Hugh Griffiths

The Standing Stone Wall, 20th Century English Signed, Oil Landscape

1948

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...

Oil on board Image size: 12 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches (31.75 x 40 cm) Contemporary style handmade frame Exhibitions 1952 Royal Academy of Arts Exhibition, Gallery no. VII, no.429. This forest scene invites the viewer into a multi-sensory event where the cool, damp shadows of the foliage can almost be felt and the rich bouquet of the forest floor recalled. Here, Sherlock has chosen a somewhat unusual angle and composition, dissecting each truck and tree form so that only a part can be seen. Furthermore, as we look into the depths of this space it becomes clear that we are stood gazing down into a valley that is in the distance, behind this wooded area. Indeed, instead of giving us an uninterrupted view of this vista, as perhaps would be expected, this view is deliberately blocked and our focus is directed instead towards the organic forms in the foreground. The Artist  Marjorie Sherlock was born at Fir Tree Cottage, George Lane, Wanstead, Essex, on 3 February 1891, the elder child of the civil engineer, Henry Sherlock, and his wife, Alice (née Platts), who was born in Benares, India. By 1901, the family was living at ‘The Limes’, 121 Mill Road, Cambridge, and Marjorie received an education locally. In 1918, she entered into marriage with her cousin, Major Wilfrid Barrett, though this proved unsuccessful and they later divorced (he remarrying in 1941). She then continued to live at the family home until the Second World War. During the First World War, Marjorie Sherlock studied at Westminster Technical Institute under the Camden Town School painters, Walter Sickert and Harold Gilman. She exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1917, when she showed a powerful view of the interior of Liverpool Street Station (Government Art Collection) (to which the current etching [202] relates). In time, she would exhibit at the International Society, the New English Art Club, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Society of 207 Graphic Art and the Women’s International Art Club (becoming a member of the last two). She also showed work internationally. Developing as a printmaker as well as a painter, Sherlock studied etching under Malcolm Osborne at the Royal College of Art in 1925. She published her etchings in four series, the titles of which indicate her love of travel: ‘English Etchings, ‘Egyptian Etchings’ (both 1925), ‘German Etchings’ (1929) and ‘Indian Etchings’ (1932). During this period, she also visited the united States. More admiring of Continental painters than British ones, she furthered her studies, in 1938, by working in Paris under André L’Hôte and André Dunoyer de Segonzac. During the Second World War, Sherlock moved to East Devon and settled at Oxenways, a Victorian hunting lodge...

Artist/ School: Barbara Doyle, British b. 1917 Barbara Doyle (British b.1917, born in Halifax Yorkshire, lived most of her life on the South Coast of England. She was an extremely a...

Rural Field Landscape Oil Painting of an Idyllic English Countryside Scene, by British Artist Dennis Harper, ( b. 1940) Harper is best known for his Rea...