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Maxwell Armfield
(1881 - 1972)
Still Life, 1914
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Maxwell Armfield (1881 - 1972)
Size:
Height – 13.2cm
Width – 11.7cm
Ever since their marriage in January, 1909, Maxwell and Constance Armfield worked in close collaboration with one another. It is likely that this needlework featured in the 1916 exhibition of the National Society of Craftsmen at NewYork Arts Club, on the occasion of which the International Studio magazine featured a three-page article on the Armfields’ embroidered work.The date of the work is significant given that the Armfields were ardent pacifists.
Painter and decorative artist, especially in tempera, and writer. Born in Ringwood, Hampshire, Armfield was educated at Birmingham School of Art – there is a Birminfham Arts and Crafts flavour in his pictures – then in Paris and Italy. Exhibited extensively, including RA, Fine Art Society, for long a noted dealer in his work, NEAC, Leicester Galleries and abroad. His work is held by the British Museum, provincial and overseas galleries. He illustrated about 20 books and wrote A Manual of Tempera Painting, Tempera Painting Today, An Artist in America and An Artist in Italy. During World War I, with his writer wife Constance Smedley, Armfield attempted to set up a high-flown peoples’ Greenleaf Theatre in his studio, an abortive venture amusingly recalled by Margaret Gardiner in her book A Scatter of Memories. Armfield was a painter of landscape and still life well crafted and full of detail. Lived in Bath, Somerset.
