John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)

Countryside – ( Study after Sel Cotman), circa 1930

£785

SKU: 11411

Initialed : JCS

Annotated on reverse – Copy after Cotman JCS – 44

Gouache on craft paper

(20cm x 29.5cm) 

Size:
Height – 200cm
Width – 295cm

1 in stock

DESCRIPTION

Presentation:
folio

Between March 1919 and November 1965, John Cecil Stephenson lived in London at No. 6 Mall Studios, off Tasker Road, Hampstead. Although better known today for his Abstract painting – Herbert Read described him one ‘as one of the earliest artists in this country to develop a completely abstract style’, he received a conventional art school training and  into his early 40 was a figurative artist producing exclusively realistic still lives, landscapes and portraits. 

From 1922 onwards he was Head of Art at The Northern Polytechnic. In 1928 he toured Northern England to produce series of watercolours of Northern castles.

Stephenson made his first abstract paintings around 1932. In 1934 he exhibited with the 7 & 5 Society, along with Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and John Piper.  Though not today as well known as many of his contemporaries he was one of the key figures in the development of abstract art in Britain.  Indeed Herbert Reed credited him with being  the father figure of the ‘gentle nest of artists’ (Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore) who occupied the Mall Studio’s in Hampstead.  At the beginning of WW2 Calder and Mondrian counted amongst his friends and were frequent visitors to The Mall Studios.

Disclaimer:
Liss Llewellyn are continually seeking to improve the quality of the information on their website. We actively undertake to post new and more accurate information on our stable of artists. We openly acknowledge the use of information from other sites including Wikipedia, artbiogs.co.uk and Tate.org and other public domains. We are grateful for the use of this information and we openly invite any comments on how to improve the accuracy of what we have posted.

THE ARTIST

John Cecil Stephenson
John Cecil
Stephenson
1889 - 1965

Painter, born in Bishop Auckland, Co. Durham. He studied at Darlington Technical College, 1906-08, at the Leeds School of Art, 1908-14, the RCA, 1914-18, and Slade, 1918. Between 1915 and 1918 he did war work, making tools. In 1919 he took on Sickert’s studio, 6 Mall Studios, Hampstead, where he was later joined by Herbert Read, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. From 1922 until 1955 he was Head of Art Teaching in the Architectural Department, Northern Polytechnic, Holloway Road. In 1932 he began making his first abstract works, exhibiting during the next decade in many abstract and constructive shows in England, France and the USA. In 1934 he exhibited with the 7&5 Society, along with the likes of Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and John Piper. During World War II he returned partly to figurative work, making paintings of the Blitz. From the 1950s he returned to large abstract paintings, realising many of the abstract compositions he had sketched out on a small scale in the previous decade, when materials had been in short supply. In 1951 he made a 10 x 30 ft. fluorescent paint mural for the Festival of Britain, and began working with ply glass for murals. In 1958 he suffered three strokes, which left him unable to move or talk. Partly for this reason he is today less well-known than many of his contemporaries, but he was one of the key figures in the development of abstract art in Britain. He is represented in the collection of the Tate and internationally.

Selected Literature:
Cecil Stephenson 1889-1965, Fischer Fine Art, London, 1976. Simon Guthrie, The Life and Art of John Cecil Stephenson: A Victorian Painter’s Journey to Abstract Expressionism, Cartmel Press Associates, 1997.

When in the fifties, I became engaged to Simon (David) Guthrie, he took me to meet his mother, Kathleen Guthrie, and his stepfather, Cecil Stephenson. They lived in a studio; to me, a novel idea. 6, Mall Studios, in Belsize Park, had been Cecil’s habitat for some thirty years. The main studio was a large room with a big north light running from the floor up into the roof. In one corner were Cecil’s easel and paints; in another were his machine tools and lathes and in a third was his piano. The fourth corner contained a sofa and some bookcases, where Kathleen could sit and read, or listen to Cecil playing his favourite Brahms or Chopin. Kathleen was Cecil’s second wife. She was herself a professional artist; a Sladey-lady and like Cecil, a founder member of the Hampstead Artists’ Council. There wasn’t room for her to paint in the studio, so Cecil had built her a painting shed in the garden. The garden also had a small pond with a large population of newts and some very decorative Koi carp, and a monorail for Cecil’s hand-built model steam locomotive. Cecil was a warm-hearted man of many talents, but modest and self-effacing, and meticulous in all his many undertakings. His output of paintings was small, due to the pressures of earning a living by teaching, and his inability to refuse requests for his engineering skills, whether it was to make a new part for a friend’s old Lagonda, dash off a metal staircase or a new set of wrought-iron gates. Perhaps he was overshadowed by his brilliant friend and erstwhile neighbour, Ben Nicholson. Other neighbours included Barbara Hepworth and John Skeaping, the art critic and writer Sir Herbert Read, and later, Henry Moore and Bernard Meadows. When Cecil died, he left quite a body of works which the family have cherished and enjoyed for the last forty years. These include most of the pictures in this exhibition. Simon retired from academic life in 1990 and he devoted himself to trying to promote his stepfather’s reputation. First he wrote a biography, based largely on Cecil’s abbreviated but carefully kept diaries. He then devoted much time and energy to trying to persuade a gallery to mount a proper retrospective of Cecil’s work, particularly the early abstracts. Remembering Cecil’s northern roots, he tried hard to interest various galleries in the north of England in such an exhibition. Sadly his ambition was never achieved. So his family were very willing to co-operate with the suggestion of The Fine Art Society to mount this show, in the hope that many more people could derive pleasure and satisfaction from these fine paintings.

– Marjorie Guthrie

 

MORE PICTURES BY ARTIST

John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Ophelia 1944
£5,000
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Concrete Composition, late 1930’s
£8,000
Sold
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Concrete Composition, late 1930’s
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Female nude, circa 1945-1950
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Female nude, circa 1945-1950
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Vitroslab Designs, late 1930’s
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Scottish mountain scene, 1930
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
The Quarry at Shrewsbury, (View from School House), c. 1930
£1,200
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Panoramic landscape
Private
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Divertimento II
Sold
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Painting II, 1937
Sold
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Clarabella, 1950
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Abstraction, 1934
£50,000
Sold
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Portrait of Elizabeth Allison, 1929
Private
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Looking towards Highbury, city of London on fire in background… night of april 16, 1941
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Study for Triangle Series, 1938/39
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Kneeling nude, c.1940
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Orange Sketch, 1939
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Study for Fugue, 1953
Sold
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Study for Fugue, 1953
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Rondo. (Subtitled “a nous la liberte”)` 1953
£7,750
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Approved Design for Festival of Women’s House
Sold
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Rondo (A Nous la Liberte), 1953
Sold
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Scrolls III, 1933
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
The End of a Doodlebug, Hampstead Heath, 1945
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Tonality
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Accent, 1960
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Uprights 1936/37
Sold
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Cadenza 2, 1959
Sold
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Madonna of the Rocks circa 1945
Sold
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Preliminary Study for Plyglass mural Queen Mary’s College
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Tita, circa 1960
£22,000
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Monody, circa 1959
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Three Graces, 1945
£9,500
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Perseus and Andromeda, 1945
£9,500
On Loan
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Carpriccioso, 1960
John Cecil Stephenson (1889 - 1965)
Life Class, early 1930’s
£1,375