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Robert Arthur Wilson (1884 - 1979)
Pencil and watercolour on paper, 7 x 6 3/4 in. (17.5 x 17 cm.)
(9 3/4 x 9 3/4 in. (24.5 x 24.5 cm.) framed)
Size:
Height – 17.5cm x Width – 17cm
Great advances were made by the artists of the last generation in
the treatment of form and of colour, it is doubtful whether the
twentieth century will not be marked by certain discoveries’ (James
Wood, introduction to R.A. Wilson: Exhibition of Paintings and Colour
Studies, exh. cat., Guild of Decorators Syndicate, London, May 1922).
Exploring
colour harmony was central to Wilson’s work and a subject on which he
wrote and lectured. Colour: its meaning and use, logic,mystery,
symbolism and power’ was the title of his BBC radio broadcast talk, in
May 1920. His paintings, which go beyond the routine colour studies
based on Chevruel’s theories, were much studied by art students of the
period, and were part of a wider discourse that was taking place at the
time, led by intellectual luminaries such as James Wood.
Literature: Eye-Music, Kandinsky, Klee and all that Jazz, Frances Guy, Pallant House, Chichester, 2007, p. 96-99
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Painter in oil, tempera and watercolour, printmaker and teacher, horn
in Monk Wearmouth, County Durharrr. He was apprenticed to a sign-writer until 21, studying part-time at Sunderland School of Art. A
Government National Scholarship took him to the Royal College of Art
where he won a scholarship. Then studied at Acad mie Julian, in Paris,
and under Percyval Tudor-Hart, a major influence. Married the painter
Stella Louise Wilson and was the father of the artist Arthur Wilson,
Taught part-time in Surrey and London art schools. Showed RA, Paris
Salon and SGA and had a series of solo exhibitions including Sunderland
Art Gallery, notably in 1965. Wrote on tempera and the use of colour
and in 1972 privately published his Memoirs of an Individualist.
British Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum hold his work, which
has an honest, art-and-crafts complexion. R A Wilson, as he liked to be
known, lived in Bletchingley. Surrey.