Geoffrey Key

Horse & Rider. Modern British Northern Art Manchester Salford. Cubism Watercolor

1988

Geoffrey Key. English ( b.1941 ). Horse with Rising Sun, 1989. Watercolor & Ink On Paper. Signed & Dated Lower Right. Image size 13.6 inches x 9.7 inches ( 34.5cm x 24.5cm ). Frame size 20.5 inches x 16.5 inches ( 52cm x 42cm ). Available for sale; this original painting is by Geoffrey Key and is dated 26th September 1989. The watercolor is presented and supplied in a sympathetic and contrasting contemporary frame (which is shown in these photographs) to suit the subject coloration, mounted using conservation materials and behind glass. This artwork and its presentation is in excellent condition. It wants for nothing and is supplied ready to hang and display. The watercolor is signed and dated lower right. Geoffrey Key is a leading figure in Northern contemporary art, widely regarded as Lancashire’s greatest living artist, noted for his realism, his expressive use of bold color and his graphic, linear style. His striking works, now much in demand, have established him as a major player of post war British figurative art. Geoffrey Key was born in Rusholme, Manchester in 1941. His mother, Marion, worked as an illustrator and encouraged him to draw and he took to this easily and with great enthusiasm. He was educated at Manchester's High School of Art, whose headmaster, Ernest Goodman, established the Salford Art Club. It is fitting that many years later, after Goodman's death, its members chose Geoffrey Key as Honorary President. In 1958 Key enrolled at the Manchester Regional College of Art, where he was tutored by the sculptor Ted Roocroft and the painter Harry Rutherford, both of whom influenced him greatly. After gaining the National Diploma of Design and the Diploma of Associateship of Manchester, the latter with distinction, Key took up a postgraduate scholarship in sculpture. His academic awards include the Heywood Medal in Fine Art and the Guthrie Bond Travelling Scholarship. Geoffrey Key’s early work included an important period of development during which he concentrated on painting and drawing a specific area of the Derbyshire landscape, the Whiteley Nab hill, south of Glossop. Key created literally hundreds of images of this one landscape and later revealed that the sole purpose of this dedicated period of study, was to build upon the firm foundation established by his academic training, whilst divesting himself of the influences he had absorbed in order to arrive at his own personal artistic language. In other words, this is where he found his own style. After graduating Key worked as a teacher at Duke Street Secondary Modern in Broughton, Salford, which later became Broughton Modern. In every spare moment though he painted and his talent was quickly recognised. As the likes of Salford Art Gallery, The Rutherston Loan Collection and North West Arts began to acquire his work he made the decision to relinquish his salary and to become a full time artist. Key was elected to membership of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts in 1968 and was a prize winner in 1971. During this time he was also commissioned by three North West England based companies – Mather & Platt, Richard Johnson & Nephew, and Wilson’s Brewery. The Richard Johnson & Nephew pictures are now held by the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester. In the 1980s the French company Société des Caves de Roquefort also commissioned Key’s work and further successful exhibitions were held in both the UK and abroad. In 1987 the Manchester Evening News asked Key to write an article on L. S. Lowry, who Key had known well, for a feature marking the centenary of the artist's birth. This article was accompanied by a contemporary drawing of Lowry by Key. Apart from LS Lowry, Key is arguably Lancashire’s best-known and most collected contemporary artist. Key says ‘I knew Lowry and he was a lovely...

