Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Picture of the Week No.6 - Harold Gilman

A Beautiful pen and ink drawing for you to enjoy this week by one of a number of talented early 20th century artists killed before their time. Gilman wasn't killed in either of the wars like so many of his contemporaries, but died of the Spanish Flu epidemic that followed the First World War. KP
HAROLD GILMAN (1876-1919)House at Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1918

pen and ink on paper, 41.8 x 54 cm
inscribed: H. Gilman

Accession No.:P.172

Drawn in 1918 on the artist’s visit to Canada, where he was commissioned to paint Halifax Harbour for Canadian War Records. It is a fine example of Gilman’s use of a pointillist technique to indicate the house and surrounding trees.

Born in Somerset, Gilman studied painting at the Hastings Art School, later transferring to the Slade, where he met Spencer GORE. In 1906 he became a member of the Fitzroy group which included SICKERT, Gore, and GINNER; in 1911 he was a founding member of the Camden Town Group. Gilman died in the Spanish ’flu epidemic of 1919. Afterwards Wyndham LEWIS wrote: ‘ I consider his death a flat contradiction to every feeling that one had about his destiny’.
EJ/CB

PROVENANCE: Mrs Sylvia Gilman, the artist’s widow; Lefevre Gallery, from whom purchased by Gallery, January 1958.
EXHIBITIONS: Camden Town Group Exhibition, Southampton, Southampton Art Gallery, 1951, no.40; Harold Gilman, London, Tate Gallery, 1954, no.59, pl.6; Arts Council, Drawings of the Camden Town Group, 1961, no.31; Watercolours and Drawings from The Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford, London, Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd, 1962, no.69, illus. pl.vii; Watercolours from Bedford, Norwich, Castle Museum, 1965, no.14; Harold Gilman, An English Post-Impressionist, Colchester, The Minories, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, and Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, 1969, no.60; The Camden Town Group, Bedford, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, 1969, no.13.
REFERENCES: A. Causey & R. Thomson, Harold Gilman, 1981, exhib. cat., p.90.

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