Algernon Cecil Newton (1880-1968)
| Artist Name | Algernon Cecil Newton (1880-1968) |
|---|---|
| Title | Portrait of a Young Boy in a Garden |
| Description | This very interesting British Edwardian portrait oil painting is by noted Slade School artist Algernon Cecil Newton. Newton became primarily a landscape artist and exhibited numerous times at the Royal Academy, London. This painting was painted in 1909 when Newton was nineteen, so is a very early work when he was perhaps exploring wider themes and genres. The painting has a Renaissance or Pre-Raphaelite feel to it. A young, auburn haired boy is dressed in a brown coat with a big cream collar and brown tights. He is stood on a path in front of a house and we can see the door and an ornate window behind him. Tall flowers grow either side of the path. He is turning back to look at the artist/viewer, almost as if his name has been called. Newton didnt paint many portraits - a memorable one being of his mother, painted in 1916 and entitled A Portrait in Brown. It would be interesting to know who the sitter, also in brown, is in this painting. There is such lovely detail in his face, almost glowing against the darker background. This is a lovely painting and an excellent example of Newton's work before he turned to landscapes. Signed and dated 1909. |
| Provenance | Surrey estate. |
| Medium | Oil on Canvas |
| Size | 28 x 36 inches |
| Frame | Housed in an original period frame, 43 inches by 35 inches, in good condition. |
| Condition | Good condition. |
| Biography | Algernon Cecil Newton RA (23 February 1880 – 21 May 1968) was an English landscape artist known as the "Canaletto of the canals". Newton was born in Hampstead in 1880, a grandson of Henry Newton, one of the founders of the Winsor & Newton the art materials company. He trained at the Slade School of Art and the London School of Art and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1903 of which he later became a member in 1943. Early in World War I, Newton held the rank of Sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Later, he served with the Army and was invalided out in 1916 after catching pneumonia, recuperating over the next few years among the artist community at Lamorna, Cornwall. In 1919 he returned to London and started exhibiting at the Royal Academy of Art. In the 1920s, he also regularly exhibited at the New English Art Club. He was elected ARA (Associate Royal Academician) in 1936, and a full RA in 1943. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Royal Academy in 1980. His Evening on the Avon was commissioned for the Long Gallery of the RMS Queen Mary. A number of his paintings are in Art Galleries in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States – notably in the Tate Britain. In 2011 the Metropolitan Museum, New York acquired his painting Stormy Sunset on the East Coast (1939). His obituary in The Times described him as a painter of quiet distinction. He could take the most forbidding canal or group of factory buildings and, without romanticizing or shrinking any detail, create a poetic and restful composition out of it. He himself once wrote: There is beauty to be found in everything, you only have to search for it; a gasometer can make as beautiful a picture as a palace on the Grand Canal, Venice. It simply depends on the artist's vision. As well as exhibiting widely in the UK he also showed internationally, including alongside Picasso, Braque and Chagall in the Carnegie International Exhibition of Painting at Pittsburgh in 1938. In 1926 and 1934, he was one of the artists chosen to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale of Art. Newton married Marjorie Emilia Balfour Rider, author of Mr Duveen: An Allegory. They had two sons—one of whom was the actor Robert Newton—and two daughters. Ann Paludan was their granddaughter. His great-grandson is Sir Mark Jones. His auction record is £225,000, set at the sale of contents of Warmington Grange by Duke's Auctions on 12 May 2021 for his oil A Dorset Landscape. A catalogue raisonné of Newton's work is being prepared by his great-grandson, Sir Mark Jones. |
| Price | £6000 |