Dame Elisabeth Frink. English ( b.1930 - d.1993 ). Hawk, 1969. Watercolor. Signed & Dated Lower Right. Image size 25.4 inches x 19.5 inches ( 64.5cm x 49.5cm ). Frame size 34.4 inches x 28.1 inches ( 87.5cm x 71.5cm ). Available for sale; this original painting is by Dame Elisabeth Frink and is dated 1969. The painting is presented and supplied in a glazed frame and mount dating from June 1997. This vintage watercolor is in very good condition, commensurate with its age. The watercolor is signed and dated lower right. Previously with Beaux Arts, London and Bath in 1999. Dame Elisabeth Frink was one of Britain’s most important post-war sculptors, an accomplished draughtsman, illustrator and teacher. She was part of the post-war school of expressionist British sculptors dubbed the Geometry of Fear, and enjoyed a highly acclaimed career that was commercially successful, broke boundaries and contributed greatly to bringing wonderful sculpture to public places. She was born on 14 November 1930 in Thurlow, the daughter of a cavalry officer, and brought up in rural Suffolk near to an active airbase. She was brought up a Catholic and educated at the Convent of the Holy Family, Exmouth. She then studied at the Guildford School of Art from 1947-1949 under Willi Soukop and Henry Moore’s assistant, Bernard Meadows, and then at the Chelsea School in London 1949-1953. She taught at Chelsea School of Art 1951-61, St. Martin’s School of Art 1954-62 and was a visiting instructor at the Royal College of Art 1965-1967, after which she lived in France until 1973. Frink first came to the attention of the public in 1951 at an exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London. In 1952 she represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, being described by Herbert Read as “the most vital, the most brilliant and the most promising of the whole Biennale”. The same year the Tate bought its first work by her, and she began to enjoy commercial success. Thereafter she exhibited regularly and was for 27 years associated with Waddington’s, London. The subjects which Frink was most concerned with were man, dog and horses, with and without riders. Interestingly she seldom sculpted the female form, drawing on archetypes of masculine strength, struggle and aggression. Her work has the recurring themes of the vulnerable and the predatory, in the spirit of an authentic post-war artist. It has been said that she was more concerned with representing mankind that portraits of individuals. The appeal of her work lies in its directness, provoking a frank statement of feeling. The anatomy is often exaggerated or incorrect; the impact growing more out of her interest in the spirit of the subject. Her animals and birds may be drawn from nature but verge on the abstract, conveying raw emotion and character rather than a realistic depiction. Her unique style is characterised by a rough treatment of the surface which embeds each piece with vitality and her personal impression. In her later work even the distinction between human and bird figures becomes blurred. Commentators have noted that the often rugged, brutal and contorted surfaces of her work reflect the destruction and terror of the six-year world-wide conflict that she witnessed as a child. Frink was an active supporter of Amnesty International. In the 1960s and early 1970s Frink produced a notable series of falling figures and winged men. Later, living in France during the Algerian war, she began making heads, blinded by goggles which had a threatening facelessness. Frink produced many notable public commissions, including Wild Boar for Harlow New Town, Blind Beggar and Dog for Bethnal Green, Noble Horse and Rider for Piccadilly, London, a lectern for Coventry Cathedral, Shepherd for Paternoster Square beside St. Paul’s Cathedral and a Walking Madonna for Salisbury Cathedral. In the early 1980s she produced a set of three larger than life figures The Dorset Martyrs which stand on the edge of the old walled town of Dorchester on the site of the old gallows, as a memorial to those who had been executed there ‘for conscience sake’. Frink’s Canterbury Tales was a collection of 19 etchings drawn directly on to copper plates and etched by her. The ‘book’ was issued in three limited editions. Her illustrations have been praised as “amongst the most successful illustrations of the century, encompassing the mood of the text in concise delineations and disarmingly ribald humour”. She illustrated other books with colored lithographs or drawings. Frink was on the Board of Trustees, British Museum from 1976, and was a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission 1976-81. CBR (1969), DBE ((1982), Associate of the Royal Academy (1971), Royal Academy (1977). She was made a Companion of Honour in 1992. She died on 18 April 1993, but not before completing her last commission, a monumental but unusual figure of Christ for the front of the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, unveiled a week before her death. For several decades Frink exhibited widely in the UK and abroad. In her later years she lived and worked in Dorset where her home and garden became an arena for her work. In 1985 she had a retrospective at the Royal Academy. She died on 18 April 1993, but not before completing her last commission, a monumental but unusual figure of Christ for the front of the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, unveiled a week before her death. There was a memorial show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Bretton Hall in 1994. Today Frink is venerated as one of the great twentieth century British sculptors. Her unique work is represented in the Tate Gallery and major public and private collections world-wide. © Big Sky Fine Art This original watercolor on paper painting of a hawk by Dame Elizabeth Frink...

Signed upper right, 'Anne Jenkins' (American, 1923-2023) and dated 1958. An elegant and psychologically penetrating study of a young boy, shown seated and holding a white cat. Born...

'Horses at the Edge of the Pond', pencil, ink and watercolour on art paper, by Yves Brayer (1980). Brayer loved the Camargue region of France and painted it widely. The Camargue is a vast, swampy delta near Arles, very exotic, with tall marsh grasses where pink flamingos, black bulls and white horses roam freely. This image depicts three horses in the Camargue near pond's edge. Although there are many horses that still run free in the area, there are cowboys — called gardians — who ride the white horses on the beaches...