Ronald Benham

Summer, 20th Century British Landscape, Framed

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 canvas on board, signed lower left Image size: 10 1/2 x 14 inches In the course of a long and varied career, Sep Scott exhibited in the Royal Academy and was a member of the Royal Watercolour Society. Scott produced some famous works for the railway poster campaigns in his early years. He became a book illustrator and one of the highest paid and respected of all British poster artists. Towards the end of his life, during a period when his style had gone somewhat out of vogue, he began working for Leonard Matthews and his trio of comics, Knockout, Sun and Thriller Comics Library. At first, Scott was used for picture strips, drawing all the adventures of the pirate hunter, Captain Flame, and proving to be a natural born strip artist. Then, when Matthews took over Thriller Comics Library, Scott began to paint the covers. He drew scores of full colour cover paintings, which would, as Leonard Matthews commented, “grace the walls of any stately home”, and were, in all probability, largely responsible for the success of the Library and the fact that these comics are so valued today amongst collectors. Scott also drew a number of short Robin Hood strips for the Library and some fine full-length adventure picture stories including Jane Eyre, Pride of the Ring, Secret Operator and the splendidly atmospheric, The Dark Shadows of London. For a short period, he also painted the occasional cover - and back page - for Comet and Sun and also contributed some paintings for the first Buck Jones Annual and the covers for both issues of the Billy the Kid Book...

Oil on canvas on board Image size: 7 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches (19 x 14 cm) Hand made contemporary style frame This small-scale artwork depicts a working farmstead, in New Zealand. It is a textural work with lots of movement and life. Under blue skies luscious vegetation grows throughout this scene between the farm buildings. There are signs of life everywhere in this scene - the fence at the rear has seemingly just been constructed as spare planks of wood rest just next to it. The farm carts...

Oil on board Image size: 12 x 15 inches (30.5 x 38 cm) Contemporary style frame

Anthony Rickards This piece titled "Summer Park" was created using oil on board and is in a handmade swept composite frame. Keywords: park, summertime, grass, field, fields, tree, ...

Lionel Bulmer (1919-1992) 'The Edge of the Field' Signed c.1950s Oil on board 17" x 20" (43 x 51cm) Lionel Bulmer (1919-1992) attended Clapham art school before war intervened; after the war he started again at the Royal College of Art which had been relocated during the conflict to Ambleside in the Lake District. Here he met his lifelong partner Margaret Green...

Oil on panel. Unsigned. (Provenance: Studio Sale of Bernadette Kelly, Hôtel Drouot, Paris).

The Cotswolds on a fine day Rosie Phipps Water colour, Gouache, Pastel 40 cm x 23 cm Pass into the landscape looking first into the far distance, and then taking one’s gaze to the m...