AFF Newsletter October 2014

AmericaN FriendS

the

Fry

GallerY

Art

1st IssueOctober 2014

WELCOME to

Edward Bawden, Central Park, New York, 1947

of

the

The Fry Art Gallery

“The Pearl of Essex”

A unique collection of paintings, prints, books, and ceramics by artists who have livedin and around Great Bardfield and Saffron Walden since 1930.

The Fry Art Gallery Castle Street Saffron Walden Essex CB10 1BDUnited Kingdom t +44 0 1799 513779

[email protected]

Bernard Cheese, First Prize, lithograph

Edward Bawden, Brighton Pier, linocut

Sheila Robinson, Cat on Chair, cardboard cutMichael Rothenstein, Cockerel Turning Round, linocut

Dear Reader,

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to this very first edition of the American Friends of the Fry newsletter, a bi-annual publication of The Fry Art Gallery.

The AFF was established in 2014 as a U.S. not-for-profit organisation, whose principal activity is to raise awareness of the activities and collections of The Fry Art Gallery amongst Americans in the United States and abroad.

Enclosed in this newsletter you will find a description of The Gallery with news about current and upcoming exhibitions, lectures, and sales.

We are very excited to extend our hands to our friends overseas and hope that you will join us in celebrating this remarkable collection of twentieth-century British Art.

If you wish to become an American Friend of the Fry or to learn about ways to support The Gallery, please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected].

Kind regards,

Rosemary ShojaieAFF Coordinator

October 2014

HISTORY

The Fry Art Gallery was opened in 1987 and houses an impressive number of paintings, prints, illustrations, wallpapers and decorative designs by artists of the

20th century and the present day who have local connections and have made a significant contribution to their field. There is an emphasis on those who for a variety of reasons settled in Great Bardfield between the early thirties of the last century and

the death in 1983 of John Aldridge RA who had lived in the village for fifty years.

Edward Bawden RA, who, with his friend Eric Ravilious, discovered Bardfield a year before the arrival of John Aldridge RA and dominated the scene for almost four decades, is well represented, as is Aldridge who remained in the village

until he died. The Gallery currently displays watercolours by Ravilious plus lithographs, books, fabric, ceramics, and a collection of woodblocks. Also in the

collection is work by Tirzah Garwood (Mrs Ravilious), and by other artists who came to Great Bardfield during and after the Second World War - Michael Rothenstein RA,

and his wife (now Duffy Ayers), Kenneth Rowntree, and George Chapman.

The collection also includes prints and paintings by Edward Bawden’s son, Richard Bawden, and examples of the varied work of artists who made their

way to Bardfield in the 1950s: Bernard Cheese, Audrey Cruddas, Walter Hoyle, Sheila Robinson, and Marianne Straub.

Keith Vaughan, Robert Colquhoun, and Robert MacBryde spent some time nearby during the same period and are also represented, together with other artists including

Michael Ayrton, Isabel Lambert, and John Norris Wood. More recently have come John Bellamy RA, Tom Deakins, and Grayson Perry RA. In 1970 Edward Bawden

moved to Saffron Walden where he lived until his death in 1989. Also represented in the collection are Paul Beck, John Bolam, Chloe Cheese, Olive Cook,

David Myerscough-Jones, Olga Lehmann, and Edwin Smith, all of whom are associated with Saffron Walden.

Background image: Eric Ravilious, Geraniums and Carnations, watercolour

THE ORIGIN OF THE BUILDINGThe Gallery was designed to house the collection of Francis Gibson, a local Quaker

businessman who died in 1859, and the building passed by descent to the Fry family who lease it to The Fry Art Gallery Society.

THE FRY ART GALLERY SOCIETY

The Fry Art Gallery Society is a registered charity (No. 295904) relying on voluntary support to maintain the building and the collection. It arranges special exhibitions

alongside the permanent collection and a fundraising Sale each November. The Society manages the Gallery through an elected committee and members receive regular

newsletters, invitations to previews and other events arranged each year.

SAFFRON WALDEN

A visit to the Gallery can be combined with time spent exploring the town itself. Saffron Walden, described in the 1968 Essex Shell Guide as “probably the best looking

small town anywhere in East Anglia” incorporates the remains of a 12th century castle and an associated Museum (1835), the Common with the turf maze, a parish

church over 200 feet long rebuilt in the 15th and 16th centuries, reflecting the wealth of the wool industry, as well as other buildings associated with the periods of prosperity based on saffon cultivation and later, brewing in the 18th and 19th

centuries. The town’s heritage from medieval through to Georgian and Victorian times is still evident in its layout, buildings, places of interest, and Bridge End

Gardens situated adjacent to the Gallery. The town is an attractive shopping and recreational centre with markets on Tuesdays and Saturdays, many restaurants,

cafes, and locally owned shops.

Recent Exhibitions

KEITH VAUGHAN IN ESSEX 20 July - 14 September 2014

Keith Vaughan, born in 1912, was a much respected artist and a significant figure who took his own life in 1977. He was very much part of the London scene, particularly in the 1950s and 60s, involved with other artists like Graham Sutherland, John Minton, and Macbryde and Colquhoun - who, as it happened, had also lived in north west Essex earlier from l950 to 1954. Vaughan was recommended to come to the locality in 1964 by his friend Michael Ayrton, who told him of some derelict cottages in his village, Toppesfield, which Vaughan then

renovated. Although he used the property - Harrow Hill - largely on a weekend basis it was significant in his work, particularly in his increasingly abstract portrayal of the landscape. Interestingly an analysis of his workdur-ing this period shows a very high proportion that were directly attributable to the Essex scene - the ‘small, compact, unspectacular landscape, combining much of the three elements of air, earth and water - within a space not so large as I couldn’t walk round it in half an hour’ as he put it.

