BLAIR HUGHES-STANTON

The earliest surviving works from the oeuvre of Blair Hughes-Stanton (1902-1981) date from 1924 and the last almost five decades later. The focus of this, the ninth, exhibition of his work at North House Gallery since its founding in 1999, in what was for the last 26 years of his life his home and studio, is primarily on the paintings in oil or tempera. The wood-engravings, for which he is better known, and the unique works on paper have been shown more recently in depth, in 2018 and 2020 respectively, but where they relate to the paintings they are included in this survey. Periods of intense wood-engraving for private press books seem to have restricted his time and inclination for painting, which was more of a personal exercise. However, when book commissions were scarce and he was working on his own account, notably in 1929 and from 1934 until the Second World War, the two disciplines could be mutually inspiring and productive.

Recovering after, for him, a disastrous war, and commissions for wood-engravings having dried up almost completely, he did many drawings in the landscape around his then home in Stratford St Mary and in his local pub, surviving by teaching two days a week. After moving to Manningtree in 1950 he embarked on a series of elaborate ink and watercolour works inspired by the new translation of The Iliad by EV Rieu.

A new marriage in 1952 and impending parenthood inspired a series of celebratory monotypes in 1953. Then after the purchase and renovation of North House in 1955 and several book collaborations with the Allen Press in the USA, the revelation of a pair of bi-focal glasses permitted the production of a series of extraordinary large, complex reduction-linocut views of the River Stour from the window of the studio and from a holiday to Cornwall. Major elements of the image were cut out of the one lino block, separately inked and reassembled at each stage of the printing, individually cut away and away, each printing with a darker colour, as many as thirteen times. The registration is incredibly accurate but the editions vary in number as mishaps in the printing could not be rectified.

Without this departure into vibrant colour he would arguably not have produced the last group of paintings: two seated nudes (yellow on a red background and orange on a green seat with a purple background) and the series of beach figures in equally startling colours and contrasting bikinis. He had been promised a retrospective at the Whitechapel for September 1969 but this was not honoured after the departure of the director Bryan Robertson. Having spent months framing all his engravings and paintings, many of which had not been seen for 30 or 40 years, his disappointment was such that after finishing these paintings he never did another. For the next decade he put all his energies into teaching at the Central School of Art.