British Art News

The latest news in Modern and Contemporary British Art.

by Alex Leith

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EILEEN MAYO: SUPERSITTER

It would be worth betting that the sitter for this painting, Girl with Powder and Puff, by Laura Knight, is none other than Eileen Mayo, an artist in her own right who earlier this year was given a retrospective show at Towner Gallery. This would probably date the painting to c1926-30, when Mayo regularly sat for Knight, as well as her husband Harold.

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ELISABETH FRINK | ‘NERVOUS NASTINESS’

It’s often been written that Elisabeth Frink’s bronze statuettes Assassins I and Assassins II, both made in 1963, were a response to the shooting of John F Kennedy. Frink herself always said that they were ‘associated with the killing, rather than inspired by it’. A quick bit of research shows that the sculptures were shown in a solo exhibition of her work opening at the Wadsworth Gallery, London, on November 28th of that year.

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OLIVIA STANTON | BEHIND THE CURVE

Olivia Stanton has worked at the Chelsea art materials shop Green & Stone for 50 years; as an artist she is represented by Candida Stevens, the Chichester-based gallerist. This two-week show is a collaboration between Green & Stone Gallery and Stevens, and displays work produced by the Hastings-based abstractionist over the last four years.

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INTERVIEW | JULIAN PAGE

How did you get involved in the art world? I grew up in a very cultural home that was also a private art gallery, by appointment. This fostered a love of art, albeit one that I was not consciously aware of for some time.

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WALTER SICKERT | NUDE NOT NAKED

Walter Sickert has been described as the first British Modernist, and this oil on canvas, The Painter and His Model, courtesy of Christopher Kingzett, is a good example of the experimental nature of his work in the early Edwardian period.

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HOWARD HODGKIN | ENTER LAUGHING

Many of Howard Hodgkin’s works had enigmatic titles, as his work was deeply personal, based on emotionally charged moments from his life. And there has been much debate about why his first professionally-produced print (1964) is called ‘Enter Laughing’. Some suggest it’s a stage direction, seeing a figure entering from the wings. Others point to the 1963 John Stein Broadway farce with the same title. Perhaps it’s simply a memory from Hodgkin’s life.

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JOHN HOYLAND | COLOUR FIELD (WITH A ‘U’)

In 1964 a bold young Yorkshire-born artist went to New York, and mingled with the foremost abstract artists of the time – Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko – as well as the all-powerful critic, Clement Greenberg. After three months, having got through his grant money, he came back home.

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CRAIG WYLIE

Wylie is being shown at British Art Fair by Jonathan Cooper, at Stand 42 on the first floor, along with work by several other artists, including David Donaldson, Sarah Raphael, Norman Blamey and Leonard McComb.

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