PRESSRELEASE

The Fine Art Society

148 New Bond Street, London W1S 2JT Tel: 020 7629 5116 www.faslondon.com

ROBERT BEVAN: PONT-AVEN TO CAMDEN TOWN

28 March - 19 April 2012
The Fine Art Society is delighted to announce an exhibition of prints and drawings by Robert Bevan. Robert Bevan (1865-1925) occupies a central position in the development of Modern British art. He was involved in many of the British avant-garde artist groups of the time, including the Allied Artists Association, the Fitzroy Street Group and the more well-known Camden Town Group. Bevan was one of the rst British artists to study in Paris, at the Acadmie Julian, and went on to work in Pont-Aven in the early 1890s, where he knew Gaugin and Renoir. Three works by Bevan are in the Muse de Pont-Aven.
Robert Bevan, The Artists Wife (1898)

In 1897 Bevan married the artist Stanislawa de Karlowska in Poland. The exhibition includes the rare lithograph portrait of her from1898. The couple set up home in Hampstead and Bevan would go to the country each summer for extended periods. Besides being an artist, he was a keen horseman, and horses were the subject of many of his works including his rst print Horses in a Stable, which will be on show, as well as several other rarities. His rst one-man exhibition was staged at the Baillie Gallery, Bayswater in 1905, when he was 40 years old. A second show was staged in 1908 when the gallery had relocated to Baker Street. The Morning Posts critic wrote of his Hansom Cab paintings in the rst Camden Town Group exhibition in 1911 as the most arresting... in design and colour...They will undoubtedly repel you at rst unless you have been through the Paris Art Salon cure.
Robert Bevan, The White House (1921)

For all press enquiries please contact Annabel Potter at Flint PR on 0203 463 2081 or annabel.potter@int-pr.com

PRESSRELEASE

The Fine Art Society

148 New Bond Street, London W1S 2JT Tel: 020 7629 5116 www.faslondon.com

Described by his contemporary ORourke Dickey as taciturn and self-critical, Bevan never sought acclaim or approval, accepting the lack of recognition and commercial failure. He continued to work with determination, and only many years after his death was his importance to Modern British art acknowledged. Bevan was one of the most original painters of his generation, developing a modern style of geometric landscapes and cityscapes painted in pulsating Post-Impressionist colour harmonies. Drawing was essential to his art and he brought new qualities to his subjects, newly expressed in lithography.
Robert Bevan, Horse Dealers (Wards Repository No.1) (1919)

The twenty ve works in this exhibition at The Fine Art Society consist of nine drawings and sixteen prints, all except one lithographs. They cover the full range of his subject matter; from landscapes in Pont-Aven, Devon and London, peasant life in Brittany and on farms, to all of the prints in the Horse Dealer series, for which he is most famous. Only one painting by Bevan entered a public collection in his lifetime; Cab Yard, Night, bought by Brighton Art Gallery in 1914. Later, a second work was acquired by the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool in 1933. There are now over 250 of his works in museums and art galleries across Britain and abroad including the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, as well as the Tate and British Museum, London.
Robert Bevan, Landscape (Rosemary Lane) (circa 1916)

The Fine Art Society, Est. 1876, 148 New Bond Street, London W1S 2JT T: +44 (0)20 7318 1895 E: art@faslondon.com W: www.faslondon.com

For all press enquiries please contact Annabel Potter at Flint PR on 0203 463 2081 or annabel.potter@int-pr.com