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Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Women Planting Potatoes, circa 1938

SKU: 11179
Thinned oil on canvas 

Size:
Height – 22.4cm
Width – 19.8cm

DESCRIPTION

Provenance:
The Artist’s Studio; thence by descent
Presentation:
framed

In late 1932 or early 1933 Dunbar, then in her postgraduate year at the Royal College of Art was asked by her mural tutor Charles Mahoney to join his team of recent graduates t0 decorate the hall at Brockley School in south-east London. Excited by the prospect of working on extensive surfaces (and by the prospect of Mahoney’s company), she volunteered readily. Initially she was assigned one of the five arched and recessed panels in the hall, each measuring 12′ x 8′ (3.65 x 2.15m), and began preliminary designs illustrative of Aesop’s fables. One of her designs was Hercules and the Carter.

Hercules and the Carter 1933 Oil on paper 18 x 10in (45.7 x 25.4cm) Private collection

Dunbar has filled her design with various vignettes, some very surprising indeed: starting from the top right-hand corner, there’s a row of telegraph poles, lifting us out of classical antiquity and into the here-and-now of 1933. Continuing clockwise, some aproned women in a field are pointing at the Olympian vision; the horse is munching at some wayside grass; next to the distressed, heaven-beseeching carter with his broken wheel is his lunch, wrapped in a red spotted handkerchief; spilled cabbages or turnips fill the lower left-hand corner; and moving up we recognise…why, this is the very image of women in a potato field, overseen by a farmer in gaiters and billycock hat, with which we started. But which came first, Dunbar’s little background scene in Hercules and the Carter, or the separate image of Potato Field?

But there’s something else that’s strange: there’s a faint black irregular line scrawled across Potato Field. It seems to echo some of the construction lines. Is it accidental? Does it have any purpose? Curiously, if this echo-line is followed and Potato Field is turned anti-clockwise by about 40¬∞, the background re-orientates and the image turns into something richer, fuller and even iconic: 

Women Planting Potatoes c.1932 Oil on board 41⁄2 x 41⁄2in (11.4 x 11.4cm) Private collection

Dunbar kept both this little painting and its earlier version, Potato Field, all her life. It’s as instructive to see Dunbar’s procedure in the deployment of these images as it is disappointing to know that Hercules and the Carter was never used.

We are grateful to Christopher-Campbell Howes, author of  Evelyn Dunbar: A Life in Painting, for the above text.

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

Evelyn Dunbar
Evelyn
Dunbar
1906 - 1960

Evelyn Dunbar studied at Rochester School of Art, Chelsea School
of Art (1927) and the Royal College of Art (1929’33). She painted
murals from 1933 -36 at Brockley School, a collaboration with her
RCA tutor (and lover) Cyril Mahoney (1903’1968) and in 1937
they wrote and illustrated together Gardeners’ Choice. 

In 1938 she set up the Blue Gallery in Rochester, exhibiting her
own work alongside that of Edward Bawden (1903’1989) and
Barnett Freedman (1901’1958) and others. In 1940 she was
appointed an official war artist, becoming the only woman (amongst
36 men) to be given a full time salaried position by the WAAC. 

She held her only solo exhibition at Withersdane, Wye, Kent
in 1953, although the WAAC included numerous pieces in touring
exhibitions ranging from Aberdeen Art Gallery to MOMA, New York. 

A posthumous exhibition was held in 2006 at St Barbe
Museum and Art Gallery, and in 2015 Liss Llewellyn mounted a
major retrospective of her recently rediscovered studio at Pallant
House Gallery. 

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August, 1937
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Design for unused title page of Gardener’s Choice, circa 1936
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Study of a figure gardening possibly for Gardener’s Diary
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Study of a young unidentified woman looking into a mirror.
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Woman Selling Watermelon Slices, West Indies
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Joseph in Prison, 1949-50
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Study for July, Gardeners Diary 1938, 1937
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Drawing of Cyclamen neapolitanum and Cyclamen Coüm for Gardeners’ Choice, 1937
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Study II for designs for an embroidered quilt [HMO 689]
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Jacobs Dream, 1960
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Men Stooking and Girls Learning to Stook. 1940
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Study at Sparsholt Farm Institute for A Land Girl and the Bail Bull, 1944 [HMO 40]
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Singling Turnips, 1943
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Seven Days
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April,1937
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The Woodcutter and the Bees, spring 1933 [HMO 309]
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Sacking Potatoes, 1948
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Colour study for sub-gallery spandrels at Brockley County School for Boys [HMO 551]
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