the elemental north 2014 Peter Hicks 1. Winter Landscape acrylic on canvas 1 70 x 155 cms 27 ⁄2 x 61 ins Cover detail (no. 36) Trevor Grimshaw, 1947–2001 Industrial scene pencil 5 1 50 x 70 cms 19 ⁄8 x 27 ⁄2 ins CCCLXIV ins ISBN 978-1-908486-56-1 Publication No: CCCLXIV 8 ⁄ 3 Published by David Messum Fine Art x 28 2 © David Messum Fine Art ⁄ 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Studio, Lords Wood, Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Tel: 01628 486565 www.messums.com Photography: Steve Russell Printed by Connekt Colour Opposite 113) (no. William Ralph Turner, 1920–2013 am 7 o'clock oil on board 54.6 x 72 cms 21 the elemental north 2014 Sue Atkinson Trevor Grimshaw Pam Poskitt Jake Attree Roger Hampson Gordon Radford Arthur Berry Dave Hartley Harry Rutherford Brian Bradshaw Andrew Hemingway Margaret Shields Peter Brook Peter Hicks Peter Stanaway George Anthony Butler Nicholas Horsfield Len Tabner Helen Clapcott Percy Kelly John Thompson Lilian Colbourn Geoffrey Key William Turner MESSUM’S Detail (no. 112) John Thompson, 1924–2011 www.messums.com Group Series – 919 black ink on paper 8 Cork Street, London W1S 3LJ 1 66 x 85 cms 26 x 33 ⁄2 ins Telephone: +44 (0)20 7437 5545 Sue Atkinson, b.1949 The naïve charm of Sue Atkinson’s work belies her deep knowledge and objectivity, humour and genuine affection. Her work has been exhibited at Foreword empathy with the people and landscapes of Whitby, Runswick Bay, and of The Royal Academy, The New English Art Club, The Royal Society of Painters course, her native Bradford. The daughter of a wool merchant, she trained at in Watercolour, The Royal Society of Marine Artists and most recently, was While it is true that compass needles generally point north, a magnetic aware of these shifts in energy and identity. Peter Stanaway combines post- Wakefield College of Art, and while she herself describes her subject matter included in the RWS/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition. compass will point slightly east of north in one part of the world and slightly cubism with social commentary in his millscapes. Helen Clapcott uses as “little people groups”, her images are always carefully balanced between west of north in another. What is more, these deviations are not constant, panorama and subdued tones in her work that hint at a future beyond the but will continue to shift along with the solid and molten stuff deep within viaduct. Geoffrey Key paints industrial landscapes with the fleeting eye of an the earth. urbanite and is equally, if not more, interested in the people who now make Manchester the second most populous city in Britain. Dave Hartley draws Geophysics might not seem an appropriate starting point for a discussion of on the technique of Trevor Grimshaw and the mood of Theodore Major’s Northern art, but magnetic variation has some parallels with how and why ‘apocalyptic Wiganscapes’ to make his poetic, almost allegorical vignettes. Northern artists and their work are perceived, because there still appears to And Jake Attree’s complex impasto technique gives his paintings of both be a shift in perception depending upon who is doing the reading. York’s medieval ruins and its commercial center a tapestry-like richness. First, there is the lodestone of L.S. Lowry, an important, deservedly popular Finally, the shades of Turner, Palmer and Constable will always haunt any artist, the significance of whose work is now confused with its status as exhibition involving British landscape. But, first and foremost, Percy Kelly’s a marketing phenomenon. Secondly, there is the fact that all too many work will always be defined by his native Cumbria as much as his passion Northern artists are still compared to Lowry, regardless of whether they for draughtsmanship. Likewise, the works of Lilian Colbourn, Peter Hicks, have anything to do with anywhere near Manchester. Thirdly, speaking as Len Tabner, Margaret Shields, and Pam Poskitt were and remain inspired someone who has enjoyed limited travel in the North of England, I think by the North Yorkshire Coast and Estuary and the Tees Valley. While their it must be easy to overlook just how large Yorkshire, Lancashire, and for techniques vary widely, from Poskitt’s eclectically sourced mixed-media that matter, Cumbria actually are; not to mention how much they vary in collages to Hicks’s action painting, Shields’s dynamic urban views to topography, culture and local character. Tabner’s literally elemental plein-air work, all of these artists are creatively Liverpool and Manchester, for example differ vastly; the former having rooted in their native North Yorkshire, and