- Bryan Pearce
Walter Bryan Pearce (
25 July 1929 –11 January ,2007 ) was a British painter. He was recognised as one of the UK's leadingnaïve art ists.Early life
Pearce was born in
St. Ives, Cornwall , which remained his home for the rest of his life. His father, Walter, was a butcher in St Ives, played rugby for Cornwall, and was later mayor of St Ives. His mother,Mary Warmington , was a painter from another local family.Pearce suffered from the
congenital disease phenylketonuria , which affects the normal development of the brain. He attended aspecial needs school in the 1940s and 1950s and then, encouraged by his mother and, later, by otherSt. Ives artists , he began drawing and painting inwatercolour s in 1953 before moving on tooil paint on board and, later,conté crayon . He attendedLeonard Fuller 'sSt. Ives School of Painting from 1953 to 1957.Artistic career
Pearce specialised in paintings of his home town, and the surrounding
Penwith area, drawn in typically flat style, with areas of bright colour surrounded by heavy outlines, likestained glass . His learning disabilities gave his art, in the words ofPeter Lanyon , an "awareness more direct" than pure observation. Lanyon also said that "Because his sources are not seen with a passive eye, but are truly happenings, his painting is original", and "It is necessary to accept these works as the labour of a man who has to communicate this way because there is no other." His art has been compared to that ofAlfred Wallis . Guided byDenis Mitchell , he joined thePenwith Society of Arts in 1957, and theNewlyn Society of Artists . He had his first first solo exhibition at theNewlyn Gallery nearPenzance in 1959, and his first solo exhibition in London at theSt Martin's Gallery in 1962. Retrospectives were held at various venues from 1966 to 2004, particularly at Penwith Gallery in 1966, theMuseum of Modern Art in Oxford in 1975, theRoyal Cornwall Museum in Truro in 2000, and theVictoria Art Gallery in Bath in 2004. Examples of his work are held by many public galleries. His business affairs were dealt with by trustees, enabling him to concentrate on his art. In the latter part of his career a good deal of his work was produced and sold in the form of prints in relatively small signed, numbered editions. Some of these were little, hand-made etchings, with which the artist had a 'hands on' creative involvement; others were screenprints made by printer-craftsmen 'after' works in other media. The latter certainly render a dozen or so of Pearce's original images, with their pure, expansive areas of specific colours, extremely convincingly. Some one-colour lithographs also exist.His mother died in 1997. He died peacefully at home in St. Ives, and his funeral was held at St Ives Parish Church on
22 January . An exhibition was held at the Tate Gallery, St Ives from3 February -13 May 2007 . It had been planned as a retrospective but became a memorial show.The Bryan Pearce Estate gave a collection of his works from the 1950s to 2006 to the Royal Cornwall Museum. These will be shown 17th November 2007 – 5th January 2008, at the Museum. Meanwhile, on 12 March 2008, an auction record for a painting by Bryan Pearce was set at Bonham's New Bond Street auction rooms in London when the work "St Ives Harbour 1" (1965), 20" x 46", realised a hammer price of £28,000 (with commission around £33,500). This was soon broken as, in the following May, Pearce's largest known oil painting, 'Penzance Harbour (all round)', oil on board 20.5" x 60.5", sold for £39000 (with commission around £47,000) at a Penzance auction house.
Several biographies have been published, including Ruth Jones's "The Path of the Son" (1976), Marion Whybrow's "Bryan Pearce: a private view" (1985) and Janet Axten's "The Artist and His Work" (2004).
ee also
*
List of St. Ives artists References
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2149764.ece Obituary] , "
The Independent ",23 January 2007 .
* [http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,1991889,00.html Obituary] , "The Guardian ",17 January 2007 .
* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1329473.ece Obituary] , "The Times ",27 January 2007 .
* [http://www.tate.org.uk/stives/exhibitions/bryan-pearce/default.shtm Special exhibition] at theTate Gallery, St Ives External links
* [http://www.bryanpearce.co.uk/ Bryan Pearce personal page] , including [http://www.bryanpearce.co.uk/biography/ biography]
* [http://www.beauxartsbath.co.uk/Pearce/Pages/PEARCE.html Beaux Arts Gallery, Bath - Bryan Pearce pages]
* [http://www.lemonstreetgallery.co.uk/artists/indexbryanpearce.htm#top Lemon Street Gallery, Truro - Bryan Pearce page]
* [http://www.archeus.co.uk/pages/thumbnails/201.html Archeus gallery, London - pictures by Bryan Pearce]
* [http://www.archeus.co.uk/pages/thumbnails/201.html Stour Gasller, Shipston on Stour - Pictures by Bryan Pearce]Further reading
* "St. Ives, all around: the paintings of Bryan Pearce". Tate Gallery (2007) ISBN-13 978-185437-7579
* C. J. Stevens (2004) "The Miracle of Bryan Pearce" John Wade, ISBN 1882425219 [http://www.johnwade.com Wade Publishing]
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