Lot 1970
‡ALGERNON NEWTON, RA (1880-1968) SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON Signed and inscribed with title and artist's address on the overlap, oil on canvas 50 x 60cm. * The unsettling atmosphere of the deserted landscapes in many of Newton's works was borne, at least in part, of two harrowing years spent in the trenches during the Great War. He was invalided home with severe pneumonia and was later reduced to selling his pictures - with some difficulty - on the pavements of London. The generation of fallen men who never returned from War reduced some of England's once busy farms to desolation and financial (as well as physical) collapse. Newton's popularity was on the rise in the 1930s but the poignant losses of comrades and friends from an earlier decade invested much of the artist's work with an allegory for their enduring absence, expressed through landscapes in which one expects to spy a human presence but in which, chillingly, there is none to be seen. The title of this work further suggests the passing of a fecund season and the advent of a time of mournful decay. Exhibited: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institute (label on stretcher) London, Royal Academy, 1936, no.536
We are grateful to the artist’s grandson, Nicholas Newton, for expanding the footnote as follows:
The unsettling atmosphere of the deserted landscapes in many of Newton's works was borne, at least in part, by his experience during the Great War. He joined up in 1916 but after several months of training he was invalided home with double pneumonia and was later reduced to selling his pictures - with some difficulty - on the pavements of London. The generation of fallen men who never returned from War reduced some of England's once busy farms to desolation and financial (as well as physical) collapse. Newton's popularity was on the rise in the 1930s but the poignant losses of his two nephews, comrades and friends from an earlier decade invested much of the artist's work with an allegory for their enduring absence, expressed through landscapes in which one expects to spy a human presence but in which, chillingly, there is none to be seen. The title of this work further suggests the passing of a fecund season and the advent of a time of mournful decay. Completed in 1936 September Afternoon was painted during an intense period when he was creating compositions motivated by the relationship between the sky and its light reflecting on the tranquil waters of English rivers. A year earlier he completed the commission of Evening on the Avon for the new RMS Queen Mary, a large work which was installed at the after end of the Long Gallery, which connected the first-class main lounge to the first-class smoking room.
