DAVID PRENTICE 1936 - 2014
A LAST LOOK AT THE MALVERNS
. .johndaviesgallery joPeriod,hn Modern & Contemporarydavie Art sgallery Period, Modern & Contemporary Art Moreton-in-Marsh Blue Light - Malvern Pastel, 26 x 30 in
Front cover: Apogee (detail, see page 11) Oil on canvas, 35 x 35 in
DAVID PRENTICE 1936 - 2014 A Last Look at the Malverns
21st June - 19th July 2014 Open 9.30am - 5.00pm Monday to Saturday
The Old Dairy Plant . Fosseway Business Park . Stratford Road Moreton-in-Marsh . Gloucestershire . GL56 9NQ
t: +44 (0)1608 652255 e: [email protected] www.johndaviesgallery.com English Air - Ridgeway Pastel, 23 x 25 in
2 AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN DAVIES
The preparations for this exhibition were well underway when David Prentice died on Wednesday, May 7th 2014. Many who follow the gallery and David’s career quite closely will have been aware that David had suffered various health threats over recent years; nevertheless it is always a shock when such an established personality, particularly someone who has lit up our lives to such a degree, is suddenly gone. In today’s world of expected longevity it is so easy to think that we all can go on forever; all of us would have loved to have seen him live longer, but his level of achievement for his allotted span was significant. I feel that he was a very fulfilled 77 years of age.
I considered that David had expended a significant amount of energy producing the very strong body of work that constitutes this exhibition, yet he made light of it. By any measure, a group of over fifty paintings comprising works on paper and small canvases and large canvases in three distinctly contrasting techniques, is no lightweight undertaking. But David was complaining of feeling very tired, and that it was all he could do to get up, have breakfast, attend to e-mails and go back to bed.
However, in addition to producing the magnificent paintings that make up this collection, David, at the invitation of Worcester City Museum and Art Gallery, had earlier this year invested a good deal of time curating an exhibition of works by Paul Nash (1889 - 1946) featuring Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Malvern Hills subjects in counterpoint to historic examples of his own works. This exhibition, ‘Skylight Landscape’, opened in May and runs through to July 5th at Worcester Art Gallery.
I remember well one of my last visits to David. I had gone over to view his latest paintings. As usual Dinah produced a delightful light lunch and in the afternoon David invited me to chat while he rested on his bed. Dinah was busy in her studio. David and I chatted for the rest of the afternoon in a very reminiscent way, so much so that Dinah went out for an Indian takeaway to sustain us. Whilst I was conscious that there was something special, intimate, about that afternoon and evening, I didn’t pick up any signals of imminent mortality.
At the end of April, by which time David and I had decided on the staging of the show that is the subject of this catalogue, I was out cycling on Bank Holiday Monday. Having tackled some severe hills en-route to a friend’s house and experiencing some subsequent discomfort, I found myself being taken to Warwick A&E. I was kept in for observation, then transferred to University Hospital, Walsgrave, Coventry. I underwent surgery there ten days later, and learned on that Saturday that David had died the day that I was in theatre. I had done the layout for the catalogue in hospital whilst waiting for my operation, and now I find myself introducing this exhibition from an unexpected and contrasting perspective to the conversation that I had hoped to have had with David at this stage. Happily, David, knowing that I had already been admitted to hospital, took it upon himself to write about the paintings and these musings are reproduced on pages 21 - 23.
Continued on page 4
3 I first met David and Dinah Prentice in late 1995 at a dinner party given by Carol Holt, a very good friend of one of my sisters. I remember the evening pretty clearly; Carol and her husband Jim lived at Barnards Green, near Malvern. It was a most enjoyable evening, excellent food and wine and I found everyone most engaging. On the wall was one of David’s outstanding watercolour views of the Malvern Hills, an example featuring a couple walking along the ridgeway against the evening light.
It wasn’t long before I followed through with a visit to the Prentice’s home in Malvern. I knew that I was to be meeting an exceptionally good watercolourist, but I had no idea of the range and scope of the rest of his picture making. It was a memorable visit, and the scene has remained almost unchanged since that time. As you enter the house, a reasonably substantial Victorian villa, the first two rooms off the hallway - once living rooms - were completely taken over as Dinah’s studios: the first an ideas room full of books and tables for cutting out materials for her large scale appliqué work; the second, the larger of the two rooms, for assembling her large scale wall hangings. The same arrangement is mirrored on the first floor by David’s two studios.
