Mother & Child 2 (ca. 1952) £125
Pencil and ink wash measuring 22cm x 26.5cm. Note verso confirming authenticity by artist’s daughter, Penelope. Framed.
Eric Malthouse (1914–1997) was a British artist and print maker who spent most of his career in South Wales. His work can be found in several collections including the Tate, the National Museum of Wales, the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth University, Art UK and the Government Art Collection. Much of his early work was Figurative and his connection with Cornwall dates from the outbreak of the second world war in 1939 when he was holidaying at Mullion in Cornwall. He moved to Cardiff in 1944 to take up a position at Cardiff School of Art, where he became established as a prominent Welsh artist. From 1952 to 1958 he produced his pigeon paintings transforming their movement to his canvas with pictures such as A Flight of Pigeons, A Flurry of Pigeons and Flying Pigeons. When he was back in Cornwall in 1955 he began, after a series of ‘St. Ives Fishermen’, paintings, the St. Ives ‘Rock Pools’ which were the foundation of his work as a non-figurative painter and showed the influence of Ceri Richards and Patrick Heron. By now his work was concerned with a close analysis of colour and spatial composition and by 1959 his paintings had become completely non-figurative. He painted murals for University Hall, Penylan, Cardiff and for the Wales Gas Board. Malthouse had been involved in printmaking since his school days at King Edward V1 School Aston where his art master showed him how to make a burin from an umbrella strut with which he made his first linocut. Printmaking became an increasingly important component of his future work. In 1968 Eric Malthouse and several other artists were commissioned by the Welsh Arts Council to design posters to be displayed on billboards throughout Wales. Malthouse’s poster “Midsummer” (10 x 20 ft) was the first to be displayed outside Wales in Oxford. Of the six posters produced only those by Eric Malthouse, Jeffrey Steele and Allen Jones were said to have asserted themselves, with the Malthouse print being described as a “sensuous, map-like spread of large sinuous areas of warm dark colours” which enlivened the street in Cardiff where it was posted. He produced illustrations for two books, Prynu Dol, a collection of short stories by Kate Roberts, and Ancestor Worship, the first published collection of poems by Emyr Humphreys.
Pencil and ink wash measuring 22cm x 26.5cm. Note verso confirming authenticity by artist’s daughter, Penelope. Framed.