This was a most successful exhibition, well reviewed by Andrew Lambirth in The Spectator magazine (right). His review also stimulated an appreciable increase in the number of new visitors to the Gallery. The illustrated catalogue, Keith Vaughan in Essex, with the monograph Gerard Hastings produced for the exhibition, was assisted by a grant from the Hargreaves and Ball Trust. Copies of the catalogue remain available by post from the gallery for £ 7.

Image above: Keith Vaughan, Pond Overgrown with Trees, oil and gouache

Now the Fry Art Gallery, with its emphasis on showing (and collecting) the work of artists connected with north-west Essex, has mounted a delightful show of some 23 oils and gouaches that Vaughan made in his Essex years.

This is the kind of small, intently focused exhibition that the Fry does so well (such as last year’s John Aldridge show). . . . The unspectacular Essex countryside inspired Vaughan, and particularly the abstract relations of blocks of colour (black barn, white snow, green foliage, blue sky or water - to put it at its crudest) against the verticals of trees or figures. He was really exploring the patterns of the grid: the interweaving of verticals with horizontals, but always with an organic and representational slant. Vaughan was too interested in the visible world to adopt any kind of pure abstraction. Look through the cubistic facets of his sensually brushed landscapes and recognise a church tower or a gable end, a woodshed or a tree trunk, emerging from the flurry of vivid marks. ‘Tilbury-Juxta-Clare’ (1970) is a lovely example of this, and the simple-looking but slabby complexities of ‘Troy’s Farm’ (1960), ‘Cust Hill’ and ‘Cattle Shed’ (both 1972).

The Fry is always a joy to visit, but with the new hang of the permanent collection featuring recently donated work by Michael Rothenstein and Michael Ayrton, and a whole wall of Ravilious paintings (a dozen watercolours including the particularly fine ‘Tea at Furlongs’, gifted by Jane Tueley) making an extraordinary splash opposite the vivacious wall of Edward Bawden’s work, the gallery is looking even more splendid than usual.

Andrew Lambirth, Spectator Magazine,

2 August 2014

Keith Vaughan, Harrow Hill III, oil and gouache

CURRENT Exhibitions

ECCLESIASTICAL DELIGHTS 20 September - 26 October 2014

A selection from our reserve collection on ecclesiastical themes.

From the Permanent Collection of over 2500 items, fifty - some which have never been displayed before - have been selected for the exhibition. One of

the highlights is a large linocut by Edward Bawden showing Saffron Walden Parish Church during the restoration of the spire being battered by a thunderstorm, and a poster for the Saffron Walden Festival in 1975. There will also be photographs of church monuments by Edwin Smith, and a collage by Olive Cook of Sicilian votive offerings.

This exhibition was opened on 20th September by Ronald Blythe (left), author of “Akenfield” and twenty-seven other books and whose interest and participation in the Church of England is well-known.

The exhibit will be on display until the Gallery closes for the season on Sunday 26th October.

Top image: Edward Bawden, Lindsell Church, linocut

Autumn Lecture series

2014 Public LecturesFriends Meeting House

High Street, Saffron Walden, at 8pm

Friday 24 October 2014Two Regency Collectors & Their MuseumsTim Knox, Director, Fitzwilliam Museum

Friday 14 November 2014Keith Vaughan in Essex Gerard Hastings

Friday 28 November 2014Goe, and catche a falling starre: writing on Eric Ravilious Alan Powers, author of Eric Ravilious: Artist and Designer (2014).

Tickets on the door: £ 8

Members may purchase tickets in advance at £ 6 each from:

Mrs J PearsonPrimrose Cottage Catmere EndSaffron Walden EssexCB11 4XGUnited Kingdom + 44 0 1799 521290

Further reading

The Fry Art Gallery has an extensive library of rare and limited edition books, as well as a growing list of titles available for purchase. To learn more about the artists of The Fry, we recommend the following:

Design: Edward Bawden and Eric RaviliousPeyton Skipwith and Brian Webb Antique Collectors Club, 2005

Edward Bawden and His CircleMalcolm YorkeAntique Collectors Club, 2007

Edward Bawden in the Middle East Nigel WeaverACC Distribution, 2008

Edward Bawden’s Kew Gardens Peyton Skipwith and Brian WebbV&A Publishing, 2014

Edward Bawden’s London Peyton Skipwith and Brian WebbV&A Publishing, 2011

The England of Eric Ravilious Freda Constable Lund Humphries Publishing Ltd, 2003

Eric Ravilious: Artist & Designer Alan PowersLund Humphries Publishing Ltd, 2013

Keith Vaughan Gerard Hastings and Philip VannLund Humphries Publishing Ltd, 2012

One Lump or Two?: Tea, Twinings and Edward Bawden with Limericks by A.J.A. Symons Peyton Skipwith; Illustrated by Edward Bawden The Mainstone Press, 2010

Peggy Angus: Designer, Teacher, PainterJames Russell Antique Collectors Club, 2014

Ravilious Wood Engravings James Russell The Mainstone Press, 2013

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