Lot 104
104
Philip Wilson Steer, O.M. (1860-1942)
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Philip Wilson Steer, O.M. (1860-1942)

The oak grove, Bridgnorth, Shropshire

Details
Philip Wilson Steer, O.M. (1860-1942)
The oak grove, Bridgnorth, Shropshire
signed and dated 'P. Wilson Steer 1901' (lower left)
oil on canvas
22 x 30¼ in. (55.9 x 36.8 cm.)
Provenance
Herbert Trench.
Geoffrey Blackwell, O.B.E., and by descent.
Literature
The Times, 1928.
D.S. MacColl, Life, Work and Setting of Philip Wilson Steer, London, 1945, p. 202.
B. Laughton, Philip Wilson Steer 1860-1942, Oxford, 1971, p. 141, no. 279.
Exhibited
Possibly, London, New English Art Club, Autumn, November 1901, no. 116 as The Grove.
Manchester, Royal Institution, 1910 (not traced).
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1927, no. 154 as The Oak Avenue. London, Tate Gallery, Loan Exhibition of Paintings by P. Wilson Steer, April-July 1929.
Johannesburgh, British Council, 1937 (not traced).
Bedford, Cecil Higgins Museum, Wilson Steer, 1954, no. 4: this exhibition travelled to Hove, Museum and Art Gallery.
Ohio, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, British Art 1890-1928, February-March 1971, no. 110 (illustrated).
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

In April 1901 a writer for the Saturday Review commented on a visit to the New English Art Club, 'And when, among the jumbled observances of my Spring Festival, I paid my visit to the New English Art Club, I found as always, in the painting of Mr Steer, something congruous with that experience of light undefiled and colour born again ... To this painter it is given to make living colour out of pigment, and the more the fitful sunshine lightens upon it, the more its radiance quickens. I shall see a great deal of pigment in the coming month, tamed into official systems, pensioned off into decent retirement, lashed in tormented morbundity, cooked into various careful glues, jams and poisons, but I hardly dare expect to find anything in the English painting so in tune with the Ambarvalia, its sacred light and flowers' (see D.S. MacColl, op. cit., p. 53).

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