Christopher Fiddes

Last updated

Christopher Fiddes
Fiddes-in-his-studio-2017.jpg
Born1934
Northampton, England
EducationNorthampton Grammar School; Northampton School of Art
Occupation(s)Artist, teacher and art historian
Known forSocial history and documentary oil paintings
Notable workNorthern Ireland Series, 1972

Christopher John Ellis Fiddes (born Northampton 13 November 1934) is an English artist, muralist, designer of stained glass and book illustrator. He is also an expert art historian. He has enjoyed a long career as an artist, with prodigious output and driven by a strong belief in the value of traditional drawing and painting techniques that he feels have been largely lost in Post-Modern art movements and the 21st-century commercial art world.

Contents

Education and teaching career

Fiddes studied art at Northampton Art School from 1950 to 1954 and then gained an Art Teacher's Diploma at Leicester University. He did two years' National Service in the Northamptonshire Regiment of the British Army and spent time in Hong Kong. In 1957 he started teaching art at a Catholic boys' secondary school and then, in 1972, he became Head of Art at Northampton High School.

Historic preservation

In 1962 he co-founded the Northampton Civic Society with the historian Sir Gyles Isham and local architects and archivists, with the aim of preserving historic buildings from redevelopment. In 1965 he bought a listed house in the village of Cogenhoe and over the next 10 years restored it. His occupation of that house, which is now a listed building, is celebrated with a plaque. [1]

Paintings and illustrations

Most of Fiddes' prolific output is driven by his compulsion to visualise acute social and political commentary. All his major works are painted in oils. They range in mood from dark, savage and sinister to frenetically energetic. The common denominator is a drive to chronicle diverse cultural, social and political episodes of the last seven decades through the lens of a self confessed artistic misfit.

In 1972 he travelled to Northern Ireland as an artist to create a record of The Troubles. [2] His dramatic and graphic paintings were based on sketches he made from close-up observation on both sides of the line. He was commissioned regularly by the author and publisher J. L. Carr to illustrate several of the small books of poetry that Carr published under the imprint of The Quince Tree Press. [3]

In observational quality, nuance and inventiveness Fiddes' canvasses rival the output of the great early satirist printmakers and painters of the 18th century - like Gillray, Hogarth and Goya. He cites Goya as one of his main influences. Yet, in style and technical relish, Fiddes' paintings are idiosyncratic interpretations of anti-establishment thinking, each one inventive in topic and storytelling as well as ingenious in composition and fiendish use of perspective, [4] with which he likes to test himself.

Northampton Museum & Art Gallery [5] are hosting Fiddes' first retrospective exhibition (10 July - 17 October 2021) to mark their re-opening after extensive remodelling. The museum is permanent home to 21 oil paintings by Fiddes as well as a few preparatory sketches. In their collection, and in this show, is one of his earliest paintings, 'Kowloon Riots'. This was painted in 1956 in response to the quelling of the riots that Fiddes witnessed while on his National Service in Kowloon, Hong Kong and it was shown at the Royal Society of British Arts (RBA) [6] at the time.

Fiddes works from his home studio in rural Northamptonshire. He is widowed and has three children - Mark and Clare from his first marriage and Cordelia from his second marriage.

Shouting in the Wind by Fiddes Shouting in the Wind.jpg
Shouting in the Wind by Fiddes
Police Post, South Belfast by Fiddes Police-Post-South-Belfast.jpg
Police Post, South Belfast by Fiddes

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francisco Goya</span> Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diego Velázquez</span> Spanish painter (1599–1660)

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Knight of the Order of Santiago was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederic Edwin Church</span> American landscape painter (1826–1900)

Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, best known for painting large landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets. Church's paintings put an emphasis on realistic detail, dramatic light, and panoramic views. He debuted some of his major works in single-painting exhibitions to a paying and often enthralled audience in New York City. In his prime, he was one of the most famous painters in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred East</span> English painter

Sir Alfred Edward East was an English painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Green (painter)</span> British painter (1939–2023)

Anthony Green was an English realist painter and printmaker best known for his paintings of his own middle-class domestic life. His works sometimes used compound perspectives and polygonal forms—particularly with large, irregularly shaped canvasses. As well as producing oil paintings, he also produced a number of works designed from the start as limited edition prints, which were typically giclée works.

