SKU: 11831
Marion Adnams
(1898 - 1995)
Design for a Nautical Mural, 1930’s
£1,850
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Marion Adnams (1898 - 1995)
Size:
Height – 38cm
Width – 41cm
From her earliest work, Adnams played with discrepancies of scale and the creation of unlikely narratives
in a surrealist way. She recorded that When I first went to see René Magritte at the Tate I saw him for
the first time and I nearly passed out. So often the same thought had been with me”.
In 1930, Adnams started attending life classes at Derby School of Art. She was gratified to find her natural
ability to draw recognised, though perhaps less so in the terms her talent was acknowledged, with one
teacher remarking, she drew like a man, direct, with no rubbing out’. The ornamental dogs featured in the
pencil drawing Study of two Staffordshire Dogs were from Adnams’ own collection of Staffordshire pottery.
The addition of a piece of paper to the left-hand side, suggests that having at first intended to draw only
one of the pair, Adnams felt a compulsion to unite it with its companion.
The Staffordshire Dogs featured in this pencil drawing were from Adnams own collection.
Lewis Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark inscribed on the reverse:
‘In winter or summer, ’twas always the same‚Äî. You could never meet either alone’.
Marion Adnams initially trained as a modern languages teacher; however, woodcuts she made while travelling in Europe during the 1920s received significant praise when she exhibited them at Derby Art Gallery, prompting her to re-train at Derby School of Art during the 1930s. She qualified as an art teacher in 1938 and in 1946 she became Head of Art at Derby Diocesan Training College.
From the late 1930s onwards, Adnams became known for her distinctive Surrealist paintings, and exhibited in local galleries and in London, including at the British Art Centre and the Modern Art Gallery Although she never formally joined any Surrealist societies, she made a significant contribution to the movement, particularly regarding female/male dichotomies within the group, which she explored extensively in her work. In 2017 she was the subject of a retrospective at Derby Art Gallery.
She wrote extensively, including an unpublished Autobiography.
