The name may not be familiar to many – either in the art world, or out of it. But David Evans (1929-1988) whose work is on show at a London gallery this month, is a name to be reckoned with. A student of Keith Vaughan (1912–1977) and a contemporary of British post-war luminaries including Peter Blake, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney, his work combines the Romantic landscapes of Samuel Palmer, the humour of Edward Lear’s draughtsmanship and the transgressive watercolours of Edward Burra (1905-1976). This month sees David Evans – Twist and Shout at the gallery Three Highgate, the first exhibition of Evans’ work since a retrospective at Salisbury in 2018, which itself took place 30 years after his untimely death in a road accident aged 58 in 1988.
The artist David Evans (1929-1988)
The new exhibition, which includes a number of Evans’ early photomontages and unseen epic watercolours, may yet shine a light on a remarkable artist whose work is well within the reach of many collectors. The show also includes previously unseen collage and pen-and-ink compositions of the 1950s and 1960s which were found alongside the more familiar large-scale
watercolours of the 1970s and 1980s.
They are a revelation and complete the previous unchartered account of his artistic journey. Welcome to the lost kingdom of David Evans.
Large scale
Evans is perhaps best known for his strikingly large and somewhat subversive watercolours, typically measuring over one metre in width or height, in which he flagrantly flouted the lingering English prejudice that watercolours
are not serious. His work reflects the deeply felt disquiet of a constantly shifting political landscape and Evans’ own campaigning and environmentalism, a rare viewpoint for its time. His compositions are characterised by a kaleidoscopic vision of Thatcher’s Britain: an era of urban redevelopment, the Falklands War, industrial unrest, nuclear power, and the Cold War.
Transition is everywhere: new roads carve their way through the countryside; fighter jets cast their shadows across the landscape; the scars left by industrial plants, pylons and landfill permeate throughout.
Early life
Evans studied art at Central School of Arts and Crafts in London under the British painter Keith Vaughan. Early in his career he showed photo montages at Victor Musgrave’s Gallery One, which was a beacon for avant garde artists in London in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
This gained him several commissions, including a mural for Sir Terence Conran ́s legendary first restaurant,
the Soup Kitchen, opened in 1953 at Chandos Place.
At the time Evans was running a small classical music record shop, Record Roundabout, at 291 Brompton Road. He was friends with many musicians, including Pete Gage, best known in the 1990s as the lead vocalist of the R&B band, Dr Feelgood. Together the young musician and Evans would visit the local Hourglass pub, sharing a gin and dubonnet and talking about music. Gage said: “David would delight in talking music, Haydn, Beecham, Koussevitsky, Stravinsky and everyone you can think of. He was an encyclopaedia of facts and insights about performances on record. “More to the point, though, he had such passion for the music he was listening to. In between customers, the afternoons on a Saturday were spent absorbing all the great composers and the great performances that were coming out in the ‘60s.”
David Evans (1929-1988) Man and Cat, Sitting on Chair, c. 1975, watercolour, 76 x 61cm (30 x 24in)
David Evans (1929-1988) Heavy Traffic, signed watercolour, 66 x 99cm (26 x 39in)
David Evans (1929-1988) The Concert Singer, signed watercolour, 101 x 66cm (39 x 26in)
Sexual liberation
But alongside the music was the art. In his spare time Evans drew portraits of his acquaintances and also created collages which were to became an essential thread throughout. By then Evans had met his lifelong partner Basil Lawrence the patron chef of a budget restaurant, The Pot in Hogarth Place off the Earl’s Court Road and a devout follower of Krishnamurti philosophy.
By living together the couple was breaking the law. It was only in 1967 that homosexuality was decriminalised. But his work may have been influenced more by the price of paper than any societal oppression.
Exhibition curator Alistair Hicks said: “Evans’ first outsize watercolours were made in 1967. It might be little outrageous to claim a direct correlation with sexual liberation, but rather begin with his choice of material and medium. Paper was, and is, cheaper than canvas, stretcher and frame. “Of course it was difficult to get large paper, but he went as big as readily available – up to around 42 inch wide. This was a definite break with tradition and probably a deliberate one.”