<i>La maja desnuda</i> Painting by Francisco de Goya

The Naked Maja or The Nude Maja is an oil on canvas painting made around 1797–1800 by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, and is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. It portrays a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows, and was probably commissioned by Manuel de Godoy, to hang in his private collection in a separate cabinet reserved for nude paintings. Goya created a pendant of the same woman identically posed, but clothed, known today as La maja vestida, also in the Prado, and usually hung next to La maja desnuda. The subject is identified as a maja or fashionable lower-class Madrid woman, based on her costume in La maja vestida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sketchbook</span>

A sketchbook is a book or pad with blank pages for sketching and is frequently used by artists for drawing or painting as a part of their creative process. Some also use sketchbooks as a sort of blueprint for future art pieces. The exhibition of sketchbooks at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University in 2006 suggested that there were two broad categories for classifying sketches:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Chinnery</span> English painter

George Chinnery was an English painter who spent most of his life in Asia, especially India and southern China.

<i>The Third of May 1808</i> 1814 painting by Francisco de Goya commemorating Spanish resistance to Napoleons armies

The Third of May 1808 is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War. Along with its companion piece of the same size, The Second of May 1808, it was commissioned by the provisional government of Spain at Goya's own suggestion shortly after the ousting of the French occupation and the restoration of King Ferdinand VII.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meadows Museum</span> Art museum in Dallas, Texas

The Meadows Museum, nicknamed "Prado on the Prairie", is a two-story, 66,000 sq. ft.art museum in Dallas, Texas on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU). Operating as a division of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, the museum houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain, with works dating from the 10th to the 21st centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Hill (painter)</span> English-born American landscape painter

Thomas Hill was an English-born American artist of the 19th century. He produced many fine paintings of the Californian landscape, in particular of the Yosemite Valley, as well as the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solomon Joseph Solomon</span> English painter (1860–1927)

Solomon Joseph Solomon was a British painter, a founding member of the New English Art Club and member of the Royal Academy.

<i>The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters</i> Aquatint by Francisco de Goya

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters or The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters is an aquatint by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya. Created between 1797 and 1799 for the Diario de Madrid, it is the 43rd of the 80 aquatints making up the satirical Los caprichos.

<i>The Burial of the Sardine</i> Painting by Francisco de Goya

The Burial of the Sardine is an oil-on-panel painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, usually dated to the 1810s. The title is posthumous, referring to the culminating event, Entierro de la Sardina, of a three-day carnival in Madrid ending on Ash Wednesday. Masked and disguised revellers are seen dancing their way to the banks of the Manzanares, where a ceremonial sardine will be buried. Goya does not illustrate the fish in the painting, nor the large doll made of straw, called a pelele, from which it hung; the centrepiece is the darkly grinning "King of the Carnival".

<i>The Spanish Wedding</i> Painting by Marià Fortuny

The Spanish Wedding or La Vicaría (1868–1870) is a masterwork by Marià Fortuny i Marsal, also known as Marià Fortuny or Mariano Fortuny. La Vicaría exemplifies genre painting of the 19th century. The use of jewel tones, contrasts between light and dark, and the virtuosity of the work attest to Fortuny's talent. It resides at Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain.

George Fiddes Watt was a Scottish portrait painter and engraver.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Carr (artist)</span> British artist

Henry Marvell Carr,, was a successful British landscape and portrait painter who served as a war artist during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">M+</span> Art museum in West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong

M+ is a museum of visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong. It exhibits twentieth and twenty-first century visual culture encompassing visual art, design and architecture, and moving image. It opened on 12 November 2021.

<i>Summer</i> (Goya) Painting by Francisco de Goya

Summer or The Threshing Floor is the largest cartoon painted by Francisco de Goya as a tapestry design for Spain's Royal Tapestry Factory. Painted from 1786 to 1787, it was part of his fifth series, dedicated to traditional themes and intended for the heir to the Spanish throne and his wife. The tapestries were to hang in the couple's dining room at the Pardo Palace.

<i>Truth, Time and History</i> 1812–1814 painting by Francisco de Goya

Truth, Time and History is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya. The painting is also known by the titles Spain, Time, and History and Allegory of the Constitution of 1812. It has been assigned dates ranging from 1797 to 1812, though it is most commonly dated between 1804 and 1808. It is currently in the collection of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.

References

  1. "Plaque 7". www.cogenhoeheritage.org.uk.
  2. "Paintings show 'horror' of Troubles". 8 February 2013 via www.bbc.co.uk.
  3. Byron Rogers (2003). The Last Englishman. The Life of J.L. Carr. London: Aurum Press.
  4. "In observational quality, nuance and inventiveness Fiddes' canvasses rival the output of the great early satirist printmakes and painters of the 18th century".
  5. "Northampton Museum & Art Gallery". 2021 via www.northamptonmuseums.com/.
  6. "RBA - Royal Society of British Arts".