John Swarbrooke Fine Art is delighted to participate in 500 Years of Drawing, a summer exhibition curated by Trois Crayons in collaboration with London Art Week.
This new venture dedicated to works on paper will transform Frieze No. 9 Cork St into a ‘drawings hub’ with a group exhibition dedicated to works on paper presented by acclaimed international drawing dealers. 17 galleries from 6 countries will exhibit over 150 drawings, ranging from Old Master through to modern and contemporary.
Artists exhibited by John Swarbrooke Fine Art will include Lisa Brice, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Gwen John, Ben Nicholson and Celia Paul.
To request availability of the below works, please click here.
Lisa Brice (b. 1968)
Drag, 2007
signed with the artist’s initials and dated lower right LB 07
oil on paper
41.6 x 59.3 cm. (16⅜ x 23⅛ in.)
'I like to think that my paintings are the antithesis of misrepresentation – the reclamation of the canvas by all the models, painters, wives, mistresses and performers. The spaces I depict are dream-like in the sense that they are fictional, but very much based on reality and lived, sensorial experience.' - Lisa Brice
Lisa Brice is a South-African born, London-based artist whose work challenges the representation of women throughout art history. Her paintings reclaim the narrative of women, freeing them from the male gaze, and their exhaustive role as model or muse.
In the present work, Brice captures a restful yet intimate moment of a woman smoking – a moment where she is unaware (or even unbothered) by the idea of a viewer and is able to relax in a natural state of her own choosing.
£27,500
Ben Nicholson OM (1894-1982)
Sketch for Walton Wood Cottage, Cumberland, 1928
inscribed and dated verso Cumberland 1928; bears inscription on the backboard My father, Ben Nicholson, made this drawing of Walton Wood Cottage, near Brampton in Cumberland, where his sister Nancy was living/Jake Nicholson
pencil on paper
33 x 42 cm. (13 x 16½ in.)
Provenance:
Private Collection.
Anon. sale; Christie’s, South Kensington, 16 October 2003, lot 665.
Anon. sale; Christie’s, South Kensington, 14 October 2004, lot 107.
Private Collection, acquired at the above sale.
Their sale; Sotheby’s, London, 14 June 2016, lot 139.
Anon. sale; Bonham’s, 10 July 2018, lot 96.
Jenna Burlingham Gallery, Newbury.
Private Collection, London.
This work shows a cottage at Walton Wood near Bankshead in Cumbria. The wild and isolated landscape of Cumbria had provided Ben and Winifred Nicholson with constant inspiration since their purchase of Bankshead, a stone farmhouse in Cumberland in 1923. It afforded them the opportunity to withdraw from London life and respond to their surroundings in a free and untutored approach. It was during this period that Nicholson’s work was particularly influenced by his wife Winifred and also Christopher Wood, with whom the Nicholsons visited Cornwall and Cumbria in 1928. Nicholson painted two oils in the same year of the same subject. The first of which is in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, previously the collection of Helen Sutherland (fig. 1).
£17,500 + ARR
fig. 1, Ben Nicholson,Walton Wood cottage, no. 1, 1928, oil on canvas, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (presented by Helen Sutherland 1965)
Celia Paul (b. 1959)
Portrait of Kate (The Artist’s Sister) Reading, 1986
signed and dated lower right Celia Paul 86 charcoal on paper
54.7 x 74.7 cm. (21½ x 29⅜ in.)
Provenance:
Marlborough, London.
William Louis-Dreyfus, Mount Kisco, New York, acquired from the above in 1990.
The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, Mount Kisco, New York, gifted by the above in 2016.
Their sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 11 April 2023, lot 46. Private Collection, London, acquired at the above sale.
Exhibited:
Washington, DC, Four Seasons Hotel, 2001-2010.
Celia Paul is an Indian-born British artist. Although still a significant part of her history, her work is highly regarded outside of her decade long relationship with Lucian Freud.
Paul creates intensely haunting yet tender portraits of those closest to her. Kate, her sister, became her confidante and main sitter after their mother became too frail to climb the eighty stairs to her studio which sits opposite the British Museum. Her visually arresting pieces capture moments of stillness and tenderness, as evident in the present work on paper.
£12,500 + ARR
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915)
Owl
pen and ink on paper
34.5 x 27.5 cm. (13⅝ x 10⅞ in.)
Provenance:
The artist Barry Flanagan (b. 1941).
Private Collection.
'…[T]he volume and scope of the work is, for so young a man, wholly amazing, no less in variety than in the speed of development.' – Ezra Pound
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor and an exponent member of the Vorticists. Despite having had only 4 years to develop his artistic practice (he was killed in action at the age of 23 during the First World War) he left a significant mark on 20th Century Modernist sculpture in Europe.
When not modelling into clay or carving directly onto stone, Gaudier-Brzeska’s clean lines and smooth energy made their way to paper, expressing the vitality of the subject before him.
£8,500
Gwen John (1876-1939)
Two Girls Seated in Church
stamped lower right with estate stamp charcoal on paper
16.5 x 12.5 cm. (6½ x 4⅞ in.)
Provenance:
Anthony d’Offay, London.
Private Collection, London, acquired from the above in 1979; and thence by descent to
Private Collection, UK.
Their sale; Bonham’s, Knightsbridge, 29 November 2023, lot 29.
Private Collection, London, acquired at the above sale.
Gwendolyn John (1876- 1939) was a Welsh artist, best known for portraits of herself and other women. Gwen lived much of her life in the shadow of her brother, the artist Augustus John, but her works today are recognized and valued in their own right. Gwen studied at the Slade School of Art from 1895 to 1898, and then went on to Paris, where she studied at the Academie Carmen under James McNeill Whistler.
In 1904, after a stay in London, Gwen moved to Paris with her friend Dorelia McNeill. She began working as an artist’s model, mostly for American and British female artists, but also for the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Gwen and Rodin grew close, and she became his mistress. During this time, John often painted portraits and empty interiors. In addition to financial support and encouragement from Rodin, John had an enthusiastic patron in John Quinn, who bought most of her work between 1920 and 1924. In 1911, Gwen moved outside of Paris to Meudon, where she built a studio near Rodin’s. When her affair with Rodin was over in 1913, John converted to Roman Catholicism, a decision that informed much of her later artwork. She painted a series of nuns’ portraits and small figure drawings of the congregation at her church, such as the present work.
As she grew older, John became more averse to exhibiting her work, and her productivity declined sharply in the last decade of her life. The few works produced in her late years were often tiny sketches, only a few square inches, showing an increasing exploration in abstraction. John died in 1939 in Dieppe.
£6,500