Richmond: Winter

Spencer Gore 26/5/1878 - 27/3/1914

Summary

Expressive winter landscape depicting Richmond in Surrey. Bare trees and a woodland created with thick black outlines, pinks, blues, yellows feature strongly. From a series of landscapes of Richmond Park (one of Greater London's Royal Parks), Spencer Gore's last series of paintings before his death from pneumonia aged 36. Richmond Park had been developed as a public amenity during the early years of the twentieth century by Edward VII. A year after the completion of this painting, the park was used for training horsemen during the First World War. Gore moved with his family to Richmond in 1913. His painting outdoors in Richmond Park during the cold and wet wintry months brought on pneumonia from which he died in March 1914.

Display Label

Gallery text panel Tradition and Experiment Early Twentieth-Century Art 1900 - 1939. In Britain, the beginning of the 20th century coincided with the end of the Victorian age. Artists and designers experimented, challenging traditional ways of seeing and making; now trying to create a new art for a modern era. In painting, it was often traditional subject matter such as portraits, landscapes and interiors that would be tackled in new ways. The bustle and the brutality of urban life was an inspiration or something to escape from. Boundaries became increasingly blurred between design and decoration, painting and making and individual expression replaced academic authority. Art was made to be affordable and at a scale that would fit into ordinary homes. Some called the celebration of the modern into question after the horrors of the First World War. Traditional imagery was simplified or became childlike and slowly broke down into fragmented visions. Dream and chance tapped into subconscious anxieties and in 1939, world war intervened once again.