The first on the left, the smaller of the two, is immaculately organised as a small English Air - Contour reference library and a room for the creation of all the paper-related works. Thus, in Pastel, 23 x 25 in this studio, fully worked-up watercolours have been created from the sketch-books, reed-pen and wash compositions not done en-plein air have come into existence, as have both types of his pastel works: the more representationally accurate examples similar to the watercolours and then the big, contrasting, expansive, semi-abstract ‘colourist’ works mostly 33 inches square. The shelves in this room were neatly laden with watercolour supplies and sticks of pastel all filling the room with their associated aromas.
Then, in the larger room next door, David would work up his oils. Having ordered up the materials for his stretchers and canvases, after the necessary preparation, he would simply place a number of canvases on the plain white walls, each on a pair of nails. They would usually range in size from as small as 8 x 9 inches right up to as much as 59 inches square. He would start his oils by laying in a profile or sky-line of a section of the hills, working in large but thin areas of colour and building up from there. He considered most of his oils in primarily abstract terms, although the far less graphic City of London paintings (2000 - 2008) and the highly naturalistic Green Fuse paintings (2010) would be exceptions to this approach.
Continued on page 6 English Air - Dark Passage Pastel, 23 x 25 in
4 Yellow Beacon Oil on canvas, 35 x 35 in
5 From the first sell out exhibition that we staged for David in 1996, we have subsequently had the privilege of showing his paintings regularly every eighteen months to two years. In this period we have learned of his influences and the painters that he admired most.
David has always admired the painter Paul Nash (1889 - 1946) and he has more than one Nash drawing amongst his very meaningful collection of other artists’ works. Likewise, a Ben Nicolson drawing of roof-tops in St. Ives, and an ink drawing of a tree-root by Graham Sutherland. A small David Cox drawing is also included, together with various works by contemporary friends for which he has great affection. The names of the artists cited above speak quietly of the ‘proper’, ‘elevated’ plane on which David’s thoughts were always circulating. Then come the surprises, Rubens and Rupert Bear.
David identified with Rubens in settling and committing himself to a chosen location, digging deep and repeatedly treating the same subject, finding new aspects, new angles. For Rubens it was Het Steen and the surrounding landscape. For David, it became the Malvern Hills. He found them inexhaustible. He would say that he saw no merit in the idea of touring the country like a travelling artist doing ‘postcard views’. The Rupert Bear influence is much more obvious when one thinks about it. Actually, as a boy, David did love English Air - Misty Morning the Rupert Bear journals and annuals; he loved the stories but he was also attracted Pastel, 23 x 25 in to the illustrations and what is very notable in the pictures that go with the stories is the depth of picture plane portraying the scene, most particularly the sense of elevation. Few of us will have trouble conjuring up an image of Rupert Bear up a tree or standing on some promontory, arm outstretched pointing at something in the far distance. A sense of drama and a sense of place are the immediate sensations communicated.
This is what David did pictorially with the Malvern Hills. He came to possess them visually through his inexhaustible explorations. Having built kites with attached cameras he even ‘flew’ above them. A very high proportion of his Malvern Hills paintings are drawn from an elevated perspective. But the magic doesn’t stop there. He was also an inveterate observer of the play of light and the weather. The hill chain has something of its own micro-climate, and this, coupled with David’s great depth and resource in handling the materials themselves - reed-pen (he made his own), watercolour, pastel, oil pastel, oil, a vast range of brushes and latterly oil-stick - make the effects he achieved hugely inspiring. Apart from being a top draughtsman, he became a highly individual colourist as well.
Continued on page 8 English Air - Wyche Pastel, 23 x 25 in
6 Blue Green Chord Oil on canvas, 35 x 35 in
7 For me one of the most attractive features of employing the ‘conversation’ or ‘interview’ format has been the discipline of avoiding anything like a hidden agenda in promoting the paintings. In this instance such an opportunity is now lost to us. What I have always attempted is to find the best fine art possible rather than the most commercial art. In other words, I select in what I believe. I now have this opportunity to say that I contend that David’s latest group of paintings is an exceptionally fine body of work. It is full of diversity in both approach and the size of canvases employed, and many of the paintings are worthy of individual comment.
