The Watercolours + Works on Paper Fair 2012

I visited the Watercolours + Works on Paper Fair 2012 at the Science Museum in South Kensington on Thursday.  It's an excellent Art Fair and well worth a visit if you like watercolours, pastels, drawings and fine art prints.  You'll see an extensive range of work by artists both past and present.

Sarah Wimperis on the Beside the Wave Stand

I was there via an invite from Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) who is representing the Beside the Wave Gallery.   She had some of her work on show which looked excellent.  Interestingly I think her Gallery was the only one to be sporting the new QR code.  People who buy the works can take them away straight away and I learned this means that she is also rehanging the stand every morning!

I also met David Paskett, President of the Royal Watercolour Society and we had a nice chat about his recent experience of taking the Entry to the Open Exhibition online.  I learned that the artists are now selected and I'll be aiming to post who they are in the near future.

The Fair has an extensive range of galleries offering a complete range of works on paper from the very traditional to the very contemporary.  I noticed that there are a lot of well known English landscape artists and I was picking out names such as Edward Bawden,  Alfred Heaton Cooper - who work I love (He's the "NC Wyeth" in the Heaton Cooper dynasty), William Russell Flint, John Piper, Edward Seago, Edward Wesson

Sim Fine Art had a couple of art history based stands - one was devoted to watercolours and drawings by the Women War Artists (below) - such as Evelyn Dunbar and Rosemary Rutherford (see The Rediscovered Wartime Folios of Rosemary Rutherford)

Sim Fine Art stand: Exhibition of work by Women War Artists

Plus an artist who has long been forgotten due in part to a large amount of his work having been destroyed in the war and a fire at his widow's home.  Horace Mann Livens's claim to fame was that he was a friend of Vincent Van Gogh and went to Paris at Vincent's invitation to paint with him.  He alos painted the earliest known portrait of Van Gogh.

Sim Fine Art stand: Exhibition of work by Horace Mann Livens

I spotted a painting by "February" by Stanley Roy Badmin RWS on the Babbington Fine Art stand which took me back to my childhood and prompted a post about it on The Art of the Landscape - and buying the book which was part of my childhood!

The Francis Iles Gallery had a fine display of the work of Rowland Hilder (1905-1993) and I discovered that they apparently have the largest stock of his work in the UK.  Hilder is another landscape artist I remember from my childhood.

Francis Iles Gallery: Artwork by Rowland Hilder

Ali Yanya is a contemporary artist, represented by Orme 11, who struck me as an excellent draughtsman - and I wondered why I hadn't seen him before.  He studied at the Royal College of Art where he got a Distinction his MA Printmaking.  He produces watercolours and etchings.  He has a very clear and sophisticated (but simple) style and to me he looked very much like somebody who should be applying for membership of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers.  I also thought his work was a total bargain - now's the time to buy folks!

So - that's a flavour of the art fair.  I had a free ticket but a ticket normally costs £15 if you wait and buy a ticket on the door.  I think it's definitely worth a visit.