David Evans (1929-1988) Scrapheap, signed watercolour, 60 x 84 cm (23 x 33in)
Rural retreat
In 1969, the couple moved to a small farm in the Suffolk village of Dallinghoo, where they strove for self-sufficiency. It was a tough but idyllic life – freezing home-grown vegetables for the winter and making homemade bread and beer. Free from the constraints of full-time work and inspired by the countryside around him, Evans put his full attention into his art. Works from this time are often surrealist making the viewer feel as if they are floating over the land. Evans spoke of “flying” dreams which
inspired his aerial landscapes. Pete Gage was a frequent visitor, increasingly aware of the artist’s frustration that the hard graft of the farm took him away from his true passion – art. Pete said: “I remember David exclaimed, ‘All I want to do is paint my pictures!’. He would produce endless scenes of everyday life, often inhabited by young men, cafes, cake shops, flowers and fields. “He loved to paint spectators at sports events, football matches, wrestling matches, or audiences in concert
halls, or rock bands in violent splashes of colour. “Then he would produce soft colours depicting aerial views of the world as he saw it. There were so many varieties of subject matter, and the speed with which he
produced them was remarkable.” But life on the farm was not easy. Evans had to work at a local mushroom factory and then as a porter in a local psychiatric hospital to make ends meet. As such he would have seen the effects of some of the more brutal cuts of Thatcher’s Britain. He wrote: “I don’t think anyone produces anything of value until it has actually got into the blood stream.”
David Evans (1929-1988) Portrait of a Young Man, pen and ink, white highlights in gouache
Growing environmentalism
Evans was also an ardent campaigner and environmentalist. The more he embraced his rural lifestyle he was aware of the encroaching modern world. Motorways, nuclear power and pylons all drawing his ire. Evans’ landscapes mirror a countryside in flux, moving from traditional small holdings to the large open fields created by modern farming methods. His compositions are occupied variously by farmers, soldiers, workmen, the occasional rambler, streams of traffic cut sharply through the green fields and looming electricity pylons that threaten and dominate the land and skyscape. His subjects do not preach but rather warn of what the future may hold if such behaviours continue and intensify. Evan’s pioneering environmentalism places him as an outsider observing, much in the same manner perhaps as being a gay man before it was legalised or even his adoption of the Indian spiritual philosophy Krishnamurti.
Watercolour rebellion
Subversion may have been at the heart of Evans’ use of the painterly medium itself (watercolour was considered traditionally for genteel use by amateurs, often women, rather than professional artists) in creating such large urgent works clearly intended for exhibition, showing his disdain for conventional standards. Alistair Hicks writes: “Evans’ watercolours may not be the most brazen act of rebellion in global 20th-century art, but there was a light touch of subversion.
“Just as he, the son of an RAF officer, worked as a porter in a hospital, so he chose to paint in watercolours in ungenteel manner. Evans did not paint anything as rough as Harlem, but his Seated Man is all the more exotic for being plonked into an everyday British interior.”
David Evans (1929-1988) The 457, photomontage on paper, 26 x 33cm (10 x 13in)
British twist
The many narratives within Evans’ compositions and their heightened colours reveal his love of storytelling with a very British twist. Off-kilter humour and a fascination with the banal, alongside commentary on the country’s sexual and day-to-day politics while championing climate change awareness, all place Evans’ work both very much within its time but with one eye
towards the future.
Urban subjects, similar to the repertoire of LS Lowry (1887-1976), unfold against a backdrop of factories, concerts halls, sporting arenas, beaches, cafeterias and bars, museum interiors and shopping centres. Billboards, traffic congestion, and fast food are very much in evidence. Night clubs are peopled predominantly by men (and the occasional drag-queen), a celebration of Evans’
homosexuality.
Evans’ compositions belong to the northern tradition of Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516): through heightened colour and narrative details his contemporary subjects resonate an underlying disquiet.
In his love of storytelling, quirky humour and a delight in the ordinary, his pictures are also unequivocally British, especially in his commitment to producing watercolours intended for exhibition, rather than as studies for larger oil.
