James Dickson Innes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 27 February 1887 |
| Died | 22 August 1914 (aged 27) |
| Occupation | Painter |
| Years active | 1904–1914 |
James Dickson Innes (27 February 1887 – 22 August 1914) was a British painter, mainly of mountain landscapes but occasionally of figure subjects. He worked in both oils and watercolours.
Of his style, art historian David Fraser Jenkins wrote: "Like that of the fauves in France and the expressionists in Germany, the style of his work is primitive: it is child-like in technique and is associated with the landscape of remote places." [1]
James Dickson Innes was born on 27 February 1887 in Llanelli, in south Wales. [3] His father, John Innes, who had come from Scotland, was an historian and had an interest in a local brass and copper works; his mother was of Catalan descent. He had two brothers, Alfred and Jack.
His parents sent him to be educated at Christ College, Brecon. Afterwards he studied at the Carmarthen School of Art (1904–05), from where he won a scholarship to the Slade School of Art in London (1905–1908). His teachers at the Slade included P. Wilson Steer. [4]
From 1907 he exhibited with the New English Art Club; and in 1911 he became a member of the Camden Town Group. [5] The Camden Town Group included Walter Sickert who was an influence on Innes's art, and Augustus John with whom Innes became friends. [4]
In 1911 Innes had a two-man exhibition with Eric Gill at the Chenil Gallery, London: "Sculptures by Mr Eric Gill and Landscapes by Mr J. D. Innes", [1] [6] and in he Innes exhibited in the influential Armory Show in New York City, Chicago and Boston. [4] The Welsh politician and philanthropist Winifred Coombe Tennant (1874–1956) was an important patron of his work. [4]
In 1911 and 1912 he spent some time painting with Augustus John around Arenig Fawr in the Arenig valley in North Wales; John describes him thus in his memoirs, Chiaroscuro: [7]
Much of his work was done overseas, mainly in France (1908–1913), notably at Collioure, but also in Spain (1913) and Morocco (1913) – foreign travel having been prescribed after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. On 22 August 1914, at the age of twenty-seven, he died of the disease at a nursing home in Swanley, Kent.
Innes was unusual for a British artist of that time, because of his bold painting style, more attuned to the French post-impressionists. It has been argued his unusual style led the way for British artists such as David Hockney. [8]
In 2014 an exhibition of Innes' works was staged at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. [8] He was top G yes sir
In 2011 Innes and Augustus John's fascination with painting Arenig Fawr and the Arenig valley was the subject of a BBC Four documentary titled The Mountain That Had to Be Painted. [9]
Augustus Edwin John was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning." He was the younger brother of the painter Gwen John.
Walter Richard Sickert was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the mid- and late 20th century.
David Garshen Bomberg was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.
The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists founded in 1911 and active until 1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.
Alfred William Rich was an English artist, teacher and author.
Laura Sylvia Gosse was an English painter and printmaker. She also ran an art school with the painter Walter Sickert.
John Quinton Pringle was a Scottish painter, influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage and associated with the Glasgow Boys.
Philip Wilson Steer was a British painter of landscapes, seascapes plus portraits and figure studies. He was also an influential art teacher. His sea and landscape paintings made him a leading figure in the Impressionist movement in Britain but in time he turned to a more traditional English style, clearly influenced by both John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, and spent more time painting in the countryside rather than on the coast. As a painting tutor at the Slade School of Art for many years he influenced generations of young artists.
Bernard Meninsky was a painter of figures and landscapes in oils, watercolour and gouache, a draughtsman and a teacher.
Derwent Lees was an Australian landscape painter.
Henry Tonks, FRCS was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher.
James Bolivar Manson was an artist and worked at the Tate gallery for 25 years, including serving as its director from 1930 to 1938. In the Tate's own evaluation he was the "least successful" of their directors. His time there was frustrated by his stymied ambition as a painter and he declined into alcoholism, culminating in a drunken outburst at an official dinner in Paris. Although his art policies were more advanced than previously at the Tate and embraced Impressionism, he stopped short of accepting newer artistic movements like Surrealism and German Expressionism, thus earning the scorn of critics such as Douglas Cooper. He retired on the grounds of ill health and resumed his career as a flower painter until his death.
Harold John Wilde Gilman was a British painter of interiors, portraits and landscapes, and a founder-member of the Camden Town Group.
Robert Polhill Bevan was a British painter, draughtsman and lithographer. He was a founding member of the Camden Town Group, the London Group, and the Cumberland Market Group.
Arthur Ambrose McEvoy was an English artist. His early works are landscapes and interiors with figures, in a style influenced by James McNeill Whistler. Later he gained success as a portrait painter, mainly of women and often in watercolour.
The Death of Chatterton is an oil painting on canvas, by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis, now in Tate Britain, London. Two smaller versions, sketches or replicas, are possessed by the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art. The Tate painting measures 62.2 centimetres (24.5 in) by 93.3 centimetres (36.7 in), and was completed during 1856.
Lillian Gertrude Browse was a British art dealer and art historian. She was a partner in two London galleries, first Roland, Browse and Delbanco and then Browse & Darby. During the Second World War she organised exhibitions at the National Gallery, whose collections had been removed to the country for safety. She wrote a number of monographs on twentieth-century artists, including important works on Walter Sickert and Sir William Nicholson. She was nicknamed "The Duchess of Cork Street", and used that name as the title of her autobiography.
William Grant Murray, usually known as Grant Murray, was a British art teacher, gallery curator and artist. He was Principal of Swansea Art School from 1908 to 1943, and the first curator of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea from 1910 to 1950. He played a leading part in the artistic life of Swansea between the wars.
Euphemia Lamb was an English artists' model and the wife of painter Henry Lamb. She modelled for Augustus John and Jacob Epstein and came to exemplify the sexual freedom of the bohemian lifestyle of the early twentieth century. Henry Lamb called her Euphemia, by which name she was generally known. John Maynard Keynes commented that Euphemia had more of a sex life "than the rest of us put together". She was one of the lovers of the occultist Aleister Crowley.
The Chenil Gallery was a British art gallery and sometime-music studio in Chelsea, London between 1905 and 1927, and later the location of various businesses referencing this early use.
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