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• Auction House:
  Theodore Bruce
• Sale Name:
  Art | Australian, Aboriginal & International
• Sale Date:
  17 May 2021 ~ 6pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  6186
• Lot Description:
  Mary Fedden
  (1915-2021) Irish/British
  Cormorant 1990
  Pencil on paper
  75 x 55 cm, 79 x 59 cm framed
  Signed & dated lower right
  Good condition, slight age discolouration of paper, cockling, framed without matt
• Provenance:
  Given to the Vendor's Parents by the Artist, with whom they were friends
• Notes:
  Mary Fedden was born in Bristol & wanted to be a painter even as a child. Leaving Badminton School at sixteen, she studied at the Slade School of Art in London from 1932 to 1936 under the theatre designer Vladimir Polunin, who had worked with the Ballets Russes. She painted sets for professional performances at Sadlers Wells, deciding against stage design as a career. Returning to Bristol, she taught art, making a living by painting portraits. During the war she served in the Land Army & the Woman's Voluntary Service, on settling in London she worked as a stage painter for the Arts Theatre in Great Newport Street producing propaganda murals. In 1944 she was called up, & sent abroad as a driver for the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI). In 1946 she resumed easel painting. She held her first exhibition at the Mansard Gallery in Heal's Department Store in 1947, showing a number of still life and flower paintings. She was subsequently commissioned to paint covers for Woman magazine. In 1949 she moved to Durham Wharf, a complex of studios on the Thames at Chiswick, where she lived and worked. In 1951 she married the artist Julian Trevelyan, whom she had met before the war. Together they travelled in Europe, Africa, India, Russia and America. From 1946 Fedden painted prolifically & had regular exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery, the New Grafton Gallery & many other galleries throughout Britain. She painted murals for the Television Pavilion at the 1951 Festival of Britain. From the late 1950s she taught painting at the Royal College of Art. In 1992 she was elected to the Royal Academy & she was a member of the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol since the mid-1930s, serving as its President from 1984 to 1988. Fedden exhibited in one-person shows throughout the UK every year from 1947 until her death in 2012. Fedden remained a prolific and popular painter until her death in 2012. She continued to live and work in the studio she shared with her husband from the 1940s on the River Thames, London.[1] She died, aged 96, in London. Further reading: Mel Gooding, Mary Fedden, Aldershot, Hampshire 1995 Terry Riggs, November 1997 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/mary-fedden-1084
• Estimate:
  A$3,000 - 5,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.