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Lot Essay
Although Gunn's reputation was assured as a portrait painter, depicting leading figures of the mid-twentieth century (Humphrey Brooke, Secretary of the Royal Academy was reported in the Daily Telegraph as saying that '... these pictures will now be seen to place Gunn above Orpen and on the level of Sargent'), his career began as a painter of landscapes: small, tonally delicate panels, Whistlerian in influence.
He initially painted in France, but during the 1920s took frequent holidays on the Sussex coast with his first wife Gwen, and their three daughters: Diana, Elizabeth, and Pauline. Some of the paintings resulting from these holidays were included in an exhibition which he shared with Rothenstein and Lavery at the revived Grosvenor Galleries in February 1923. The venture was followed by a one man show in 1927 at which the English beach scenes were hung among views of his more recent sketching grounds in the Var valley: Antibes, Biôt, and St Paul.
A comparable picture entitled Low Tide, sharing the same dimensions, sold recently at Sotheby's, Olympia, 15 September 2004, (£28,800), while a smaller example, Figures on a sandy shore, measuring 10 x 13 in., sold from the Collection of Stanley J Seeger at Sotheby's London, on 14 June 2001 (£22,350).
He initially painted in France, but during the 1920s took frequent holidays on the Sussex coast with his first wife Gwen, and their three daughters: Diana, Elizabeth, and Pauline. Some of the paintings resulting from these holidays were included in an exhibition which he shared with Rothenstein and Lavery at the revived Grosvenor Galleries in February 1923. The venture was followed by a one man show in 1927 at which the English beach scenes were hung among views of his more recent sketching grounds in the Var valley: Antibes, Biôt, and St Paul.
A comparable picture entitled Low Tide, sharing the same dimensions, sold recently at Sotheby's, Olympia, 15 September 2004, (£28,800), while a smaller example, Figures on a sandy shore, measuring 10 x 13 in., sold from the Collection of Stanley J Seeger at Sotheby's London, on 14 June 2001 (£22,350).