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Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Studies for gardening vignettes, drawn on variously for Gardeners Choice, 1936-37, and Gardeners Diary 1938, 1937 [HMO 200]

SKU: 6709
Pencil and pen & ink on paper
22 x 15 in. (55.5 x 38 cm)

Presentation:
folio

Size:
Height – 55.5cm x Width – 38cm

DESCRIPTION

Provenance:
Roger Folley; Alasdair Dunbar; Hammer Mill Oast Collection
Exhibited: Evelyn Dunbar – The Lost Works, Pallant House Gallery, October 2015 – February 2016, cat 60.

Literature: Evelyn Dunbar – The Lost Works, Sacha Llewellyn & Paul Liss, July 2015, cat. 60, page 100-101.


Gardener’s Diary 1938 & Related Paintings
Noel Carrington, Dunbar’s Hampstead landlord, was keen to promote the work of those artists he admired. In 1937 as editor at Country Life Ltd. ‚Äì a separate publishing entity from the eponymous magazine ‚Äì he commissioned Ravilious to illustrate The Country Life Cookery Book and Edward Bawden The Gardener’s Diary. These were followed in 1938 by High Street, again illustrated by Ravilious, with text by J.M. Richards, and a further Gardener’s Diary illustrated by Evelyn Dunbar. Although the two diaries are similar in format they are very different in content ‚Äì the 1937 one has a running frieze of flowers and plants along the top of each weekly double page, balanced at the bottom by quotes from William Cobbett’s English Gardener of 1827: within each week the Diary provided upright columns for daily entries and notes, while a considerable space was allowed for comments on the weather. 
Bawden’s end-papers depicted a cut rose in a vase with his own half-drawn sketch pinned neatly to the drawing board beside it.
For 1938 the brief must have changed quite radically, perhaps in response to comments
received on the previous year’s production, as the emphasis changed from the
depiction of individual plants to the physical attributes of gardeners and gardening,
with quotes ranging from the Book of Job to authors as varied as Charles Lamb and
Thomas Hardy. The decision to depict the months through the personification of their
attributes was probably a joint decision between Dunbar and Carrington, but chimes
with the otherworldly quality she had exploited so successfully at Brockley in her mural
The Country Girl and the Pail of Milk. Bawden’s running frieze of plants and flowers at
the top of each page was replaced by discreet depictions of fruits and seeds in the top
right-hand corner while Dunbar’s tailpieces consisted of simple outline depictions of
gardeners ‚Äì male and female. There were only a dozen vignettes of these toiling figures and the delightful sheet of studies (CAT 60) shows several of them in embryonic form, most particularly the rear view of one of the Dunbar’s gardeners bent double with rake or hoe in hand.
This figure makes five appearances in all, being repeated as the tailpiece 
to various weeks in January, March, April, May and December. Apart from the figure
of a weary gardener carrying two full watering cans, who appears just twice – in June
and July – there is little correlation between the seasons and the activity depicted;
Dunbar took the opportunity through a studied awkwardness to emphasise the fact that
physical labour is the gardener’s lot throughout the year.
A lighter mood is reflected in her depictions of the months each of which takes human form: female in the gentler months ‚Äì February (CAT 65) with crocus flowers and daffodil shoots in her hat, and April (CAT 69) jauntily wearing a bird’s-nest hat and carrying attributes of topiary and a garden frame.
August is definitely a male month with its abundance of cabbages and 
onions, as is November, the season for bonfires and general clearance. The figure of April ‚Äì expressive of lightheartedness ‚Äì became almost a leitmotif in her work recurring
in odd drawings and doodles, as well as in one of her most beautiful oil paintings.
Dunbar was not one to waste a good idea or design. These personifications of the
months also recur as the principal motifs in An English Calendar (CAT 71), the large
(6 foot square) decoration she painted the same year and later presented to Wye
College (on the closure of Wye in 2005 it passed into the collection of its parent body
Imperial College). Personation of the Seasons and the Virtues is deeply rooted in our
psyche from the Green Man of northern climes to classical sculptures of ancient Greece
and Rome. Dunbar delighted in personifying abstract conceptions returning to this
device in The Days of the Week (CAT 72) and in her projected Faith, Hope and Charity
(CAT 109) as well as transforming April into the heavily muffled figure in her wartime
painting Putting on Anti-Gas Protective Clothing (FIG 4).
Peyton Skipwith

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THE ARTIST

Evelyn Dunbar
Evelyn
Dunbar
1906 - 1960

Evelyn Dunbar studied at Rochester School of Art, Chelsea School
of Art (1927) and the Royal College of Art (1929’33). She painted
murals from 1933 -36 at Brockley School, a collaboration with her
RCA tutor (and lover) Cyril Mahoney (1903’1968) and in 1937
they wrote and illustrated together Gardeners’ Choice. 

In 1938 she set up the Blue Gallery in Rochester, exhibiting her
own work alongside that of Edward Bawden (1903’1989) and
Barnett Freedman (1901’1958) and others. In 1940 she was
appointed an official war artist, becoming the only woman (amongst
36 men) to be given a full time salaried position by the WAAC. 

She held her only solo exhibition at Withersdane, Wye, Kent
in 1953, although the WAAC included numerous pieces in touring
exhibitions ranging from Aberdeen Art Gallery to MOMA, New York. 

A posthumous exhibition was held in 2006 at St Barbe
Museum and Art Gallery, and in 2015 Liss Llewellyn mounted a
major retrospective of her recently rediscovered studio at Pallant
House Gallery. 

