SKU: 11190
Barnett Freedman
(1901 - 1958)
The farmer and his wife, at the roadside, mid 1920’s
£1,900
Barnett Freedman (1901 - 1958)
£1,900
Size:
Height – 56.5cm
Width – 38.6cm
1 in stock
Literature:Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964.
Street scene was started in 1933 – and completed in 1939 at which point Tate acquired it.
The artist said in 1956 that there had been many preliminary studies, but these had disappeared and he had no record of them. The scene was not a specific street, but a composition based on various sketches done from memory. A drawing of a London Street Scene’ reproduced in the Studio, CIX, 1935, p.90, may be a variation of a similar theme. A squared-up study for the old fiddler dated 1934 was in the Arts Council Memorial exhibition 1958 (52), as well as other studies, People’ 1934 (26), Study for a Street Scene’ c. 1928 (39), and a drawing (unnumbered) lent by Sir Kenneth Clark.
‘The Street Scene’ at Tate.
Illustrator, painter, printmaker and teacher, Freedman was born to Russian Jewish immigrants living in poverty in the East End of London. In 1916, he worked as draughtsman to a monumental mason, and at the same time took evening classes at St Martin’s School of Art. In 1922, he won a three-year scholarship to the Royal College of Art. In 1928, he joined the staff of the Royal College, and not long afterwards began to teach at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford. He soon became a pioneer in the revival of colour lithography. He was an Official War Artist in World War II. By the time of his death Freedman had established an enviable reputation as an illustrator and designer of posters, stamps, books and book-jackets. He believed that there was no such thing as commercial art, ‘only good art and bad art’. His first exhibition was held in 1929 at the Literary Bookshop, Bloomsbury. A memorial exhibition was organised by the Arts Council in 1958. Manchester Polytechnic, which holds the Freedman archive, held a major show in 1990. Examples of his work are in the collection of the Tate Gallery.
With thanks to artbiogs.co.uk
