$15.92
$23.88
Provenance: Montpelier Studio, Montpelier Street, London (label verso) Bonhams, Modern British Art, 22nd March 2000 William Patrick Hall was a British artist for whom watercolour was the most perfect medium. It allowed him to convey a sense of immediacy, sudden delight, the sparkling intensity of the scene before him. He worked swiftly and prolifically - but let nothing out of his studio that did not stand up to his own intense, critical scrutiny. As a consequence, his work is elusive, not only in terms of his medium and his preoccupation with passing effects of light and movement, but also in terms of trying to track it down, today. On leaving school, Hall returned to York and worked in his family’s business, a tannery in New Earswick. He entertained a desire to be an artist from the first, and studied at both York and Northampton Schools of Art. Whilst still a teenager, he also assisted in the conservation studios attached to York Minster, where the stained glass was being repaired and conserved. Hall was unable to work full time as an artist until after WWII and the subsequent closure of the family business. Well before this, however, he started to exhibit, notably at the Royal Academy. In 1928, 1929 and 1932, he showed drawings of York - including, in 1929, a pencil drawing entitled, Maintenance of the fabric, York Minster. His early work was dominated by drawings, with pencil and chalk. In 1943, again at the Royal Academy, he showed dry point etchings of The Toll Bridge, Selby and Interior, St. Martin-le-Grand, York. In 1944, he started to exhibit London scenes - including St. Paul’s from Bankside, an image of the Cathedral which, in 1943, had become an icon of fortitude, when it largely survived the onslaught of the Blitz. In 1947, it was with another image of St. Paul’s, a chalk drawing, that Hall marked his move from York to London, shortly after the War - at last, feeling free to focus on his work as an artist, as the family business had closed. From this time, for more than three decades, Hall lived and worked in South Terrace in Kensington, where he painted constantly. He was Honorary, then acting, Secretary of the Chelsea Arts Club, and made many friends amongst fellow artists; Sir Henry Rushbury, Keeper of the Royal Academy and Head of the Academy Schools, remained a close friend from his York days. Hall continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy, until 1961, and at the New English Art Club, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Paris Salon. He also showed elsewhere, in London and the provinces, including at Waddington Gallery, Marjorie Parr, Hayes Austen and latterly Montpelier Studio, where he had sell-out shows. Hall regularly travelled round the countryside and coast of England and Europe with his wife Mary. His artistic method was to stop and sketch the images he encountered on his journeys. These sketches were then worked up in the studio. This process did not end up with highly finished, literal representations; instead, Hall aimed to keep a sense of sudden encounter, immediacy, freshness. He worked with a very wet brush, saturating his paper with a dominant hue – the white ground shining through – and thus capturing the light and atmosphere. On that ground, his fleeting images are touched in with sophisticated brevity; details are even stuck onto the pictures with neat, tiny, patches of collage and textures sometimes conveyed by combing and scraping through the surface of the wet paint. His was not a conventional approach. But, as a perfectionist, he was rarely satisfied, and he repeatedly destroyed his work and started again; hence the scarcity on the market today. Hall and his wife Elizabeth moved to Kent in the early 1970s, where he died, in 1992. To say that Hall’s main influence was from the Impressionist school was far too simplistic a view; although undoubtedly present in his work with the plein air traditions of the turn of the century, equally so is his interest in the expressive abstractions of post-war Europe and America. Patrick Hall’s appearance – tall, dapper, elegant, with his bow tie and stooped gait – and the apparent serenity of his pictures should not mislead: his pictures, which sing with an abstract poise and subtlety, as well as vivid, translucent colour, are the outcome of a questioning and exacting mind. His watercolours of France and Italy are in the best tradition of British painting. ‘Chambre Douze’ was painted in the final months of the artist’s life.
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