Harry Bush
(1883 - 1957)
The Artist’s House at 19 Queensland Avenue, London
£22,000
Sold
Harry Bush (1883 - 1957)
Oil on canvas
26 2/5 x 3/5 in. (67 x 93 cm)
Size:
Height – 67cm
Width – 93cm
Harry Bush saw the ancestry of his art in the quiet dignity of Dutch and Flemish domestic scenes, and, as his younger daughter recalled, mixed pigments and oils, ‘so that his work should mellow, glow and last, and if possible, improve’ (The Art of the Garden, Tate, 2004, p. 85)
Bush’s paintings so obviously mirror the ordinary world we see around us in the U.K (the houses are very specific to England ‚Äì even London suburbia). His gift is to take that reality’ beyond the immediate to something still and satisfying, yet still rooted in and expressed through, the everyday.
The exact location of this painting has yet to be identified but it appears to be set on on an extensive town-edge common. Hay ricks are being made off to the right distance, Рcommons or parts thereof were sometimes let for hay. The buildings are predominantly modest single houses. There are very few rows/terraces or big houses, no industry, and only what looks like a possible nonconformist church. Paul Stamper has suggested that for this composition Bush might have gone back to Sussex – he was born in Brighton – and this shows a town at the foot of the Downs.
High Noon is a 1952 American Western film produced by Stanley Kramer from a screenplay by Carl Foreman, directed by Fred Zinnemann, and starring Gary Cooper. The plot, which occurs in real time, centers on a town marshal whose sense of duty is tested when he must decide to either face a gang of killers alone, or leave town with his new wife.
An iconic film whose story has been partly or completely repeated in later film productions, its ending scenes (a final showdown with Cooper pitched against four outlaws) especially inspired a next-to-endless number of later films, including but not just limited to westerns.
We are grateful to Paul Stamper FSA and Peter Quartermaine for assistance.
Painter, born in Brighton, Sussex. In 1900 he joined the Victualling Department of the Admiralty but left four years later to join Carlton Studios, Chelsea, where he worked under Fred Taylor, the poster and watercolour artist. He later studied at Regent Street Polytechnic and in 1922 he began exhibiting at the RA. He was an elected member of the ROI and also showed at the RWA, RSA and the Paris Salon. Bush lived at 19 Queensland Avenue, Merton Park, SW19, in a custom-built house with a studio at the top. The house was purchased in 1911 for Bush’s wife, Noel Nisbet, a noted watercolourist of mythical, medievalist scenes. Harry Bush became known as the ‘Painter of the Suburbs’ owing to the remarkably evocative series of views in and around his home in Merton which were exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1922-54. A studio sale of his work was held at Christie’s, London, in September 1984. His work is represented in the collection of Melbourne Art Gallery, Australia.
With thanks to artbiogs.co.uk
