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£2,900

Presentation: Framed
SN: 495
Tempera on paper, 6 1/4 × 8 5/8 in. (16 × 22 cm.)
Provenance: Michael Whitehall since the 1980s
Literature: John Basford, Harry Epworth Allen, Rowsley, Derbyshire, 2007, repr. p. 87
In a fine gilded oak frame
Although by the late 1920s Allen had already found the powerful and coherent style of painting that would characterise his work for the next four decades, he was at this time still employed as Arthur Balfour’s confidential secretary. Only in 1931, when he was made redundant, did he take up painting full time.

This is a study for the painting The Allotment. The scene is probably near Whiteley Woods, Sheffield.
We are grateful to John Basford for his help in cataloguing this painting.
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£1,900

Presentation: Framed
SN: 4562
Signed and inscribed with title
Watercolour
18 x 22.7 cm

In a gilded double d section reeded frame
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 2
Signed, tempera on canvas, 19 X 24 ins. (48 X 61 cms.)
Provenance: Sotheby's, 19th July 1989, lot 191; The Fine Art Society; Alan Fortunoff, (acquired 1991)

The Pool is an unusual subject in Allen's oeuvre - his subjects were usually sourced from contemporary daily life in Derbyshire. Typical amongst his thirty-nine Academy exhibits (1934-55) are titles such as Northern Winter, The Derelict, The Dead tree and Cement works in Derbyshire.

The stylised treatment of the figures and landscape is entirely characteristic. To this end Allen used tempera to great effect (a medium that he employed almost exclusively in preference to oil), producing compositions which are distinctive, intensely linear and colourful. We are concerned primarily, Allen wrote in 1942, with rhythm and design, and our colour must be employed for the purpose of reinforcing these fundamentals and strengthening form, Harry Allen, Decorative Landscape Painting, The Artist, November 1942, p. 57
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 274
Oil on board
13 x 16 in. (33 x 40.7 cms)
Provenance: Mr and Mrs Stocks, 1986; The Fine Art Society; Laporte Coporate Art Collection, (no. 1)
Exhibited: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle 1932, no. 201
R.B.A in 1946, No.340 where offered at £36 15 0 Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 1986, no. 11
Literature: Liss, Laporte A History in Art, 2000, p. 20, illustrated
John Basford, Harry Epwoth Allen, Rowsley, Derbyshire, 2007, p. 63 (ill) and 124
'
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 494
Tempera on panel,
11 1/4 × 13 3/4 in. (28.5 × 35 cm.)
Provenance: Michael Whitehall since the 1980s
Exhibited:Twentieth Century Gallery, London, 1991
Literature: John Basford, Harry Epworth Allen, Rowsley,
Derbyshire, 2007, p. 104, repr. p. 21
‘Harry Epworth Allen produced a body of work which is much less well-known than it should be within the English landscape revival of the midcentury. Like his direct contemporaries, John Nash and Ivor Hitchens, he is an artist mostly identified with a particular area, that of the environs of Sheffield and the Peak District of Derbyshire’ (James Rawlin,‘20th-Century British and Irish Art’, Sotheby’s catalogue, 17 November 2004, p. 36).

Thumbnail panels:

Harry Epworth Allen 1894-1958

Painter, notably in tempera, especially of Derbyshire. Born in Sheffield, Allen attended King Edward VII School for boys, and then became a clerk in the steel works of Arthur Balfour, in his spare time attending Sheffield Technical School of Art. He served in the army in World War I, gaining the Military Medal for conspicuous gallantry. Although badly injured and having an artificial leg, Allen continued to paint and became Balfour's confidential secretary. From 1931 he painted full-time and joined the new Yorkshire Group of Artists. He began exhibiting at the RA, and showed with RBSA and PS. He also travelled in Ireland and was elected a member of the RBA in 1935. Although Allen's early work is conventionally realistic he soon developed his distinctive style of simplified landscape and figure studies, which eventually were shown abroad in Canada and America. In the early 1940s Allen published a series of articles in The Artist on landscape painting in which he expounded his approach. His work is in a number of public galleries, notably Sheffield, Wakefield, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Newport, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. There was a memorial show at Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, in 1959 and in 1986. Lived in Ecclesall, Sheffield.