Leslie Marr (lots 83-90)

Introduction
Leslie Marr, born in Durham into a family of engineers and shipbuilders, studied Engineering at Cambridge. But while serving with the RAF in the Middle East during the Second World War discovered a burning inclination to paint. Short on supplies, he procured some brushes and paint and purportedly used his kit bag as canvas to depict the landscape around him.

On his return to London he enrolled in art school in Pimlico. But uninspired by the conventional approach offered, a chance encounter with David Bomberg’s stepdaughter, Dinora Mendelsohn, led Marr to seek the more vivacious and anything but ‘run-of-the-mill’ teaching style that Bomberg espoused at Borough Polytechnic in South London.

Bomberg’s innovative non-academic approach to painting centred around discovering what he called ‘the spirit of the mass’. It was a method that had been fuelled by his pre-War painting expeditions to far flung and isolated destinations: the rugged landscapes of Palestine, the volcanic gorges of Ronda in Spain, and the mountains of Cyprus. And his ideas had a profound influence on a number of his students, Leon Kossoff (1926-2019) and Frank Auerbach (b.1931) amongst them, as well as Marr himself. Bomberg’s non-conventional style spawned The Borough Group, founded in 1946 by Cliff Holden (1926 -2020). Among its members were Bomberg himself, his wife Lillian Holt (1898-1983), Dinora Mendelson (1924-2010), Dorothy Mead (1928-1975), Edna Mann (1926-1985), Miles Peter Richmond (1922-2008), Dennis Creffield (1931-2018) and Marr.

After marrying in 1946, Marr and Dinora travelled to Cyprus with Bomberg. Painting there together Marr’s work flourished, and he would later describe his time in Greece as the point at which he achieved the ‘enlightened’ state. But with the break-up of the Group in 1950 Marr turned to other interests, including as a photographer, film maker and Formula 1 driver before returning to painting after Bomberg’s death in 1957.

Re-connecting with Bomberg’s original approach, Marr travelled far and wide to seek out wild and isolated landscapes – as far afield as New Zealand - and used extreme contrasts and thrusting diagonals to depict untamed Nature. In the present sale these landscapes include highly charged views of the River Barle and Chuggaton in Devon (lots 83 & 84), Rothbury, Northumberland (lot 85) and Glen Etive, Scotland (lot 87). But Bomberg’s nervous energy can equally be seen in Marr’s charcoal of Lucca cathedral (lot 88), which combines a massing of architectural elements with swirling weather conditions. Another influence was Chaim Soutine, whose distinctive style permeates much of Marr's later output.

83
LESLIE MARR (BRITISH 1922-2021)
BARLE IN WINTER
signed and dated Marr / 63/4 lower left
oil on canvas
91.5 x 91.5cm; 36 x 36in
106 x 106cm; 41 3/4 x 41 3/4in (framed)

Exhibited
London, Portland Gallery, Leslie Marr, A Centenary Exhibition, 2022, n.n.

The River Barle runs north across the border between Devon and Somerset, a few miles west of Marr's home at Higher Chuggaton where he lived between 1963 and 1970.