Messum's is delighted to be offering the opportunity to acquire works directly from the Estate of celebrated Welsh artist Peter Prendergast throughout March 2022. David Messum is working directly with the artist's family and, following on from the major exhibition at Messum's in 2021, has curated a group of very special paintings and studies available to purchase through www.messums.com and Messum's are delighted to offer our clients FREE UK DELIVERY during March 2022.
CONTINUE READING to learn more about this very special artist and the opportunities this exhibition brings for collectors of Modern British Art to acquire important works at very attractive prices, directly from the Estate.
To see the complete exhibition catalogue CLICK HERE
Above Left: Details from 'Gwen' 28x19cm Above Right: 'Self Portrait' 56x35cm
Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Maggie Hambling, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Leon Kossoff and Henry Moore – a star studded line-up of Modern British artists who were all selected to hang in the Tate Gallery’s landmark exhibition ‘The Hard-Won Image’ in 1984. Alongside them, hung the epic painting ‘Bethesda Quarry’ by Peter Prendergast, the son of a Cardiff coal miner who had forged a reputation as one of Britain’s foremost landscape painters. The fact that the painting was selected from the show by the Contemporary Art Society to present to the Tate Gallery’s permanent collection is testimony to Prendergast’s position within modern British art at the time.
“Peter Prendergast has the rare ability to look at landscape and see both its material reality and its spiritual potential. This means that we believe in what he shows us, however extravagant the surging colour or the splendid complexities of form ... Prendergast carries us away with him into his own vision, which then becomes our own.”
Sister Wendy Beckett, 1993
Perhaps due to the artist’s untimely death in 2007, Prendergast’s considerable body of work experienced a degree of obscurity compared to his celebrated modern British contemporaries. This was set to change in 2021 when David Messum was introduced to the Estate and staged a major solo exhibition of the artist’s paintings and studies at his London gallery. The current exhibition of works from the Estate, is currently available online through Messum’s, has been selected entirely from works in the artist’s personal studio archive and offers an entirely new look at the artist’s oeuvre. It is a worthy testimony to his entire career, from talented and committed beginner to mature, accomplished and nationally recognised artist.
"Having studied under Frank Auerbach at the Slade School of Art in the 1960s, Peter Prendergast moved to Bethesda, north Wales. There, with works of brutal expression and powerful drama, this son of a Cardiff coal miner forged a reputation as one of Britain’s foremost landscape painters. "
David Boyd Haycock, author and critic
Having studied under Frank Auerbach at the Slade School of Art in the 1960s, Prendergast moved to Bethesda, north Wales where he remained for the rest of his life until his death in 2007. His friend Sir Kyffin Williams had died four months before, and in that brief interval Prendergast was widely recognised as the foremost artist at work in Wales – and as his obituary in The Guardian acknowledged, ‘one of Britain’s foremost landscape painters’. His work is in various national and regional collections, including the Tate Gallery, the British Museum and the National Museum of Wales.
PETER PRENDERGAST AND BETHESDA QUARRY
'Penrhyn Quarry' mixed media on paper 86x121cm (left) is a reflection of what would become Prendergast’s life-long devotion to place, and Wales in particular. Close to his home in North Wales was the enormous Penrhyn Slate Quarry. Worked for over 200 years, Prendergast reckoned it was the largest manmade hole in the world. Such is the great cultural significance of this Welsh landscape of terraces, pools, pits and tips, it has recently been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Working up close, Prendergast spent years trying to capture it in paint, ink, charcoal and graphite.
As his father was an Irish coal miner, Prendergast always felt a keen connection between his father’s work and his own working process, even going so far as to equate them as forms of “digging”. He said, “The materials I use to make images—charcoal is burnt wood, paint is earth bound with oil, lead from the ground—are the same as my father was involved with in digging coal... I try to understand how the earth is constructed ... to search for the spirit of nature. My father was digging out coal to make profits for other people. But then coal keeps people’s houses warm. Painting keeps people’s souls warm.”
(Interviewed by Robert Armstrong in ‘Peter Prendergast: Paintings from Wales’,
The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, and Agnew’s, 1993).
‘For me, painting isn’t about confirming what you think is there, but telling what hasn’t been seen, what’s beneath the surface. The problem for the painter is to find imagery which isn’t predictable, imagery which develops in some way.’
Peter Prendergast, 1994.
EXPLORE THE DIGITAL CATALOGUE HERE
VIEW THE PAINTINGS ONLINE HERE
EXHIBITION DETAILS online at www.messums.com, 24 works from the Artist’s Studio ranging in price from £785 - £22,500 during March 2022. Free UK delivery.
Telephone the gallery on 020 72874448 or email info@messums.com for more information.
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