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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2283
Signed with monogram b.l.: ‘FB’
Oil on board, 64×63cm (25¼×24¾in)
Provenance: William Stewart, and by descent
Since this is a monochrome work it was probably painted as an illustration for a book or magazine.
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2286
Signed with monogram b.r.: ‘FB’. Also inscribed (probably in another hand) on surface: ‘Wilfred Jewson’ and ‘xxxx/1917’
Oil on panel, 45.5×31.6cm (17⅞×12½in)
Provenance: William de Belleroche
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2294
Signed, dated and titled b.r.in red: ‘F Brangwyn 92 Gulur’
Oil on canvas, 52.1×59.7cm (20½×23½in)
Reference: Galloway 264
Provenance: William de Belleroche; Mr & Mrs J G Cluff; The Fine Art Society; private collection
Exh: Exhibition of Works by Frank Brangwyn RA, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull 1933 (No 29); The Fine Art Society, 2000
This scene, one of several Brangwyn painted of Spanish goatherds, was undertaken whilst travelling through Spain in 1892 in company with Arthur Melville. It is aptly described in an article Brangwyn wrote for The Studio:
‘Under the long shadows of a few poplars on the banks we could see a goatherd surrounded by flocks of black goats,looking like spots of ink on the sun-swept hills’.(33)
Brangwyn recorded that the two artists actually sketched a goatherd a few days later at Galar, as Brangwyn spelt it, Melville having persuaded the man to come down to the canal side.
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2306
Signed with monogram and date b.l.:‘FB 1890’.
Inscribed with title verso:‘Turkish Fishermen’ Oil on board, 38×45cm (15×17¾in)
Provenance: Liss Fine Art; private collection Brangwyn travelled to Turkey in 1890, the results of his work being exhibited in his first one-man show, From the Scheldt to the Danube,at the Royal Arcade Gallery, London in March 1891. This brilliantly coloured oil is almost identical to a watercolour, Fishing Boats on the Danube, in the collection of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. This might lead one to assume that the oil is No 169 in Vincent Galloway’s, The Oils and Murals of Frank Brangwyn, but neither the size nor inscription match.Brangwyn, inspired by the scenery,possibly painted a number of similar compositions.
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2307
Signed with monogram b.r.: ‘FB’
Oil on board, 41x55.5cm (16⅛×21⅞in)
Provenance: The Fine Art Society; private collection
Quay may have been painted when Brangwyn visited Morocco with Dudley Hardy, the cartoonist and poster designer.
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2308
Oil on canvas, 43×52cm (16⅞×20½in)
Provenance: Mrs V Abbot; Liss Fine Art; private collection
Brangwyn and his friend, the artist Dudley Hardy, visited Morocco in 1893 and probably returned the following year for another sketching trip.
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2309
Signed with monogram b.l.: ‘FB’
Oil on canvas, 63.5×76cm (25×29⅞in)
Provenance: The Fine Art Society; private collection
Brangwyn is thought to have visited Venice for the first time in 1896. He designed the British Room for the Venice Biennale in 1905 and 1907 and always felt a strong association with the city and its celebrated tradition of painting. In 1922 he illustrated Edward Hutton’s book The Pageant of Venice. (34)
Venetian boat-building yards, known as squero,were a favourite subject of Brangwyn’s; he produced another five oils, three etchings and two watercolours on the same theme.
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2310
Oil on board, 62×41.5cm (24⅜×16¼in)
Provenance: private collection
Ill: Scribner’s Magazine, cover, Vol XXXVIII, October 1905
This painting demonstrates two salient points about Brangwyn’s working practice. Firstly his ‘pattern book’working process, by which figures would be re-used, irrespective of changes in context or the passage of time. On 7 May 1921, Frank Alford wrote that he was working on one of the murals for Jefferson City: ‘FB thinks of taking out the figures on the extreme [left] being a man carrying a large basket of fruit on his head,& putting in its place a figure of a boy on a ladder pulling fruit.The same boy was used in one of FB’s series for Scribner’s magazine.’ (36)
Secondly, despite the fact that Brangwyn was financially secure by 1905, he continued to accept commercial commissions,partly because he found it difficult to refuse any challenge, but mainly because by these means he could introduce art to a wider audience. The gold painted bar across the painting relates directly to the format of the magazine cover.
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2312
Signed with monogram b.r.: ‘FB’
Oil on board, 63.5×76.2cm (25×30in)
Provenance: Barbizon House; unknown; Sotheby’s, London, 3 October 1975, Lot 214; private collection
There is a Barbizon House sticker verso,and Barbizon House had an apparently identical painting c 1926, described as oil on millboard, measuring 20×35in. The painting may be Galloway 732 (see fn II).
The scene is the lagoon slightly east of the Punta de Dogana, with the Dogana faintly visible background left.
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2313
Signed with monogram and date b.r.: ‘FB 1914’
Oil on canvas, 127×121.9cm (50×48in)
Reference: Galloway 308
Provenance: Barbizon House (1926); private collection (UK)
Exh: Barbizon House, 1926 (cat 4)
Lit and Ill: Barbizon House Record, 1926
The Barbizon House record noted that:
‘There is a fine massive confusedness in this remarkable painting. The busy scene is filled with the movement of many strong figures, some occupied with the ephemeral passing of the fish-catch of the morning, while others are equally busy with the more permanent building of a good ship of the future.
The artist has aimed at producing a grand decorative scheme showing the scaffolding reaching to the ribs of the vessel and the active movement ofthe workers in full swing, each absorbed in his own labour.’
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2314
Oil on canvas, 104×142cm (40⅞×55⅞in)
Provenance: Campion Hall, Oxford (presented to Father M C D’Arcy by Brangwyn);
The Fine Art Society; private collection
Ill: Herbert Furst, The Decorative Art of Frank Brangwyn, London: The Bodley Head, 1924, facing p143
After World War I, Brangwyn was commissioned to produce Stations of the Cross for Arras Cathedral through the recommendation of his friend, the artist, Theophile Steinlen (1859–1923; see p22). Reproductions of the Stations were to be distributed to other war damaged churches. Unfortunately the series was never completed.It was generally reported that this was due to the death of the model Cervi, although we know from Frank Alford’s diary that Marco Jafrato also posed as Christ. (41)The deaths of Brangwyn’s wife, Lucy, and Steinlen himself may have had more to do with the failure of the commission.
Studies or completed panels have been discovered for 10 of the 14 Stations. The work was illustrated in Herbert Furst’s book The Decorative Art of Frank Brangwyn, facing p143. Brangwyn subsequently altered the painting and inserted his self portrait on the right, offering succour to Christ, probably before presenting the work to Father D’Arcy (c1935). (42)
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