Eight artists have already appeared in our earlier Studio sales. But three are making their debuts:

Eardley Knollys, Margaret Green and Miriam Sacks (lots 33-39, 56-67 & 80-87). Knollys worked in advertising, ran the Storran Gallery and served under Donald Macleod Matheson at the nascent National Trust, where he toured the Southwest with James Lees-Milne, a range of experiences that informed the colourful and exuberant canvases that he subsequently painted.

Green and Sacks are two of three women painters featured.  Green, like Rose Hilton (lots 124-131) studied at the RCA where they met their husbands, Lionel Bulmer (lots 40-55) and Roger Hilton. Roger forbade Rose from painting while they were married, but Green enjoyed a hugely constructive painterly synergy with Bulmer during their lives together. It was only after Roger Hilton died in 1975 that Rose was able to give free reign to her painterly talents. But when Bulmer died in 1992 a grief-stricken Green stopped painting altogether.

The catalyst for Sacks’s work was seeing the medieval tapestries at The Cloisters in New York in the mid-1950s. The unique tapestries she made thereafter were widely fêted during her lifetime, benefiting from numerous exhibitions in the UK and abroad. They appear for the first time at auction.

Of the artists whose work makes a return to the sale in March, George Mayer-Marton from Austria and Hans Feibusch from Germany are two of the many talented émigrés who fled to England to escape the Nazis (lots 1-8 & 9-32). Feibusch quickly became part of the London Group and showed with the Lefevre Gallery before establishing himself as the leading muralist in the UK after the War. In contrast, Mayer-Marton endured a succession of tragedies. His studio in Hampstead was fire-bombed and his wife died from a nervous breakdown, but he persevered despite the odds to become a much-vaunted senior lecturer at the Liverpool School of Art.

For different reasons, often of their choosing, the progress of other artists in the sale was often disrupted. After a string of gallery shows in the 1950s, James Hull (lots 68-79) packed in his easel for a role as a design consultant, only returning to paint twenty years later. Likewise, Leslie Marr (lots 96-107), the son-in-law of David Bomberg and a member of the Borough Group of artists that formed around Bomberg at Borough Polytechnic after the War, turned his hand to photography, film production and racing cars, only returning to paint after Bomberg’s death in 1957.

The last two artists in our sale are Leo Davy (lots 88-94) and Michael Upton (lots 108-123). Davy suffered from congenital deafness and shunned the spotlight, while Upton morphed from painting to performance and back again before retiring to Cornwall. His work was latterly recognised by The Times critic John Russell Taylor amongst others for the intimacy and control of the small and thoughtful interiors that he produced.

As well as the present catalogue, in our concurrent Olympia Timed online sale From the Studio: Works from the Estate of Bernard Myers we are offering 96 lots of Myers’ work (lots 201-296). We have featured works from Myers’ studio in each of our three previous estate sales, but the online auction of his work that runs from in 7th-16th March is the most comprehensive to date.

As ever, our From the Studios sales offer artists ready for rediscovery, their work invariably ripe for the picking. We look forward to fielding your enquiries and welcoming you here during the pre-sale viewing.

ARTISTS: 

LIONEL BULMER

LEO DAVY

HANS FEIBUSCH

MARGARET GREEN

ROSE HILTON

JAMES HULL

EARDLEY KNOLLYS

LESLIE MARR

GEORGE MAYER-MARTON

MIRIAM SACKS

MICHAEL UPTON

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