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Harry Epworth Allen
(1894 - 1958)
A Derbyshire Landscape, circa 1950
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Harry Epworth Allen (1894 - 1958)
Size:
Height – 48.3cm
Width – 61cm
The Pool is an unusual subject in Allen’s oeuvre – his subjects were usually sourced from contemporary daily life in Derbyshire. Typical amongst his thirty-nine Academy exhibits (1934-55) are titles such as Northern Winter, The Derelict, The Dead Tree and Cement Works in Derbyshire.
The stylised treatment of the figures and landscape is entirely characteristic. To this end Allen used tempera to great effect (a medium that he employed almost exclusively in preference to oil), producing compositions which are distinctive, intensely linear and colourful.
“We are concerned primarily, Allen wrote in 1942, with rhythm and design, and our colour must be employed for the purpose of reinforcing these fundamentals and strengthening form. Harry Allen, Decorative Landscape Painting, The Artist, November 1942, p. 57
The location has recently been identified as the pool on the Longshaw Estate with the distinctive outlines of Carl Wark and Higger Tor behind.
We are grateful to Alistair Wright for assistance
Painter, notably in tempera, especially of Derbyshire. Born in Sheffield, Allen attended King Edward VII School for boys, and then became a clerk in the steel works of Arthur Balfour, in his spare time attending Sheffield Technical School of Art. He served in the army in World War I, gaining the Military Medal for conspicuous gallantry. Although badly injured and having an artificial leg, Allen continued to paint and became Balfour’s confidential secretary. From 1931 he painted full-time and joined the new Yorkshire Group of Artists. He began exhibiting at the RA, and showed with RBSA and PS. He also travelled in Ireland and was elected a member of the RBA in 1935. Although Allen’s early work is conventionally realistic he soon developed his distinctive style of simplified landscape and figure studies, which eventually were shown abroad in Canada and America. In the early 1940s Allen published a series of articles in The Artist on landscape painting in which he expounded his approach. His work is in a number of public galleries, notably Sheffield, Wakefield, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Newport, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. There was a memorial show at Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, in 1959 and in 1986. Lived in Ecclesall, Sheffield.