united by their association with been generally more cosmopolitan, partly due to its shipping industry and Joe Cole, who spent a long and generous career as drawings tutor at the associated influx of migrants. Furthermore, the cities had competing and Middlesbrough School of Art. largely irreconcilable Academies. Of course, what these cities share, along Lowry’s work and reputation will continue to exert a strong pull on the public with York, are the coastal geography and/or natural resources that shaped imagination and hopefully, by association, a growing awareness of Northern them from before the 18th through to the late 20th Century. artists. As always, in presenting this, our fourth exhibition of the Elemental Inevitably, Northern British art is associated with the industrial landscape North, our goal is to contribute to this awareness. This exhibition is not meant and everything about it that is both magnificent and severe. One of the most to represent a regional survey, but each of these Northern artists (like Lowry, influential Mancunian artists, Adolphe Valette, was an Impressionist whose who, after all did not work in a vacuum, and cited Rossetti as his greatest style was specifically inspired by the city’s dense pollution. Lowry was the influence) were inspired not only by their immediate surroundings, but also archetypal painter of the pre-war millscape and his “matchstick men” are the works of (among others) Breughel, Sickert, Munch and the School of alternately interpreted as sentimental and joyless. Harry Rutherford, on the Paris. Their paintings and drawings variously illustrate mills, moorlands, other hand, a follower of Sickert, more obviously distinguished workers from still lifes and city life, but above all, the sheer variety of Northern art and their surroundings; many of his paintings actively celebrated their lives outside how it continues to be drawn in new and fascinating directions. the factory gates. Roger Hampson and William Turner were far more unsparing For their advice and expertise in preparing our research into this catalogue, in depicting the stark reality of living in a declining community, but they were we would like to sincerely thank Ian Burke, Val Fairburn Barnes, Anthony also aware that if the man-made was disappearing, the people remained. Cosgrove, Peter Davies, David Gunning, Stephen Whittle and Gloria Wilson. As the factories, mills and mines closed, their communities correspondingly Andrea Gates found new magnetic centres and contemporary Northern artists are keenly Art Historian and Archivist, Messum’s Fine Art 2. A Stroll on Runswick Bay acrylic on board 40.6 x 50.8 cms 16 x 20 ins Sue Atkinson cont. Jake Attree, b.1950 Working from his studio at Dean Clough in Halifax – an enormous mill complex that once housed Crossley Carpets – Jake Attree’s boldly textural 3. A Yorkshire Shepherd views of York, London, and even New York City, acrylic on canvas 1 30.5 x 31 cms 12 x 12 ⁄4 ins assert not only his command of oil paint, but also his perceptions of how a city’s architecture, whether sacred or urban, can both nurture and 4. Red Square proscribe its inhabitants. His distinctive tapestry- acrylic on board 7 like handling of medium and form creates images 25.4 x 20 cms 10 x 7 ⁄8 ins that draw the eye from across a room, and yet, always reward closer attention. 5. A Sudden Downpour acrylic on board His birthplace of York continues to be a favoured 1 35.6 x 46 cms 14 x 18 ⁄8 ins subject of his work, and his bravura impasto technique can evoke the currents of the River Ouse, 6. A Busy Northern Mill Town the Tadcaster limestone ruins of St Mary’s Abbey, acrylic on board and rooftop views from the Minster, which recall 35.6 x 30.5 cms 14 x 12 ins works by Mondrian (one of his early influences) and mosaics from Roman Eboracum. Despite all his local ties and subject matter however, Attree is far from parochial, and his affinity for Northern European painting – an enduring source of inspiration – extends from Pieter Brueghel the Elder to the Flemish expressionist Constant Permeke. The fully illustrated catalogue (including an essay by art historian Lynne Green) that accompanied Jake Attree’s first solo exhibition at Messum’s in January 2013 is available through Studio Publications (£15 p&p). 7. The Angel, Islington looking across Pentonville Road from Goswell Road oil on panel 1 122 x 92 cms 48 x 36 ⁄4 ins Jake Attree cont. 8. The River and the City of York from Baile Hill 9. The Chapterhouse and Great East Window, York Minster from the City Walls oil on panel oil on panel 1 1 63.5 x 84 cms 25 x 33 ⁄8 ins 86.5 x 87 cms 34 x 34 ⁄4 ins Jake Attree cont.