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Mary Fedden OBE RA (1915-2012)

Sunflowers

Oil on canvas

Mary Fedden, born in Bristol in 1915, quietly shaped the story of 20th-century British art. After training at the Slade School of Fine Art, she developed a style that seemed both structured and slightly offbeat, which is exactly what made it so distinctive. Her career spanned decades, and so did her influence, especially through her teaching roles at the Royal College of Art, where her students included David Hockney.

Fedden painted right up until her final years, never straying far from her preferred subjects: still life, seaside scenes, and those famously expressive cats. As a female British artist working in what was still very much a male-dominated art world, she carved out a reputation that felt entirely her own. Collectors still seek out Mary Fedden paintings for their mix of wit, elegance, and emotional accessibility; a balance not easily found.

She married fellow artist Julian Trevelyan in 1951, and the two shared a Thames-side studio at Durham Wharf for decades. Fedden was elected President of the Royal West of England Academy between 1984 and 1988, and later became a Royal Academian on 27th May 1992. She continued painting well into her nineties and sadly passed away in 2012, aged 96.

Adrian Paul Allinson, RBA ROI LG PS (1890-1959)

Lake Brienz, 1921

Pastel on paper

One of the hugely talented generation of artists to emerge just before the First World War, Adrian Allinson managed to hold his own through both his personality and his work. He became best known as a painter of appealing, stylised landscapes, figure and flower compositions. However, his manifold talents encompassed sculpture, wood carving, pottery, poster design and set design.

In 1919 Adrian Paul Allinson married Adelaide Clark (née Buckland), the widow of the art teacher Forbes Maitland Clark. After their marriage he adopted the fuller name Adrian Paul Allinson. They spent much of the early stages of their marriage in a small Swiss village, inspiring Allinson’s most famous continental landscapes. Allinson also maintained a studio in London at the Thackeray Studios in Fitzroy Square, and gave that as his address when beginning to exhibit at the RA from 1921. The fruits of his Swiss sojourn were shown in 1922 at a solo show at the St George’s Gallery.

Roger Hilton CBE (1911-1975)

Gouache on paper

34.5 x 48.7cm

Provenance: Waddington Gallery

Born in 1911 and trained at the Slade School of Art, Hilton became one of the most distinctive voices associated with the St Ives and wider post-war British Abstraction scene.

Roger Hilton’s late work has a raw urgent energy that still feels contemporary. In the final two years of his life, while confined to bed in Cornwall, Hilton made the intimate “night letters” and related gouaches: insomniac, witty, sometimes bitter, and often hauntingly direct responses to art, illness, daily irritations, and his own mortality.

Hilton’s work is held in major public collections, including Tate, the British Museum, The V&A, The British Council Collection, The Government Art Collection, The National Portrait Gallery and many more.

Painted in 1974, Elephant by Roger Hilton is a vivid and highly expressive example of the artist’s late burst of artistic creativity. Executed with sweeping brushwork and animated by bold passages of red, ochre and blue against a deep grey form, the composition transforms the circus elephant into a playful semi abstract presence.