworks in this historic exhibition is included below. To request availability please click here
John Minton (1917-57) was born in Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire and studied art at St John’s Wood School of Art from 1935 to 1938 and was greatly influenced by his fellow student Michael Ayrton, who enthused him with the work of French neo-romantic painters. He spent eight months studying in France, frequently accompanied by Ayrton, and returned from Paris when the Second World War began.
From 1943 to 1946 Minton taught illustration at the Camberwell College of Arts, and from 1946 to 1948 he was in charge of drawing and illustration at the Central School of Art and Design. At the same time, he continued to draw and paint, sharing a studio for some years with Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, and later with Keith Vaughan. A particularly defining moment for Minton's imagery was a trip to Cornwall, including Marazion and Mounts Bay.
Between 1945 and 1956 he had seven solo exhibitions at the Lefevre Gallery. Minton's appearance in this period is shown in a 1952 portrait by Lucian Freud, as well as in self-portraits. In addition to landscapes, portraits and other paintings, some of them on an unusually large scale, he built up a reputation as an illustrator of books.
Minton’s posthumous fame was initially as an illustrator. Many of his commissions for illustrations came from the publisher John Lehmann. For Lehmann, Minton illustrated A Book of Mediterranean Food and French Country Cooking (the first two books by the food writer Elizabeth David), travel books such as Time was Away - A Notebook in Corsica, by Alan Ross, and fiction. Other publishers for whom he illustrated books included Michael Joseph, Secker and Warburg and Rupert Hart-Davis.
Although Minton was respected both by the conservative Royal Academy and the modernist London Group, he was out of sympathy with the abstract painting that began to prevail during the 1950s, and he felt increasingly out of touch with current fashion. He suffered extreme mood swings and became dependent on alcohol. He took his own life in 1957 at his London home, taking an overdose of sleeping tablets.
John Minton (1917-57)
Portrait of a Man
pen and sepia ink on paper
38 x 27 cm. (15 x 10 2/3 in.)
Time Was Away: A notebook in Corsica
Alan Ross (1922-2001), with over eighty illustrations by John Minton
First edition, with dust-jacket, published by John Lehmann Ltd., 1948
John Minton (1917-1957)
Figures in a landscape
signed lower left John Minton
pen and ink on paper
24 by 31 cm. (9 1/2 x 12 1/5 in.)
Keith Vaughan (1912-77) abandoned a career in advertising in 1939 to pursue painting. From 1941 to 1944 he served in the Pioneer Corps. His drawings of army life, however attracted attention and he entered the circle of Peter Watson in London. From 1946 to 1952 he shared a studio with John Minton.
As a younger-generation Neo-Romantic Vaughan was heavily influenced by the work of Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore and William Blake. During the 1950s Vaughan became a painter of figure compositions that attempted to balance male nudes with abstract environments.
After 1945 Vaughan travelled in the Mediterranean, North Africa, Mexico and the USA. In 1959, he was appointed a resident artist at Iowa State University. Upon his return to London, he taught at the Camberwell School of Art (1946-48), the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1948-57) and the Slade School of Fine Art (1959-77).
Vaughan’s remarkable journal (1939-77), inspired by André Gide, reveals the tension in his life and work between intellectual puritanism and unrepressed sensuality. His work can be regarded as an expression of his feelings about the male body. Despite considerable success, including the award of a CBE in 1965, he became increasingly melancholic and reclusive. Vaughan committed suicide in 1977.
Keith Vaughan (1912-1977)
Les Illuminations de Rimbaud: Parade, 1975
inscribed lower left Quels hommes mûrs - des yeux, hébétés à la façon de la nuit d'éte
(‘What mature men - eyes dazed like the summer night’)
gouache on paper
48 x 42 cm. (19 x 16 1/4 in.)
Les Illuminations are symbolist poems presented by Rimbaud to his lover Paul Verlaine in 1875.
Vaughan first made illustrations of Rimbaud’s work in the 1940s and returned to this source for the magnificent set of 6 Gouaches which were the stand-out works in his final exhibition in the spring of 1976.
A Season in Hell
Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Norman Cameron
Illustrated with eight colour lithographs by Keith Vaughan
First edition, with original dust-jacket, published by John Lehmann Ltd., 1956
Sir Francis Rose (1909-1979), heir to a Scottish baronetcy, was born in England, but brought up in the South of France. He lived in Paris between 1929 and 1936, where he studied with Francis Picabia and José Maria Sert and worked on set designs for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Rose painted in Brittany with Christopher Wood in 1929. In 1930, Rose shared his first exhibition with Salvador Dalí.
In 1931, Rose was introduced to Gertrude Stein who became his patron and friend, and to her partner, Alice B. Toklas (he later illustrated The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook). He travelled extensively in the 1930s and exhibited in Paris, London and New York. Rose continued to exhibit in London and Paris in the 1950s and 1960s, with a major retrospective in London and Brighton in 1966. In 1961, Rose published his memoir, Saying Life; and in 1972, made a brief appearance as ‘Lord Chaos’ in Kenneth Anger's film Lucifer Rising.
Sir Francis Rose (1909-1979)
Harlequin, 1963
signed and dated lower right Francis Rose/1963 and inscribed with title
oil on canvas
74.5 by 49.5 cm. (29 1/4 by 19 1/2 in.)
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
The World Is Round
Illustrated throughout by Sir Francis Rose
First UK edition, with original cloth dust-jacket
Published by Batsford, London, 1939
Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967)
The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book
First UK edition, with original cloth dust-jacket
Published by Michael Joseph, London, 1954
The rare first UK edition of The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book includes the infamous recipe for Haschich Fudge, excised from the American addition which appeared a few days after this UK edition.
Doris Brabham Hatt (1890 - 1969) received a privileged education in London, Vienna and Paris, studying in London at the Royal College of Art and at Goldsmith's College, but it was her visits to Paris in the early 1920s that were to inspire her artistic direction. Having initially been influenced by Paul and John Nash and the Romantic English landscape tradition, she was soon captivated by the modern Paris School, particularly the works of Braque, Léger and Picasso. She began exhibiting with the Clifton Arts Club in 1921 where fellow invited exhibitors included Wyndham Lewis and the Bloomsbury artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.
However it was the intoxicating atmosphere of Paris during the 1920s with its euphoric optimism for the speed and dynamism of the new machine age that was to have the most profound impact on her life and work. In 1925 she moved to Paris to work in the studio of Fernand Léger, returning to Clevedon an ardent communist. She exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in 1943 and the Modern Art Gallery in 1944 with Sickert, Kokoschka, Pissarro, Modigliani, and Stanley Spencer.
Doris Brabham Hatt (1890 - 1969)
The Horse’s Mouth, 1952
signed with initials lower right
oil on board
51 x 61 cm. (20 x 24 in.)
The Horse’s Mouth was a 1944 novel by Anglo-Irish writer Joyce Cary. The book follows the adventures of Gulley Jimson, an artist who would exploit his friends and acquaintances to earn money, told from his point of view. Cary's novel also uses Gulley's unique perspective to comment on the social and political events of the time.
Celia Paul, Letters to Gwen John, Penguin, 2022
Gwen John (1876-1939), née Gwendolyn Mary John, was born in Wales and was drawing from an early age. In 1895 she began a course of study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where her younger brother Augustus had enrolled the previous year.
In Paris John modelled for renowned sculptor Auguste Rodin, with whom she had a long and intense love affair that lasted some ten years. John lived in France for the remainder of her career, over the course of which she produced fewer than two hundred paintings as well as numerous drawings; her subjects were mainly portraits of solitary women and girls, as well as occasional landscapes, interiors and still life compositions.
Celia Paul (b. 1959) was born to missionary parents in South India, returning to their native England in 1965 when Paul was still a child, yet a deep-rooted spirituality still prevails within her deeply meditative figurative works. Paul’s paintings and prints are intimate portraits of people or places with whom she is deeply connected and have always been idiosyncratically her own. Her subjects have centred on her family, especially her sisters with her mother featuring most regularly as a sitter throughout her oeuvre;
In 2022 Paul’s Letters to Gwen John was published, an imagined correspondence with Gwen John, whose life and work have loomed so large in hers.
Gwen John (1876 - 1939)
The Seated Boy
signed lower left Gwen John
pencil and wash on paper
16.5 by 12.5cm (6 1/2 x 5 in.)
Provenance:
Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 1959.
Exhibited:
London, Crane Kalman Gallery, The Innocent Eye, Dec. 1959.
Celia Paul (b. 1959)
Portrait of Kate Reading, 1986
signed lower right Celia Paul and dated 86
charcoal on paper
55 x 75 cm. (21 1/2 x 29 3/8 in.)
Exhibited:
Washington, DC, Four Seasons Hotel, 2001-2010