Spencer Frederick Gore

Redfern Gallery, London
P.H. Byhan-Cook Esq.
Colonel Alexander Gregory-Hood, O.B.E., M.C.
Private Collection
Sale, Christie's London, 6th June 2003, lot 15
Jonathan Clark & Co., London, where purchased by the present owner, 24th May 2004

London, Carfax Gallery, Paintings by Spencer F Gore and Harold Gilman, January 1913, cat. no.17, (as Sunset);
London, Redfern Gallery, Spencer Gore and Frederick Gore, 6th February - 3rd March 1962, cat. no.60;
London, Anthony d'Offay, Spencer Frederick Gore, 11th February - 30th March 1983, cat. no.22;
London, Royal Academy, British Art in the 20th Century, 15th January - 5th April 1987, cat. no.10, illustrated.

Original canvas. There are some lines of paint cracking at the extreme upper edge of the canvas and in the yellow pigment of the sky. Subject to the above the work appears to be in good condition. Ultraviolet light reveals small areas of florescence at the upper corners and in the centre of the upper horizontal edge. These appear to be consistent with sensitively executed spots of retouching. The painting is presented in a ornate gilt frame. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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We are grateful to Wendy Baron for her kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

Spencer Gore, alongside fellow members of the Camden Group, was fascinated by the day-to-day life of ordinary people in the modern city. The urban surroundings presented artistic opportunities which Gore conveyed through his own unique visual language of bright, pure colours. Although most associated with the landscape of Camden Town, Gore was also interested in the emergence of the so-called ‘garden cities’ central to social reform at the turn of the century. Letchworth Garden City was built in 1903 according to the radical design of the social reformer Ebenezer Howard who believed that the modern city should combine the positive aspects of the countryside with the vitality of urban life. This twentieth-century utopian ideal promised a higher standard of living which would translate into an enhanced society. The experiment was a success and Hampstead Garden Suburb followed in 1907 and Welwyn Garden City in the 1920s. 

Gore, along with Harold Gilman and William Ratcliffe, was drawn to this satellite city which was neither town nor country. Here Gore found a landscape that was both natural and man-made which fitted with his unique expression of modernity. Gilman bought a house in Letchworth (100 Wilbury Road) in 1908 and between August and November of 1912 whilst Gilman was abroad, Gore lived there producing a series comprising over twenty paintings of Letchworth and the surrounding area. These paintings are considered to be the most radical of his career, demonstrating his response to the Futurist and Post-Impressionist exhibitions held in London between 1910 and 1912. Other works from the series are included in the Tate, London, the Ashmolean, Oxford, the Government Art Collection and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

Wendy Baron comments, ‘The unparalleled vigour and originality of these paintings represent his response to the stimulus of European Post-Impressionism as seen in several key exhibitions recently staged in London, in particular Manet and the Post-Impressionists (1910-1911), Gauguin and Cezanne at Stafford Gallery and, perhaps the most crucial to the Letchworth interlude, the Italian Futurist Painters at the Sackville Gallery in March 1911’ (see Wendy Baron, Perfect Moderns A History of the Camden Town Group, Aldershot, 2000, p.130). Gore was drawn to the works of Gauguin and Matisse in these exhibitions and their influence is evident in this painting.

In Gore’s intense observation of the scene, the shapes in the landscape have been reduced to basic forms applied in broken touches of rich pigments. The deep greens of the fields are contrasted with the sunset which radiates from the top half of the canvas in an explosion of bold colours. The geometric strip of the man-made path boldly curves in pink hues across the composition and its angular lines contrast with the softer rendition of the natural vegetation. Here, the beginnings of man-made infrastructure meets nature, emphasised further by the introduction of a solitary figure with a dog and thus a seemingly traditional rural landscape is transformed into the modern picturesque as Gore captures the spirit of the age through his own unique modernist vocabulary.