Eric Brown

Salisbury Cathedral, 20th Century English Artist, Oil Landscape

1894-1955

Oil on board, signed lower left Inscribed and dated 1905 on reverse Image size: 8 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches (21 x 27 cm) Contemporary style hand made frame This is a scene of the outskirts of the village of East Ruston, found near the coast in Norfolk. The setting is a sand and gravel pit with the houses of the village just identifiable through the trees in the background. This small sand pit...

Oil on board, signed and dated '1974' lower right Image size: 31 x 48 inches (79 x 122 cm) June 1987 Exhibition label on verso Original frame Provenance The Artist's Estate Exhibited "Raymond Booth, A Memorial Exhibition", The Fine Art Society, London, 12th August - 9th September 2016, no.62 "Raymond Booth, In the Wild", The Fine Art Society, London, 02 May -29 May 2017, No. 11 Booth was above all a great recorder of the natural world who could translate his observations of the Yorkshire countryside, its fauna and flora, into compositions of a beauty and intensity rivalling the greatest of his Victorian predecessors. This intense, yet intimate, landscape depicts a section of woods around Booth's home in Alwoodley, Leeds, where he spent much of his time. Here Booth has worked slowly to develop the densely worked, close-up, landscape in which the woodland and meadows have acquired a poetic quality through his sensitivity to season, weather and time of day. Raymond Charles Booth Intensely private, and possessing an obsessive work ethic and passion for the natural world, Raymond Booth earned a reputation as one of the greatest botanical painters and illustrators, despite rarely leaving his Yorkshire home. Eschewing the more fashionable modernist principles of the early mid-twentieth century, he instead produced beautiful, intense compositions in oil of British flora and fauna, that rival the very finest Victorian followers of the genre. Raymond Booth was born in Wetherby, West Yorkshire, on 8 August 1929, to John Booth, a member of the local police force, and his wife Margaret Edna. When Raymond was still a young child, the family moved from their first home in the crowded streets of central Leeds, to Fearnville Place, in the leafy suburb of Roundhay. His father was a keen rambler and impressed upon Booth from an early age a respect and understanding for the British countryside. Just a short walk from his childhood home was Roundhay Park, the second largest urban park in Europe, comprised of over 700 acres of parkland, lakes and woodland. It is likely that growing up so close to such an environment had a profound influence on him, helping to develop what would become a lifelong obsession with natural world. Booth’s early passion for nature was surely heightened by the number of summer holidays he spent on an estate near Winterslow, Wiltshire, where an uncle worked as a gamekeeper. In 1946, at the age of 17, Booth won a scholarship to study at Leeds College of Art. However, his studies were put on hold during two years of National Service, which he spent largely with the RAF in Egypt, guarding the Suez Canal. He returned to Leeds College in 1949, graduating in 1953. While at Leeds College, he had frustrated his teachers and fellow students by insisting on working in a more traditional, precise style, and rejecting the more Modernist principles that were being promoted. As a result, his teachers convinced him that he was unlikely to earn a living as an artist, and encouraged him instead to study for a teaching diploma. Shortly after graduation however, he was diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis, a consequence of his time in Egypt, and was admitted to a sanatorium, where he would stay for the next six months. Years later, Booth would joke ‘I am one of the few people who can say, “Thank God for TB”’ (The Times obituary, 9 September 2015), as his months of recuperation gave him countless hours to develop his skills as a botanical artist. This enforced focus on his work gave him the confidence to submit a number of his drawings to a botanical art exhibition in London organised by the Royal Horticultural Society. These works attracted the attention of a number of prominent horticulturalists, including Dr Harold Fletcher, the director of the RHS’s gardens at Wisley, Sir George Taylor...

Highway Derelict, May, 1939, oil on canvas board, signed upper right, 18 x 20 inches, exhibited 1) Society of Independent Artists, American Society of Fine Arts (Art Students League)...

Farmhouse in Autumn, Early 20th Century Landscape by Florence Helena McGillivray A vibrant and colorful late 1920's landscape by Florence Helena McGillivray (Canadian, 1864-1938). This beautiful 1929 landscape depicts a quaint farmhouse in autumn, surrounded by a landscape full of fall foliage in goldenrod yellow, bright orange, and deep red, with soft purple hills receding into the distance. Signed "F. McGillivray" lower left. Displayed in a new Arts & Crafts style giltwood frame. Board size: 16"H x 20"W. Framed size: 19.25"H x 23.25"W x 1"D. McGillivray (1864–1938) garnered admiration for her modern landscape paintings, as well as for her mentorship of young artists, including Tom Thomson. She has been credited in some instances as an influence for what would later be known as the Group of Seven. A prolific sketcher and painter, Florence McGillivray...