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Letterhead proof for The Children’s Shop c. 1950

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Sketches for the personification of April, for Country Life 1938 Gardener’s Diary 1937

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Study for a Christmas card design, 1942 [HMO 340]

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Sketch for Milking Practice with Artificial Udders

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Sketch for a portrait of an Airwoman reading

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Studies of Young Girl

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Study of Dipsacus fullonum (common teasel)

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Phallic bud, 1937

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The Vegetable Gardener

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Fashion studies

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House and Garden – Greetings to you!

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Basket with Fruit and Flowers (2)

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Drawing of Carved Oak Buffet, 19th Century

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Study for June

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Illustration 2 for A Farm Dictionary

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Figures for Farm Dictionary Illustration
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Marjorie Reading, 1931

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Woman Sewing c.1925

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Young Woman Reading a Letter, c. 1927

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Sketches of clarinets

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The Law-abiding Citizen! c.1927

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Sketch for Bedtime, c.1926

£425.00

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Story Time, c.1926

£525.00

SKU: 11628

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Some Games…c. 1958

£900.00

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Fancy Dress Ball, 1926

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Service! c. 1924

£255.00

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Laddie, The Intruder, c.1923

£900.00

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What fools…c.1926

£685.00

SKU: 11621

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Portrait of William Dunbar, 1922

£895.00

SKU: 11615

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Unidentified Woman with Parrot Brooch, c. 1927

£485.00

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Seated Nude Study

£325.00

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Reclining Male Nude Study

£490.00

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Standing Nude Studies

£350.00

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Head and Shoulders Male Study

£475.00

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April Fool!

£480.00

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View over fields

£975.00

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View across farm buildings

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Study for Children and Hands

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SKU: 11521

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The Young Artist, circa 1920

£760.00

SKU: 11522

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Children Playing

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Child Playing the Banjo

£475.00

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Noah’s Arc

£350.00

SKU: 11508

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Sacred Music on Sundays’

£275.00

SKU: 11509

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Farm Illustration 4

£375.00

Reserved
SKU: 11510

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Study 2 related to Princess Caroline
SKU: 11511

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Landscape 1

£700.00

SKU: 11512

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Landscape 2

£975.00

SKU: 11513

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Artist Sketching

£700.00

SKU: 11491

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Sketch for An English Calendar 1938

£495.00

SKU: 11494

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Unidentified study, c.1956

£775.00

SKU: 11497

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Florence Dunbar Peeling Apples c.1922

£300.00

SKU: 11499

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Miss T. and begging dog!

£175.00

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Christmas Tree in a pot

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Figure Sitting

£350.00

Private
SKU: 11503

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Speciality Dancers
SKU: 11504

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Farm Dictionary Illustration 2

£200.00

SKU: 11506

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Sketches and motifs for a Christmas card design, 1946

£575.00

SKU: 11507

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Illustration for A Farm Dictionary

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Unidentified Design

£250.00

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Design for a Christmas Card

£250.00

SKU: 11468

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Seated Nude Study 2

£350.00

SKU: 11469

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Nude Study of Woman Sitting

£600.00

SKU: 11474

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Nude Study with Hand on Hip

£200.00

SKU: 11475

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Seated Nude Study 1

£275.00

SKU: 11477

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Sketches of two Land Girls featuring in Men Stooking and Girls Learning to Stook. Pencil 1940

£375.00

SKU: 11478

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Sketches for the personification of April for the Country Life 1938 Gardener’s Diary.

£580.00

SKU: 11480

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Portrait

£375.00

SKU: 11482

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Study for Seated Woman reading

£250.00

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Study for Seated Woman

£250.00

SKU: 11484

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Flower Show Illustrations

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Sketch for Joseph in Prison, 1947

£600.00

SKU: 11462

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Nude Figure Studies

£300.00

SKU: 11464

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Chalk Nude Study with Sketching Figure in Foreground

£300.00

SKU: 11466

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Sitting Nude Study with Umbrella

£200.00

SKU: 11448

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Wheelbarrow Study

£280.00

SKU: 11449

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The Farming Year Poster

£860.00

SKU: 11450

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Vignette Sketch for Gardener’s Choice

£320.00

SKU: 11452

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Studies for A Farm Dictionary (Evans Brothers, London) 1953

£365.00

SKU: 11453

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Farming Sketch

£375.00

SKU: 11455

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Plant studies, probably in connection with Country Life 1938 Gardener’s Diary.

£225.00

SKU: 11456

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Flowers study

£195.00

SKU: 11459

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Flower Study

£380.00

SKU: 11460

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Various Figure Studies including a Ballerina

£500.00

SKU: 11461

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Nude Study with artist at work

£350.00

SKU: 11440

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Portrait sketch of unidentified WAAF officer, 1944

£800.00

SKU: 11442

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Studies for Standing by on Train 21.

£350.00

SKU: 11443

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

The horse gin

£325.00

SKU: 11444

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Farmer with Shoulder Yolk – Study for Farm Dictionary

£325.00

SKU: 11445

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Prune’

£300.00

SKU: 11447

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

‘Bottle, Bowl, Box’

£285.00

SKU: 11439

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Sketch for Land Girls Going to Bed.

£375.00

SKU: 11100

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Royal College of Art Sketch Club Annual Summer Camp, 1930

£895.00

SKU: 11101

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Portrait of an Unidentified Woman

£970.00

SKU: 11103

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Pencil sketch for Portrait of an Airwoman, 1944

£1,500.00

SKU: 11104

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Seated Woman with Sleeping Dog

£1,500.00

SKU: 11095

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Portrait of an Unidentified Man, c.1925

£1,375.00

SKU: 11096

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Ring-a-ring-a-rosies

£795.00

SKU: 11086

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

Trenching or double-digging, 1938

£525.00

SKU: 11088

Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

A diagrammatic explanation of trenching or double digging

£1,750.00

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Cape Capers!

£350.00