SKU: 11949
Harry Bush
(1883 - 1957)
The Shower , mid 1920’s
£19,000
Private Collection
Harry Bush (1883 - 1957)
Oil on canvas; original white gesso Dutch Ripple frame, 40 x 58 in. (101.5 x 147.5 cm.)
Size:
Height – 101.5cm
Width – 147.5cm
Provenance: Christie’s, Harry Bush Studio Sale, 28.9.84, lot 53
Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1932, no. 588
Literature: Nicholas Alfrey, Stephen Daniels and Martin Postle (eds.),
The Art of the Garden: The Garden in British Art, 1800 to the Present
Day, Tate, 2004, (fig. 47, illustrated p. 85)
Bush lived at 19 Queensland Avenue, Merton Park, SW19, in a
custom-built house with an extra storey for his studio. 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). Most of his
twenty-seven Royal Academy exhibits (1922-54) were based on local
subjects, earning him the epithet ‘Painter of the Suburbs‘. Amongst
this series are some of the most beautiful, if understated, images of
suburban London between the wars. An almost identical painting by Bush
was included in the recent Tate Britain show The Art of the Garden
(illustrated on page 85 of the catalogue, fig. 47).
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
