MAXWELL ASHBY ARMFIELD RWS (1882-1972) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »

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Tempera on panel

Signed top left with the artist's monogram and dated 1917-1921

Fine Art Society 1978
Margaret Baynes; by descent to her nephew; to 2010

Arlington, USA 1917
Berkeley, University of California 1919
London, Royal Watercolour Society, 1946
Berkeley, University of California 1947
London, Kensington, 1949
Bournemouth, Bournemouth, Russell Cotes Gallery, 1951
Southampton, Art Gallery, Maxwell Armfield, June-July 1978, number 30; this exhibition travelled to :
Birmingham Art Gallery, August-September 1978;
and London, Fine Art Society, October-November 1978

The painting is in the original frame painted by the artist. Inscribed on the reverse by Maxwell Armfield Varnished 1960. This varnish has now been removed and the original egg tempera surface is now revealed.

In the spring of 1915, Maxwell Armfield and his wife Constance Smedley left their Cotswold house and sailed to the United States, where they were to stay until 1922. There he concentrated on oil painting in the avant-garde style, but did not abandon his small tempera still life and landscape paintings. He joined a group of artists who included George Bellows and Robert Henri, who saw beauty and charm in modern, industrial America.

The Armfields founded The Greenleaf Theatre in 1915 as a universal travelling theatre and between 1916 and 1921 they lectured and performed across the United States at various universities, colleges, community theatres and workshops and womens' clubs. (1)

Armfield describes his first experiences of New York in his book An Artist in America.(2)

1. Nicola Gordon Bowe, Constance and Maxwell Armfield: An American Interlude 1915-1922, The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Florida International University Board of Trustees on behalf of The Wolfsonian-FIU, 1989
2. Maxwell Armfield, An Artist in America, London 1925, page 12