Stephen writes; A letter from a lady in Boston, Massachusetts, enquiring about a David Haughton etching she had purchased for just $18 in a Boston thrift shop, has sparked my fascination once again with David's extraordinarily inventive mark-making. Little marks adding up to an expressive whole, are all the more apparent in David's etchings, and the one in question here is none other than "Rooftops, St Just", one of his stand-out 'St Just' subjects, which began as a pencil drawing in 1958 and became a painting.
The oil painting, a large (for him) canvas measuring 44" x 72", is in the collection of the British Arts Council. The painting is likely to have been started about the time the drawing was made (1958 was a propitious time for David's practice) and completed in 1978 after a return to working from the drawings made in Cornwall in the late fifties. The Arts Council purchased the painting from an exhibition devoted to David's paintings I assisted with, near Regents Park at the Work of Art Gallery. Luckily for us, "Rooftops" was one of the survivors from the dreadful fire which severely damaged his home and studio (and David's health) in Holland Park in 1981.
One has to ask, how exactly did a David Haughton etching end up in a Massachusetts charity shop? The Victoria & Albert Museum collection holds another of David's etchings portraying St Just. It is dated 1960 ("Backyard") so I imagine the "Rooftops" etching dated from the same time (David may have attempted to revive the original etching plates in the mid 1970s, at the time he returned to using his original drawings to complete paintings began years earlier). Both etchings had editions of 50.
In the late Fifties David was on a winning streak. Throughout this time there were mixed exhibitions in London, and in 1955 David exhibited with his contemporaries Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, John Wells, Terry Frost and Bryan Wynter in "Six Painters from Cornwall" an exhibition which toured major cities across Canada, organised by the National Gallery of Canada. If my memory serves me well, I believe there is a mention of this in Norman Levine's book "Canada Made Me".
Terry Frost
Patrick Heron
Interestingly, the St Just etchings came under various spotlights, not least that of St Georges Gallery, London, in 1963. In the two years previous to this David's fine work could be admired as part of two "International Prints" exhibitions which toured as far as New Zealand and Japan. And surprise, surprise! the USA venues included Boston, Massachusetts, - answering, perhaps, our question: How did David's etching end up in Boston?
Questions, questions... Is it too improbable that a travelling exhibition would have had actual editions for sale? Maybe the etching was purchased post-exhibition? And why choose an image of a town some 3,000 miles away across the ocean? Did the buyer know St Just? - I guess we will never know.
No comments:
Post a Comment