Broadly speaking we have a fine group of eleven pastels featuring on the Inside Front Cover, page 2, page 4, page 6, page 8, page 10 and page 18. These unquestionably show David’s pastel technique at its undiminished best. We have just three highly accomplished pen and wash drawings featuring the Rivers Wye and Severn on pages 38 and 40, adjacent to their large scale, dramatic, related oils on pages 39 and 41. On pages 42 to 44 and on the Back Cover we have new paintings on the subject of Jemima’s restored squatter’s cottage, ‘The House that Jack Built’. This is the location of which David has said “And now there is a new place, not far from home, which seems to be English Air - Reservoir calling me to explore its meanings and secret ways”. Pastel, 23 x 25 in It is in these paintings that David has been using his newest technique of ‘marouflage’ - laying down a digital image of the subject on to part of the canvas - and using this as a starting point from which to evolve a work completed with oil. The results are both engaging and delicate, fresh and possessing a charming intimacy.
Then on the Front Cover, pages 5, 7, 9, page 11 through to 17, and page 19, pages 24 - 37 we have a truly magnificent body of oil paintings that stem from the Colour in the Hills group of 2010.
I am writing at something of a disadvantage recuperating at home and not having the benefit of the paintings in the flesh, although I did see them in David’s studio as described earlier. We all see different things in paintings, but I think this is such an exceptional group I would like to comment on a few. First on page 5, Yellow Beacon, I think the directness in the painting is remarkable. Its approach is close to that of a watercolour, and I feel that it is a masterpiece of economy. I will also apply this summary to Beacon (page 30), Girl in a Yellow Oil Skin (page 32) and South Prospect (page 34).
Continued on page 10 English Air - Pink Path Pastel, 23 x 25 in
8 Malvern Triad Oil on canvas, 35 x 35 in
9 In Blue-Green Chord (page 7), Malvern Triad (page 9), Soft Light - Malvern (page 12), Pale Sunlight on Black Hill, (page 13), Gentle Light - Malvern (page 24), Weather’s Edge (page 25), Elgar’s Chord (page 27), From Madams (page 31), Autumn Hills (page 33), and Perigee (page 36) we have David mainly concerned with striking an even balance between representational elements and abstract structure, while at the same time each painting has its own story to tell regarding weather and light. From Madams is noteworthy in that this is the name of the house, and therefore the location, from which Paul Nash painted his painting Skylight Landscape (Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester) presently showing in the exhibition that David has curated at Worcester.
There are many of contrasts between the 25 oil paintings that appear between pages 5 and 37, and the closer one looks the greater the dangers in comparing them. Nevertheless I find it difficult not to pass comment on the serene, almost ethereal atmosphere of Apogee (page 11), Grey Mist - Malvern (page 19) and Morning Light (page 29). There are so many paintings which seem particularly distinctive that I find I cannot pass them by also without note, such as the robust and verdant The Green Hill Revisited (page 15) which relates to an earlier painting The Green Hill, the magnificent sense of space English Air - Refractive and elevation in Buzzard Flight - Malvern (page 17), and the consummate clarity of Winter Pastel, 23 x 25 in Beacon (page 35).
Over the last thirty years the body of work that David has produced featuring the Malvern Hills must rank amongst the most accomplished in all British landscape painting of the second half of the 20th and early part of the 21st centuries.
This collection will make a spectacular exhibition but it also will be tinged with great sadness for many. There may well be retrospective shows for David to come, but this collection will mark the end of an amazingly productive career and celebrate his gifts and inspiration in an unrepeatable manner.
