Dipping my toe in the water

Do you remember my last blog-post about bidding at an auction? I decided that I needed to believe in my hunches and the next time I spotted a picture that gave me a tingle down the spine, I'd be braver and bid higher.

Last Friday at Willingham Auctions my art-antenna crackled into action . . .

I spotted these serious looking women:


This beautifully composed oil painting:


and this rather gorgeous chair:


So I left three commission bids with the auctioneer (because once again I had to be somewhere else on the auction day, and it makes me consider very very carefully what price I'm prepared to pay).


So what happened.

The serious women are in fact Xenia Noelle Lowinsky and her sister Ruth Lowinsky portrayed in two wood engravings by Eric Gill. I got very excited and almost lost my head and put in a huge bid to make sure I got them . . . but sensibly I did a few minutes research and found the same prints for sale at various galleries for fairly modest prices. So, Xenia (prison reformer and gardener) and Ruth (society hostess, food writer and grandmother of herb growing expert Jecka McVicar) were bought by someone who out-bid me by quite a lot and paid a lot more than the prices online!

The chair has also gone to someone else, I had no idea what it might be worth but the estimate was so low it was worth a modest punt! I'm very pleased that I spent some time enjoying looking at the beautiful needlepoint upholstery while it was in the sale room. At the end of the day someone else wanted it more than I did – and I think they got an absolute bargain!


But . . . Gosh! I successfully bid for the painting by Katherine Fryer. I don't usually consider buying oil paintings but I liked this so much I rushed off to find out who the painter was – and do you now what? She's also an accomplished printmaker! You can see some of her wood blocks here; she studied at Leeds College of Art, last year they published a tribute on their web site to celebrate her 100th birthday.

I collected the 'The Pond' from the auction house this afternoon; I could see that someone had tidied the picture up and had replaced the paper tape around the edges – but they had carefully left the original label visible:

WAKEFIELD CITY ART GALLERY
W. R. A. E. 1935
ARTIST: K. M. Fryer
TITLE: "The Pond"
Price: £4 . 4 (4 guineas)

Katherine May Frier was born on 26 August 1910, she had left Leeds College of Art in 1931, so this is a painting from the start of her long career as an artist.


And, look! there's another painting on the other side of the canvas . . .


You need to turn the canvas upside down to see it . . .


The account of her life on the Leeds College of Art web site mentions that Katherine's reminiscences of her time in Leeds recall soot-clad buildings – she used to wonder how the French Impressionists were able to create brightly coloured canvasses from urban scenes. Is this abandoned picture one of her attempts to do just that? Did she cast it aside and then use the reverse of the canvas to paint this picture of a still pool on the edge of a wood, looking out over the green fields?

So, Katherine Fryer's painting "The Pond" is now propped up on a chair in my studio; it's a picture I will spend time enjoying – the repeated geometry of the fence, it's reflection in the water, the dark against light/light against dark patterns, and the symphony of shades of green, I can imagine dipping my toe into the cool water.

In 2000 she held a solo show of called 'One Point of View', and said that "she will continue to draw and paint for as long as she is able to do so" – in her early 20s, when she painted "The Pool" she didn't know her career as an artist and an inspirational teacher would be so long. Perhaps you know her? I'd love to find out more about her work.

Celia
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