On this day in November...
Important events from The Redfern Gallery archives
November 7, 2021
The latest entry as part of a new, regular feature providing a summary of important historical events that relate to the Redfern and its artists.
1 November 1965 Exhibition of paintings by Christopher Wood. Exhibits include Dancing Sailors, Brittany, which illustrates the front cover of the catalogue. This important painting was completed just months before Wood's tragic death at Salisbury Station in August 1930. It was later included in the major retrospective organised by the Arts Council in 1979, and is now in the permanent collection of Leicester Museums and Galleries.
2 November 1950 Opening of Pointillists and their Period, with paintings by Seurat, Signac and Pissarro.
3 November 1937 Exhibition of paintings and watercolours by Glyn Philpot, the last show before his sudden death on 18 December; the next would be a posthumous retrospective organised by the Tate Gallery, the following year.
3 November 2011 Paintings by Paul Jenkins are included in Highlights from the Ernestine and Bradley Wayne Collection, which opens at the Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York. The Dallas-based couple amassed a significant collection of work by major names including Frankenthaler, Hockney, Picasso, Stella and Wesselmann.
4 November 1952 Paintings by William Gear are shown at the National Gallery of Canada, as part of the British Council touring exhibition, Five Contemporary Painters. Selected by National Gallery director, Sir Philip Hendy, the other artists are Josef Herman, Ben Nicholson, Matthew Smith and Robert Colquhoun. The show tours Canada throughout the following year, when Gear also takes part in the Redfern's Coronation Exhibition of Contemporary British Paintings.
4 November 1980 Patrick Procktor became the first modern European artist to visit China. Paintings and watercolours made during the trip are unveiled at the Redfern on this date, along with a new series of aquatints, The China Series, a set of which is sold to the Government Art Collection.
5 November 1953 Opening of Figures in Their Settings at the Tate Gallery, in which Paul Feiler is included. It comes on the back of a successful solo exhibition at the Redfern earlier in the year.
6 November 1964 First day of Bryan Kneale's latest Redfern show, his fifth since 1954. One of the exhibits, a sculpture entitled Knuckle, is sold to the Tate.
7 November 2015 Margaret Mellis is one of 45 artists selected for Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965 at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.
9 November 1979 Bryan Organ meets Prince Charles for the first time, following a commission from the National Portrait Gallery. His resulting portrait, completed the following year, is ground-breaking for its relaxed and informal depiction of a royal sitter. It remains one of the NPG's most popular and important paintings.
11 November 1982 Opening of an exhibition of recent oils by Jeffrey Smart; this is the third Redfern show for the celebrated Australian painter.
12 November 1961 Eileen Agar is included in The Art of Assemblage at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which closes on this day. A controversial, large-scale survey show, featuring work by Braque, Duchamp, Ernst, Magritte and Rauschenberg. Also in this month, on 30 November 1944, the Redfern staged a second solo show of Agar, and then, exactly 60 years later, a retrospective.
13 November 1962 First day of British Art Today at San Francisco Museum of Art, which features the work of Adrian Heath. Touring to Santa Barbara and Dallas the following year, the exhibition included many of the leading painters of the time: Francis Bacon, Peter Blake, Terry Frost, Ben Nicholson, Victor Pasmore and Graham Sutherland, with Lawrence Alloway writing the catalogue essay. The Redfern had staged four solo shows of Heath's work by this point.
16 November 2016 Danny Markey's show of nocturnes is 'critic's choice' in The Financial Times. Jackie Wullschlager writes: "In gestural dynamic paintings and superb conte compositions, Markey has created nocturnes that are both dystopian mysteries and particular, evocative descriptions of time and milieus".
17 November 2015 First day of the sell-out exhibition of paintings by Danny Fox.
19 November 1996 Exhibition of paintings, sculpture and prints by Leon Underwood, featuring the work of some of his students, such as Eileen Agar, Gertrude Hermes and Henry Moore. Underwood taught life drawing for three years at the Royal College of Art from 1920, and also set up a private art school, the Brook Green School. Moore, in particular, has often paid tribute to the influential tutelage of Underwood.
20 November 2016 David Tindle retrospective at Huddersfield Art Gallery receives a 5-star review from The Observer's Rachel Cooke, who describes Tindle as "one of the finest figurative painters of his generation".
24 November 1951 Last day of Patrick Heron exhibition of new oils, including Harbour Window with Two Figures, which is later purchased by the Tate in 1980. This painting features in another one-man show at the Redfern, in 1954.
27 November 1952 Opening of two major Redfern shows: recent oils by Graham Sutherland, and the first Keith Vaughan retrospective.
29 November 1963 Last day of Zao Wou-Ki exhibition at the Redfern, his first London show in over a decade.
30 November 1948 The Redfern stages a Victor Pasmore exhibition of new oils, from which the British Council purchases Carnations in Vase.
