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Maxwell Armfield, RWSSiegfried1904
1904
About the Item
MAXWELL ARMFIELD, RWS.
(1882-1972)
Siegfried
Signed, inscribed and dated l.c.: MAXWELL ARMFIELD/MDCCCCIV [1904] PARIS;SIEGFRIED/ACT III
Pencil and watercolour
Framed
24 by 16 cm., 9 ½ by 6 ¼ in.
(frame size 42.5 by 34.5 cm., 16 ¾ by 13 ½ in.)
Provenance:
Fine Art Society, London, 1979.
Born at Ringwood, Hampshire, of Quaker parents, his father being a milling engineer, Armfield studied at the Birmingham School of Art under Arthur Gaskin and Joseph Southall who taught him the tempera technique he was to practice for the rest of his life. In September 1902, after visiting Italy at the suggestion of Gaskin, he went to Paris, enrolling at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and sharing a studio with three other students – Norman Wilkinson (also from Birmingham), Keith Henderson and the sculptor Gaston Lachaise. Returning to London the following year, he embarked on the series of one-man exhibitions that were henceforth to mark his career, showing first at Robert Ross’s Carfax Gallery (1908, 1912) and subsequently at the Leicester Galleries and elsewhere, as well as contributing regularly to the RA, NEAC and RWS. In 1909 he married the writing Constance Smedley, with whom he was to work closely until her death in 1941. In 1915 they left for an intensely active and successful seven-year spell in America.
Armfield was not only a painter but a prolific illustrator and versatile decorative artist, while being deeply involved in theatre, music, teaching and journalism and writing some twenty books, including poetry, accounts of his foreign travels and such textbooks as the much-acclaimed Manual of Tempera Painting (1930). He was also a tireless researcher in occult religions and passionately interested in the formal and philosophical basis of art. He is represented in the collection of the British Museum and many provincial and overseas galleries.
The present work is a preparatory drawing for the artist’s 1905 tempera painting of the same subject.
- Creator:Maxwell Armfield, RWS (1882 - 1972, British)
- Creation Year:1904
- Dimensions:Height: 9.45 in (24 cm)Width: 6.3 in (16 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:London, GB
- Reference Number:
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- Aesthetic Phase Pre-Raphaelite Movement Late 19th Century. Sanguine Red ChalkLocated in Sutton Poyntz, DorsetAlice Mary Chambers. English ( b.1855 - d.1920 ). Portrait of Rebecca Porter Paddon 1850 – 1915 (nee Somerset) Red Chalk on Paper Signed with monogram upper left. Image size 17.9 inches x 14.8 inches ( 45.5cm x 37.5cm ). Frame size 25 inches x 21.9 inches ( 63.5cm x 55.5cm ). Available for sale; this original sanguine red chalk portrait drawing on paper is by the English female artist Alice Mary Chambers and dates from around 1880 to 1885. The drawing is presented and supplied in a glazed frame dating from the 1990s which uses a backboard and mount from the 1960s (which is shown in these photographs). This antique drawing is in very good condition. It is supplied ready to hang and display. The drawing is signed with the artist’s monogram upper left. Provenance: By descent through the sitter’s family. Alice Mary Chambers was a fascinating and significant figure in British artistic circles, and part of the higher echelons of the ‘aesthetic’ phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement of the late nineteenth century. A contemporary of Evelyn De Morgan, Kate Bounce and Marianne Stokes, she was also a close friend of Charles Augustus Howell through whom she met Algernon Swinburne, Whistler and Dante Gabrielle Rossetti. The influence of Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt and E.R. Hughes can also be seen in her highly acclaimed red chalk studies and watercolour works. Alice was born in Harlow, Essex, in 1855, the daughter of the Rev John Charles Chambers, a controversial figure in the Anglican Church, and his wife, Mary. Their two older children had both died in infancy in 1852. At the time of her birth, Alice’s father was vicar of St Mary Magdalene in Harlow, but in 1856 he became perpetual curate of St. Mary’s, Crown Street, and warden of the House of Charity, both in Soho, London, and he retained these positions until his death. He has been described as turning St Mary’s into a model for managing a parish along ritualist (Anglo-Catholic) lines. By consent, he and his wife separated ‘each to live crypto-monastic lives of celibacy and charity’. Census records show that in 1861 Alice and her mother were living at Fernley Bank, West Hill, Sydenham, a school for young ladies run by her mother’s sisters, Sarah, Martha and Ann, and at which her mother also taught. By 1871 Alice and her mother were again living with her father, in Bloomsbury. However, within the next three years, both her parents died. In his will her father made his brother, who was vicar of Hook in Yorkshire, guardian of Alice and left the income from a substantial sum for her maintenance and education. It appears this enabled her to complete her studies. Alice had emerged as an artist by 1875, when she produced her earliest dated work. She exhibited at the Royal Academy (9 works), and the New Watercolour Society and the New Gallery, London between 1881-1894. She specialised in drawings of female figures and mythological and orientalist subjects. She also provided frontispiece illustration for Mary Hullah’s The Lion Battalion (1885), a collection of stories for children. Chambers signed her work with a monogram which is reminiscent of Rossetti’s, and often used a leafy backdrop. By 1881 Chambers had established a close relationship with the artists’ agent, Charles Augustus Howell, who is considered one of the most colourful characters of the Victorian age. Howell was the friend and agent of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and later secretary to John Ruskin. He had a mixed reputation during his lifetime, as both a ‘gifted raconteur’ and a ‘prodigious liar’. Chambers became a member of a close circle around Howell, that also included his wife, Kitty, and his mistresses, the artist Rosa Corder and Clara Vaughan. It has been suggested that Chambers was the third of these mistresses, though she somehow managed to retain her respectability. Chambers was at her most artistically productive during the years of her friendship with Howell and his circle, benefitting from the support of a like-minded community. By 1881 she was living at 17 Red Lion Square, an address with significant Pre-Raphaelite associations – and described herself an “artist in drawing and painting’. Previous lodgers at 17 Red Lion Square included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, W.H.Deverall, and Edward Burne-Jones. It was also the premises at which (William) Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co established their first headquarters. When Howell died in 1890, he and Chambers were living at the same address in Southampton Row, and possibly in a ménage with Rosa Corder. Chambers was obviously a most trusted friend as she was named as one of the two executors and trustees of his will, along with the auctioneer, Frederick John Bonham, and as one of the two guardians of his daughter by Kitty, along with Corder. It was Chambers who made the arrangements for Howell’s funeral and the sale of his estate. Following Howell’s death and through the 1890s Chambers appears to have led a peripatetic life and spent much of her time in France and Spain In 1901 she was living at 15 Ann’s Villas, in West London, and described herself in the census at living on her own means, rather than as an artist. From that time, she retained one or more addresses in London, but spent most of her time in a cottage in Sussex, or abroad in Italy or Spain. In 1913 Chambers donated Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s plaster death mask to the National Portrait Gallery. Alice Chambers died at Pomona House, Fulham on 5 May 1920. © Big Sky Fine Art There is a tantalizing link between the artist and the sitter of this drawing; they were both remarkable women in their time, with only five years between them in age, and they had the same lifespan of 65 years. They would have mixed in similar social circles and from what is known of their individual lives it is easy to imagine that they would have admired and respected each other. They obviously spent time together when Rebecca sat for her portrait. From the appearance of the subject, it can be reasonably estimated that the picture was created around 1880-85, when the artist would have been around 25-30 and the subject around 30-35. 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