On Loan
Rachel Reckitt
(1908 - 1995)
The Tower
On Loan
Rachel Reckitt (1908 - 1995)
Size:
Height – 99.1cm
Width – 73.7cm
Reckitt studied wood engraving at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London from 1933 to 1937, where she was taught by the School’s founder, Iain Macnab. Although painted in oil, this work has all the hard-edge stylisation of a print, and stays true to the mission of the School in its rendering of ordinary subject matter with great movement and vitality.
Reckitt travelled extensively in Europe, and many of the works she produced were influenced by her journeys in France, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal. A painting in the Salford Museum & Art Gallery of a Farm House in Catalonia shows that Reckitt was in Spain during the thirties, and she would return in the mid 50’s to paint scenes of matadors and bullfighting. A painting in the Museum of Somerset by her also portrays the castration of a bull.
Artist in mild steel, wood, stone, paint and wood engraving, born in St Albans, Hertfordshire. She studied at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in late 1930s under lain Macnab, and in 1970-5 at the Roadwater Smithy, Somerset, with Harry and Jim Horrobin. After training Reckitt worked from home in west Somerset at Rodhuish, Minehead. Carried out commissions for pub signs; wood-engraved book illustrations and single prints; and did sculpture in five Somerset churches and for private commission. She was an honorary member of the Somerset Guild of Craftsmen and SWE and a member of British Artist Blacksmiths’ Association. Other group shows included Wertheim Gallery and LG. Had solo exhibitions at Duncan Campbell Contemporary Art and Bridgwater Arts Centre. A retrospective publication, Rachel Reckitt: where everything that meets the eye… appeared in zoos, Hal Bishop’s survey of her work, supported by Somerset County Museums Service and the Golsoncott Foundation, accompanying shows in Taunton, Glastonbury and Exeter. Public collections in Salford and Bridgwater hold examples, as do Withycombe, Old Cleeve and Leighland.
