SKU: 11572
Harry Bush
(1883 - 1957)
The Artist’s House at 19 Queensland Avenue, London
£22,000
Harry Bush (1883 - 1957)
£49,000
Size:
Height – 75.6cm
Width – 101.6cm
1 in stock
Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.64
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1940, no 250
Bush and the artist Noel Laura Nisbet (1887‚Äì1956), whom he married in 1910, live in the same semi-detached house in Queensland Avenue, Merton Park, SW19, (a gift from Noel’s father) from 1914 until their deaths, but while Noel’s work featured imagined scenes (often for book illustrations), over the years Harry regularly depicted the suburban back gardens seen from his studio. Both artist’s had a custom-built studio on in 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)
Bush’s paintings so obviously mirror the ordinary world we see around us in the U.K (the houses are very specific to England ‚Äì even London suburbia). His gift is to take that reality’ beyond the immediate to something still and satisfying, yet still rooted in and expressed through, the everyday.
We are grateful to Peter Quartermaine for his assistance.
Exhibited: Sanctuary, Artist-Gardeners, 1919-39, Garden Museum, London, 25th February – 5 April, 2020
Literature: Christopher Woodward, Sanctuary: Artist-Gardeners, 1919–1939, published by Liss Llewellyn, 2020
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