John Davies May 2014
For David’s last words on these paintings please turn to page 21
English Air - Cool Walking Pastel, 23 x 25 in
10 Apogee Oil on canvas, 35 x 35 in
11 Soft Light - Malvern Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in
12 Pale Sunlight on Black Hill Oil on canvas, 35 x 35 in
13 The Belle Vue Oil on canvas, 24 x 26 in
14 The Green Hill Revisited Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in
15 Black Hill Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in
16 Buzzard Flight - Malvern Oil on canvas, 40 x 35 in
17 Malvern Azure Pastel, 26 x 30 in
18 Grey Mist - Malvern Oil on canvas, 35 x 40 in
19 DAVID PRENTICE 1936 - 2014
David in his element 2010
20 David writing on his last body of work...
Is it necessary to apologise or try to explain my obsessions with the main subjects of this exhibition? Each subject seems to provide infinite possibilities. The Malvern Hills have provided the subject of my paintings for nearly thirty years. And now there is a new place, not far from home, which seems to be calling for me to exploit its meanings and secret ways. I make no apology for my continued interest in my daughter’s cottage in the wood (see pages 42 - 44). What began as a promise to her that I would record her restoration of a completely derelict building to a place for her to live has turned into a fascination with life where the surrounding wood and its management provides an interdependent existence. Each day is taken up with a way of life which could have been very familiar to rural dwellers previous to the last century or so. What this provides for the painter is endless subtle variations on light and form as the wood is cut, coppiced and replanted. The management of the wood opens new vistas and glades whilst an endless variety of flora takes advantage of differing conditions of light and shade. Continued on page 22
21 The Malvern Hills paintings fall into distinct kinds of interest. There is a small number where I have revisited paintings I had made, sometimes decades ago, which seem to contain some fundamental rightness beyond the generalities of the wider body of Malvern works. By reworking each painting, usually on a much small scale, I sought to discover something of why that seems so right - for me a fascinating journey, the relationship of new and old ideas.
In the Malvern Group I also wanted to follow up something I hinted at in my last exhibition with JD. Whether it is possible to follow experiments with completely intuitive relationships of colour into abstraction which have minimal topographic information but still remain a true observation on a particular spot on the hills. For most of you who desire topographical revisiting this group may present some difficulties. But for your and my own pleasures in the weather and landscape of the hills the predominate interests remain just as an objective focus on observation in most of the Malvern works as always.
22 There are two large oils and three small, on the spot, reed pen and wash paintings of the River Wye. The small pen and wash works were made some years ago when I first discovered the picturesque nature of the river downstream from Symonds Yat to Chepstow where its intimate secrecy merges into the dramatic scale of the lower reaches of the Severn.
The views above Tintern are from the steep-sided wooded flanks of the river near to the spot where Tennyson wrote his musings on the Wye in 1847.
Eagle’s Nest is a secluded perch, rather like an old fashioned theatre box, at the top of a steep climb vertically from the river bank and it is the best spot I know to see the confluence of the two rivers.
At the time of writing this both John Davies and I are contending with serious health problems. So we both thank John’s wonderful team, the framers and photographers, who have enabled this exhibition to proceed under very difficult conditions.
David Prentice
May 2014
23 Gentle Light - Malvern Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in
24 Weather’s Edge Oil on canvas, 42 x 48 in
25 Black Hill - Malvern Oil on canvas, 24 x 26 in
26 Elgar’s Chord Oil on canvas, 42 x 48 in
27 Below British Camp Oil on canvas, 24 x 26 in
28 Morning Light Oil on canvas, 42 x 48 in
29 Beacon Oil on canvas, 24 x 26 in
30 From Madams Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in
31 Girl in a Yellow Oilskin Oil on canvas, 24 x 26 in
32 Autumn Hills Oil on canvas, 42 x 48 in
33 South Prospect Oil on canvas, 24 x 26 in
34 Winter Beacon Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in
35 Perigee Oil on canvas, 35 x 35 in
36 Sun on Glass Oil on canvas, 35 x 40 in
37 River Wye - Upstream from Lydbrook Reed pen and watercolour, 13 x 19 in
Confluence of the Wye and the Severn Reed pen and watercolour, 13 x 19 in
38 Eagles Nest (confluence of the Wye and Severn) Oil on canvas, 42 x 48 in
39 Tintern from the Devil’s Pulpit Reed pen and watercolour, 13 x 19 in
40 The Wye at Tintern Oil on canvas, 42 x 48 in
