Tuesday 15 December 2015

James Dickson Innes (1887–1914)





















Taken from BBC Your Paintings
"British painter, mainly of landscapes (particularly mountain scenes) but also occasionally of figure subjects. He often painted with his friend Augustus John, particularly in their native Wales in 1911 and 1912.
"His early work was in an Impressionist manner influenced by Steer, but he developed a more expressive Post-Impressionist style combining hot colour and decorative pattern. He usually painted on a fairly small scale, often on wooden panels; he also worked a good deal in watercolour."



Derwent Lees (1885–1931)

















From: BBC Your Paintings

"Australian painter, active mainly in Britain. As a boy he lost a foot in a riding accident. He studied at Melbourne University and in Paris before settling in London, where he trained at the Slade School, 1905–8. From 1908 to 1918 he taught drawing at the Slade. He was a close friend of J. D. Innes and Augustus John and often travelled and worked with them.

"His main subject was landscape and he shared with them a lyrical response to the countryside; usually he worked on a small scale, with fluid brushwork in oil on panel or watercolour. He travelled widely, visiting Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia.

"In his biography of Augustus John (1976), Michael Holroyd describes Lees as ‘a copycat of genius…He could paint McEvoys, Inneses or Johns at will and with a fluency that sometimes makes them almost indistinguishable from their originals—though his figures with their great dense areas of cheek and chin do have originality.’ In about 1918 Lees began to suffer from mental illness and spent the rest of his life confined in an institution."