David Evans (1929-1988) Motorway II, signed watercolour, 71x 107cm (28 x 42in)
David Evans (1929-1988) Portrait of a Young Man, Naked from the Waist Up, c. 1970, pen and ink and watercolour, 28 x 22 cm (11 x 8in)
Early death
The couple’s rural life continued through the ‘80s and, despite the remoteness, Evans was gaining a growing reputation on the London art scene while making money for his pictures.
He had several solo exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery in Cork Street and sold work in the Flying Colours Gallery
in Edinburgh. But back in Suffolk where he continued to work as a hospital porter it was while cycling to his shift he was
killed in a car accident, aged just 59.
He was buried in a small church near Ipswich. With Basil reluctant to continue showing his work, interest in Evans’ art lessened, leaving only friends and a few gallerists to continue to look out for it. When
Basil died in 2012, Evans’ work started to appear on the market, gaining a following.
It can only be hoped that the upcoming exhibition will shine a light on his work and encourage more people to appreciate his undeniable talents.
David Evans (1929 -1988) Driving Past the Electricity Pylons, signed watercolour 68 x 104cm (263⁄4 x 50in)
David Evans – Twist and Shout continues at Three Highgate, 3 Highgate High Street, London, N6 5JR until July 12. The gallery is open on Thursday and Saturday 2-6pm and Sunday 12-4pm. All other days by appointment. For more details or to arrange a visit go to www.threehighgate.com
COLLECTING WORKS BY DAVID EVANS
Paul Liss shares his insights into the market for David Evans
Each of David Evans six solo exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery between 1979 and 1988 typically included up to 40
of watercolours, with the largest works priced at up to £2,000. In today’s money that would equate to values in excess of £10,000. But how might collectors evaluate the worth of a David Evans today?
Evans worked almost exclusively on paper, a medium that, commercially, has often been considered a poor relation compared to paintings in oil on canvas. But this has not stopped the prices of artists like Eric Ravilious and Edward Burra (who, like Evans, were exclusively paper based) from regularly climbing into the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Indeed, for Burra, who is
the nearest to Evans in stylistic terms, the record stands at over £2m.
Aside from Burra, Evans is the only 20th-century British artist who worked in watercolour on such a large scale, and he did so with a technical facility that resulted in extraordinary luminous colour – rare for a medium more typically associated with a pale
palette. Evans is actually on record as saying that if he could have found a supplier of larger paper, he would have painted even bigger works. Watercolour, unlike oil, is an unforgiving medium – mistakes cannot be corrected. And therein lies the innate value of artists such as Burra and Evans.
David Evans (1929-1988) Up in the Air, collage including pencil, watercolour, gouache and photomontage 32 x 35cm (121⁄2 x 133⁄4in)
Treasure trove
The online marketplace, Artprice lists only 25 works by Evans as having passed through the salerooms in the last 35 years – some of which are not even by David Evans. One consequence of having a common name means Evans is sometimes confused with other artists; with one recently-listed work even purporting to have been painted in 1990 two years after Evans died.
Prices achieved at auction for these few somewhat random works were in the mid hundreds, but the real market for a David Evans has never been tested by the appearance of Evans’ meaningful body of work.
This is because, when Evans died, unexpectedly, in his late 50s, the works remaining in his studio all passed to his long-term partner Basil Lawrence. Numbering more than 300 pictures, a third were large watercolours and
the rest a variety of drawings, and early work, including collages. This treasure trove was effectively removed from the market, with Evans’ work not being publicly shown or promoted.
Hidden away for the best part of four decades, the upcoming exhibition is the first time a significant body of Evans’ oeuvre (nearly
40 important and rare works) will be on sale. Prices range from the low to the mid thousands, with some larger watercolours moving into high thousands. Among the rarest works are the exquisite early collages; something you are
unlikely to see being offered for sale again. Paul Liss is one of the co-founders of Liss Llewellyn, created in 1991. The gallery sources paintings directly from artists’ estates and private collections.
For more details go to www.lissllewellyn.com