41 THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT
“And now there is a new place, not far from home, which seems to be calling for me to exploit its meanings and secret ways. I make no apology for my continued interest in my daughter’s cottage in the wood. What began as a promise to her that I would record her restoration of a completely derelict building to a place for her to live has turned into a fascination with a life where the surrounding wood and its management provides an interdependent existence. Each day is taken up with a way of life which would have been very familiar to rural dwellers previous to the last century or so. What this provides for the painter is endless subtle variations on light and form as the wood is cut, coppiced and replanted. The management of the wood opens new vistas and glades whilst an endless variety of flora takes Cottage in the Wood advantage of differing conditions of light and shade.” Oil on canvas, 18 x 16 in David Prentice May 2014
Woodland Cottage Mixed media, 7 x 20 in
42 Sketchbook Thatch 5 Sketchbook Thatch 6 Mixed media, 7 x 20 in Mixed media, 7 x 20 in
Sketchbook Thatch 7 Sketchbook Thatch 4 Mixed media, 7 x 20 in Mixed media, 7 x 20 in
Sketchbook Thatch 8 Cottage Gate Mixed media, 7 x 20 in Mixed media, 7 x 20 in
43 Dark Wood (diptych) Oil on canvas, 15 x 36 in
44 David Prentice 1936 - 2014
Biography Selected Group Exhibitions
1936 Born near Birmingham 1957-1997 Royal Birmingham Society of Artists 1949-1952 Moseley School of Art & Crafts 1964/65 Betty Parsons Gallery, New York 1952-1957 Birmingham College of Arts & Crafts 1965 Museum of Modern Art, New York 1964-1972 Co-Director & Founder, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham 1967 Albright-Knox Gallery, New York 1980-1990 Lived in Northampton 1968/69 Axiom Gallery, London 1986 Retired from teaching in Birmingham 1968/70 Arts Council Touring Exhibition, UK 1986-1987 Artist in Residence at Nottingham University 1968/70/72 John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, 2014 Died, Malvern, May 7th 2014 LiverpoolArt Gallery 1969 Curwen Gallery, London Selected Solo Exhibitions 1970/71 Lisson Gallery, London 1976 Birmingham City Art Gallery 1968 Arts Council Gallery, Cambridge 1985-2000 The Royal Watercolour Society, London 1971 Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Park, London 1988/89 Camden Arts Centre, London 1977 Coracle Press, London 1989 Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York 1974/80 Ikon Gallery, Birmingham 1989/90 Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, 1993 Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk London Midlands Contemporary Art Ltd, Birmingham 1989-2007 Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times 1992/94 Anna-Mei Chadwick, London Competition, UK 1994/97 Art First, London 1995 Birmingham City Museum & Art Gallery 1996/98/01 The John Davies Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold 2000/02 Discerning Eye, London Malvern Theatres 2004 Ikon Gallery 40th Anniversary Exhibition 2002 ART London, Duke of York’s HQ, Chelsea 2014 Worcester City Art Gallery, Skylight Landscape Malvern Theatres, ‘Paintings from the Sixties’ 2003/05/06/08 The John Davies Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold Awards 2006 Modern British Artists, London 2007 Lemon Street Gallery, Truro, Cornwall 1955 Painting Prize Industrial Britain 2008 Medici Gallery, London 1958 Painting Prize Royal Artillery 2008/10/11/12 The John Davies Gallery, Moreton-in-Marsh 1990 First Prize Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times 2010 Finding Landscape, University of Birmingham 1996 Third Prize Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times 2011 Monnow Valley Arts, Walterhouse, Herefordshire 1999 Second Prize Singer & Friedlander/Sunday Times 2011 Number Nine the Gallery, Birmingham 2007 Third Prize Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander 2012 Shell House Gallery, Ledbury / Sunday Times 2013/2014 The John Davies Gallery, Moreton-in-Marsh 2011 Short listed for House of Lords, No 1 Millbank Principal Collections Miami-Dade Community College, Miami, Florida Arts Council of Great Britain Copyright © 2014 The John Davies Gallery House of Commons Acquisition Committee Rank Organisation Copyright © 2014 David Prentice Printed by Vale Press Ltd. Betty Parsons, New York Charterhouse Bank Ltd Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Art Institute of Chicago, Robert Mayer Collection Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, Florida Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery Museum of Modern Art, New York Back cover: Winter Cottage Victoria & Albert Museum, London (member’s gallery collection) Mixed Media, 7 x 20 in 45
The Old Dairy Plant . Fosseway Business Park . Stratford Road Moreton-in-Marsh . Gloucestershire . GL56 9NQ
t: +44 (0)1608 652255 e: [email protected] www.johndaviesgallery.com