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Mary PotterA Rough Sea, Aldeburgh, Oil on Canvas Painting by Mary Potter, 1958 circa1958 circa
1958 circa
About the Item
A Rough Sea, Aldeburgh, Oil on Canvas Painting by Mary Potter, 1958 circa
Additional information:
Medium: Oil on canvas
61 x 50.8 cm
24 x 20 in
Signed verso
This view is of the shingle beach and sea at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, most likely painted near Crag House, the former home of the composer, Benjamin Britten and the opera singer, Peter Pears. Mary Potter had moved to Aldeburgh in 1951 and struck up a friendship with Britten and the two would spend time together. In January 1953, there were serious floods along the east coast which breached the inadequate sea defences claiming 50 lives in Suffolk. Aldeburgh, pinned between the River Orde and the North Sea, was badly hit and the ground floor of Britten’s house was flooded. So it is quite likely that Winter Sea, with its turbulent waves, bears the memory of those floods. In 1957, Britten complained to Potter that walkers along the beach distracted his concentration. So they swapped houses – he moving into her house, the Red House, a five-minute drive inland, which was more secluded and is now the Britten-Pears Foundation, and she into Crag House.
Mary Potter was a painter of still lifes and landscapes in oil and watercolour.
Born in Beckenham, Kent in 1900, she was a school friend of Enid Blyton. Afterwards, she studied at the Beckenham School of Art in 1916 before being awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Potter declined and instead, in 1918, took the Orpen bursary and began her studies at the Slade. After gaining a full scholarship the following year, Potter became a protégé of the influential new Professor, Henry Tonks, and graduated with seven awards in 1921.
Potter's best-known work uses a restrained palette of subtle, elusive colours as well as fugitive shapes and textures to convey the ephemeral quality of the air and light. Many of her pre-war paintings are of the Thames at Chiswick, as seen from her window, while her later work responds to the coastal landscape around Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where she lived for many years.
Potter had been made a member of the Seven and Five Society from early in its history in 1921, and their exhibitions provided her first source of critical praise. From 1922 Potter also exhibited with the New English Art Club under her maiden name (Attenborough) before marrying Stephen Potter in 1927. She moved to the London Group, who split from the NEAC in 1930, the same year that she was appointed a Member. Potter's first solo exhibition took place at the Bloomsbury Gallery in 1931 and was well-reviewed by contemporary critics. She went on to have many solo exhibitions with London galleries such as the Redfern (1949) and the New Art Centre, which continued to champion her work following her death in 1981.
- Creator:Mary Potter (1900 - 1981, British)
- Creation Year:1958 circa
- Dimensions:Height: 24 in (60.96 cm)Width: 20 in (50.8 cm)
- Medium:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Kingsclere, GB
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2718214575832
Mary Potter
Mary Potter, OBE was an English painter whose best-known work uses a restrained palette of subtle colors. After studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, Potter began her career, exhibiting in London by the early 1920s. From the 1950s, her work became increasingly abstract and she gained wider notice. Born Mary Attenborough in Beckenham, she upset her parents by choosing painting from her many talents. While at Slade, she was awarded first prize for portrait painting and a place in the New English Art Club exhibition. She then decided that she was working to a formula and ceremonially burned all her portraits. Mary, later, married writer Stephen Potter and with two children, continued to paint as she wished. It was while living by the Thames in Chiswick from 1927 that she began to dabble with the watery vision which she would explore for the rest of her life. An early member of The London Group, Mary Potter also showed allegiance to the Seven and Five Society. In 1951, the Potter family moved to Aldeburgh, and it was this Suffolk fishing town that was to provide the inspiration for her finest art. After her divorce in 1955, her great friendship with the founders of the Aldeburgh Festival, Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, led to them swapping houses for six years. This was so that she could paint overlooking the sea from Crag House. During her isolation, she painted to ever greater acclaim by paring down her vision, thinning her paint, blurring outlines and abolishing the horizon line.
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