DESPITE being in the forefront of British Modernism, with Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo, in St Ives during the 1940s and 1950s, Wilhelmina— Willie—Barns-Graham’s work is still relatively little known. Perhaps it’s less easy to categorise than theirs. As Nicholson was, she was both a figurative and an abstract painter and draughtsman, but, unlike him, each did not represent different phases of her career, as she carried on the practice of drawing in the open air throughout her life, even during her most extreme non-figurative periods.
Born in 1912, into a well-to-do Scottish family in St Andrews, Barns-Graham had to fight paternal opposition to be allowed to study art rather than follow a more genteel course to marriage and family life. She succeeded in entering the Edinburgh College of Art, where she was tutored by the Scottish Colourist S. J. Peploe and by William Gillies. In 1938, she was awarded a six-month European travelling scholarship; however, due to illness, followed by the outbreak of war, it became impossible to take this up. Instead, she was encouraged to move to St Ives. As Virginia Button writes in her forthcoming book on the artist published by Sansom and Co, this ‘represented independence from her family and the beginning of a love affair with Cornwall that would last for 60 years’.
Denne historien er fra June 03, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 03, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds