Modern British

V Ward

Unknown Officer in Trench Cap
Watercolour and pencil
Signed and dated 1918, lower right
Image size: 12 x 10 inches

William Merrett Hodges
1874 – 1961

The Suffragettes

Oil on canvas, signed bottom left

Image size: 36 x 32 ½ inches

Contemporary style frame

This year 2018 is the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, the law that gave the first women the right to vote in the UK.

Florence May Asher

1888 - 1977

In the Terra

Oil on canvas, signed lower right

Image size: 32 ½ x 28 ¾ inches (82.5 x 73 cm)

Original frame

 Provenance:  Canadian National Exhibition 1928, frontispiece to Toronto catalogue 

Florence May Asher was born 2 May 1888, in Nottingham. She was a  member of the Royal Academy and exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris from 1926. Asher was the daughter of J.W. Asher. Studied at the Royal Academy schools (1913-18), winning a silver medal for paintings of figures from life and the Landseer Scholarship. Subsequently lived at Sevenoaks, Kent and Petersfield, Hants.

Produced figures and landscapes in oils, etchings and aquatints. Exhibited at many of the leading galleries, including the Royal Academy (1922-23) and the Royal Society of British Artists.

She was elected a Member of the last of those in 1926. Also exhibited with the Society of Women Artists in an exhibition titled “Eleven Painters and Sculptures” along with Rosalie Emslie, Ethel Walker, Hooper Rowe and others. Exhibited with the New Autumn Group.

Exhibited works included: Otford Mount, The Conspirator, Nude Figure and Rhythm.

Asher died in 1977.

Eustace Pain Elliott Nash

1886–1969

On the deck, Poole Harbour

Oil on canvas, signed & dated 1948

Image size: 20 x 24 inches (51 x 61 cm)

Contemporary style frame

An artist, illustrator and cartoonist born in Boscombe, Nash studied at the Drummond Road School of Art. He became a prolific commercial artist and lithographer, working in partnership with his brother, Leslie, at their studio in Albert Road, Bournemouth. From 1913, he contributed a weekly cartoon to the now defunct Bournemouth Graphic newspaper, demonstrating a gentle and pertinent humour towards local personalities, events and news.

His vibrant, observant style, combined with his love for his home town and surrounding area, meant that he was the ideal choice to produce artwork for Bournemouth and Poole Councils’ publicity departments. However, Nash’s greatest love was to escape the confines of his studio and explore the Dorset and Wiltshire countryside, sketchbook in hand.

Kind, friendly and always willing to help anybody, Nash was a magnanimous supporter of the local art scene. He was a founder member of Bournemouth Arts Club in 1920 and for over forty years made his studio available for the Club’s fortnightly working and social evenings.

Leslie Harradine

1887 - 1965

Allure

Glazed terracotta, signed & dated 1948

Height:15¼ inches

Arthur "Leslie" Harradine (1887–1965) was one of Royal Doulton's premier, and most prolific, figurine modellers from 1920 until the mid-1950s.

Born Arthur Leslie Harradine in Lambeth to Charles Percy, a solicitor's clerk, and Jessie Harradine (nee Tealby) in 1887. He first joined the Doulton Lambeth studio as an apprentice in 1902 working under George Tinworth while studying part-time at the Camberwell School of Arts. He went on to qualify and work in the Royal Doulton design department.

His main interest lay in clay sculpture and the design of free-standing figures and he produced several prototypes for these which came to the attention of Charles Noke the Royal Doulton art director in Burslem.

Raymond Coxon
1896 - 1987

Country Meadow

Oil on canvas, signed lower left

Image size: 37 ¾ x 59 ¾ inches

Framed

Raymond Coxon was a painter for over 75 years. He produced diverse and stimulating work, from portraits to landscapes and even church murals, although his loyalty to his own direction sometimes left him apart from fashionable development.

None the less, his paintings have been bought by many distinguished collectors including Maynard Keynes, Sir Michael Sadler, Henry Lamb and Sir Edward Marsh; they also hang in numerous national and provincial collections.

Born in 1896 at Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, he was the second child of five girls and two boys born to James and Georgina Coxon, who had herself had some art training. Educated locally at Leek High School, Raymond impressed his teachers with his drawing capability.

While serving with the Cavalry in Palestine in the First World War, he took a tiny box of watercolours with him, and whenever he had an opportunity would send miniature-sized work home to his mother.  

After the war he studied at Leeds College of Art from 1919 to 1921, where he met and became great friends with Henry Moore. In 1922 Coxon and Moore made their first visit to France and, thanks to an introduction from John Rothenstein, met Maillol and Bonnard.

Later they were best men at each other's weddings. Coxon married Edna Ginesi, a fellow student at Leeds, who was Leeds-born but of Italian descent; the marriage was to last over 70 years.   After Leeds, Coxon went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London (1921-25), under Sir William Rothenstein. He always remembered Rothenstein's kindness to him and other students both at the college and at the Rothenstein home in Hampstead.

Coxon's diploma work was a mural after Masaccio's Expulsion of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence. As a student he had little money but a terrific zest for living, putting drawing-pins in his shoes to spare him the cost of a cobbler and saving the threepenny tram fare by walking from Hammersmith to the Cafe Royal. The threepence saved enabled him to drink coffee all day and talk to "Gin" - his future wife - and other artists.

Coxon used to say to me that this was "pure delight - we could mix with people there, famous or not, feeling that we were treated equally and not like poor relations; devoid of class distinction, it seemed that everybody had some quality."  

In 1927 Raymond and Gin Coxon with Henry Moore and Leon Underwood formed the short-lived British Independent Society, and Coxon's work was illustrated in "Young British Drawing", in Drawing and Design. His first one-man exhibition took place the following year with the London Artists Association at the Cooling Galleries. He became a member of the London Group in 1931 and some of his paintings were bought by the Contemporary Art Society.  

Cezanne was probably the most important influence on Coxon's early work, and his landscapes of Yorkshire's "green velvet hills" contrasted with the remoteness and majesty of North Wales, where he also painted, particularly Cwm Pennant in Brecon.

In 1947, Raymond and Gin made their first visit to the United States and were inspired by the power of the canyon and the sense of "nature in the raw". Back in London, living and working in Hammersmith, Coxon painted fellow artists and friends including a sensitive portrait of Henry Moore in 1924. Other notable portraits of friends in the Thirties and Forties were of Ceri Richards, Vivian Pitchforth and John Piper.  

In 1936 Coxon had a one-man show at the Leicester Galleries and with Gin, Henry and Irina Moore visited Cadaques in Spain as the civil war broke out. In 1940-45 he was an official war artist, attached to the Navy; he held further one- man shows at the Leicester Galleries in 1940, 1947 and 1960.  Gin's influence on Raymond was as strong as his love; a good painter herself, she was always prepared to push him forward to his advantage.

In 1985 he exhibited at the Michael Parkin Gallery, London, and was finally given a retrospective in 1987 at the City Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent.

Raymond Coxon died Rowfant, West Sussex 31 January 1997 

You can hear the artist talking about his life on the following IWM link below

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80000983

Museums

The Hepworth, Wakefeild, Imperial War Museum, The Courtauld Gallery, National Museum Wales, Birmingham Museum, Tate Gallery, Ferens Ar Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, Salford Museum, V & A Museum & British Museum