Overview

Ray Atkins (b 1937) is one of the least well known major painters of his generation. He studied at Bromley College of Art in Kent before gaining a postgraduate place at the Slade despite having failed the National Diploma in Design in 1961. Teaching posts at Reading University and then Falmouth Art School followed, and the latter led to a 34-year stay in Cornwall. He painted the extraordinary landscape of the china clay country around St Austell with its colossal pits and mounds of micae, and the desolation left over by the demise of the tin mining industry. Intimate subjects of children, gardens, family life and inevitably the sea were also part of the ouevre. The nineties also saw a long series of works on the theme of dance. Peter Davies' text follows Atkins' journey from the dark but creative London period to the high spots in the eighties with a retrospective at the Royal West of England Academy and with work selected for the John Moores in Liverpool, a room at a Serpentine summer Show, and representation in shows at the Hayward gallery. David Stoker gives a personal and touching account of his discovery of Atkins in France, leading to a growing friendship and a deep understanding and respect for the work. Harvey's painting output was prodigious, and this book includes approximately 100 illustrations of his favoured subjects: the Cornish at work, children at play, and intimate interior scenes and conversation pieces. Many of his contemporaries in Newlyn were visiting 'observers', but for Harold Harvey, who rarely went outside the county even though a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, painting the Cornish world 'because it was there' was his whole life. AUTHOR: Peter Davies is Professor and Head of German at the University of Edinburgh. Helmut Schmitz is Reader in German at the University of Warwick.

Full Product Details

9781915670151

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Peter Davies is Professor and Head of German at the University of Edinburgh. Helmut Schmitz is Reader in German at the University of Warwick. Peter Risdon retired from the Civil Service after more than 30 years at the British Library. Aged 57, he lives in north London with his wife Christine. He now writes biographies of British artists who are awaiting rediscovery, and this is his first book. He is currently completing a 'life' and catalogue raisonne of the important Post-Impressionist artist Alfred Wolmark. Pauline Sheppard has lived and worked in Cornwall since 1972; a founder member of Cornwall Theatre Company, her work has been seen as far afield as Berlin and as close to home as the Minack Theatre, where her adaptations of classic stories for the Minack Schools Fortnight became an important part of the season's calendar. As a writer her concerns are universal issues set in Cornwall: Dogs in 1992 deals with the philosophy of freedom and crossing borders when a group of travellers are evicted from wasteland; and Dressing Granite, 1997, about the survival of the individual. In 1998 she adapted Our Little Town by Charles Lee who was writing in Newlyn in the late 1890s and rubbed shoulders with the artists. In 2000 she adapted the Ordinalia (The Cornish Mystery Cycle) for the community of St. Just. She is also a member of Scavel an gow, a group of Cornish short story writers.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available