Lionel Townsend Crawshaw RSW, RSBA (1864-1949)
"Girls bathing"
Initialled, signed and inscribed verso, oil on panel, 20cm by 25cm

Provenance: Doris Bilbrough (née Sykes), cook to the Hess household, early 20th century - c. 1930s
Thence by descent

“You could not turn your head without seeing something you wanted to put onto canvas, here was material for a landscape painter, a sea painter, a figure painter… there was every range of colour and intensity of light and dark, from the crowded alleyway to the spread of the sea…”

- Dame Laura Knight on painting on the North Yorkshire coast from her autobiography “Oil and Greasepaint” (1941)

Lots 1011-1036 are a rare collection of works and a vibrant insight into a period of British Impressionism based chiefly at Staithes and on the North Yorkshire coast during the early 20th century, and which have formed part of the same private collection since their execution.

The vendor’s Great-Grandmother, Doris Bilbrough, née Sykes was cook to the Hess household in Leeds from the early 20th century – c.1930’s. Mrs Bilbrough’s daughter, the vendor’s grandmother spent a great deal of time in the Hess household during her mother’s employment with the family, and was later described by her husband as a type of companion to Florence Hess, although she was never an official employee of the family. There was evidently a close bond between the vendor’s grandmother and Florence Hess, as both she and her husband continued to visit Florence through into the late 1950’s and possibly beyond. Verbal Sykes Family history also states that the couple reputedly lived with the Hess family during the Second World War, probably at their house on Sandmoor Drive, Alwoodley, Leeds.

Lot 1014 “Mother and child in a sun-drenched garden” and lot 1019 “Picnic by the Sea” are understood to have been wedding presents to the couple and either passed directly from the artist, or via Mrs Bilbrough (her mother).

The understanding is that the remainder of the lots presented here would likely have been presents for birthdays, or other occasions which warranted being marked with a gift from artist to friend.

Florence Adelina Hess WIAC (1891-1974) was born in Leeds, later studied at Leeds College of Art with the tutor Mark Senior NPS (1862-1927), and became his long-standing personal assistant and friend from 1905. Hess was originally introduced to Senior via fellow artist Owen Bowen and member of the Savage Club, Leeds (founded around 1891), whose 50 members were principally made up of the local Art world and prominent businessmen of Leeds.

Mark Senior had studied at Wakefield School of Art, privately with Leeds-based portrait painter Isaac Faulkner Bird and latterly at the Slade School in London and was one of the founder members of the Staithes Group, based on the North Yorkshire coast. The group sought to convey through “en plein air” painting the rolling landscape, unchanged maritime traditions and picturesque coastline in the fresh, immediate style of Impressionism, which had migrated from Europe and had likely taken some cues from the earlier 19th century French artist Eugène Louis Boudin (1824-1898). Senior’s free flowing, characteristically spontaneous style also shows alignment to some of his other contemporaries and artist friends, such as Frank Brangwyn RA, RWS, RBA (1867-1956), Henry Tonks FRCS (1862-1937), Philip Wilson Steer OM (1860-1942) and James McNeil Whistler RBA (1834-1903) all of whose hand shows such an immediate stroke, as to border on abstraction at times.

As Senior’s most notable pupil and assistant, Florence Hess (along with his other pupil Gertrude Hudson) at times accompanied him on various painting and sketching trips to the Continent, including Belgium and Holland. Senior’s influence on Hess’s work is highly abundant, particularly in her earlier examples, which often use lashings of the azure blue, which was so synonymous with her Master, and also echo the impressionistic palette of the epoch seen in France and beyond.

Hess became a member of the Fylingdales Group and continued a strong association with the Staithes Group, presumably with regular trips to the North Yorkshire coast within her duties as assistant to Senior and her evidencable time spent at his Runswick Bay abode “Hillside”. See lot 1014, fig. 1 and fig. 2.

In 1928 Hess visited another artist’s coastal colony at St Ives, Cornwall, at a time when Barabara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson would have been core to the artistic life and atmosphere in full swing there. It is also known that she took specific interest in the work of Alfred Wallis whilst visiting St. Ives and admired the simplicity and lack of perspective that he approached his paintings with.

Hess exhibited widely throughout her career including at The New English Art Club, The Women’s International Art Club, The Yorkshire Union of Artist’s and The Royal Academy.