UNSUNG at the British Art Fair by Jessica Wood

Not so much a Salon des Refuses or a Rogues Gallery as the unsung heroes who made the scene what it was? Jessica Wood previews and examines the work in the Unsung exhibition to be held at the British Art Fair 2025, and attempts to understand and rationalise why these artists may have remained outside the limelight.

Teaching, marriage, and other hammer blows to an artist’s commercial success revealed in Unsung, a special exhibition at British Art Fair 2025

If you ask a gallerist if they have any artists in their roster whose talent they feel is undervalued, they most likely will leap to offer suggestions. British Art Fair Committee member, Colin Gleadell discovered just this when he pitched the idea of Unsung, an exhibition of overlooked Modern British artists, to the fair’s dealers. With their eye for talent and in-depth market knowledge, they were quick to respond by sending over suggestions. Gleadell, who is also a leading art market journalist, made the final selection to be shown at the fair 25-28 September, Saatchi Gallery, London.

While studying the reasons why these artists have been unsung, Gleadell noted recurrent themes. One unexpected blow to an artist’s commercial success appears to be the choice of an academic life rather than entering the gallery system. The premise is that in almost all professions, academic appointments are viewed as a positive contribution to a person’s career, but not in the art world. The art market just doesn’t appear to support artists who excel at teaching and we wonder why. Included in this section is Antony Eyton (b.1923), a figurative painter associated with the Euston Road School in the 1950s, who devoted much of his energy to teaching at Camberwell College of Arts and the Royal Academy Schools. “At 102 years old, Eyton continues to produce first-rate paintings, but has yet to be acknowledged with a museum show and is consequently undervalued,” says Tanya Baxter, Director Tanya Baxter Contemporary.

Like Eyton, the Scottish artist William Johnstone (1897–1981) chose academic life over entering the art market. He was Principal of Camberwell College of Arts from 1938 and Central School of Art and Design from 1947 to 1960. Johnstone’s drip paintings precede Jackson Pollock’s. He became renowned as a teacher, creating innovative courses and employment in teaching for such important artists as Alan Davie and Eduardo Paolozzi. Johnstone was awarded an OBE in 1954 for his significant contributions to art education. In his 1967 book ‘The Company I Have Kept’, the poet and author Hugh McDairmid called Johnstone “the bad boy of Scottish art” and “not only the most important but the only important living Scottish artist”.

Ray Atkins (b 1937) was taught by Frank Auerbach in the 1950s, and admired by Leon Kossoff. He taught fairly consistently from 1965 at art colleges in Bournemouth, Reading (from 1970), Epsom and Falmouth (until 1990). Castlegate House Gallery Director, Steve Swallow, feels Atkins has been unjustly overlooked. “I think his decades of teaching probably impacted his drive for further recognition and limited the possibility of further funding through sales,” says Swallow. “Like many good artists who taught, he just slipped through the net.”

Bigotry

Unsung reveals talented Modern British artists, whose careers have been impacted by prejudice of one kind or another. Denton Welch (1915-1948) was well known in his day as a writer under the patronage of Dame Edith Sitwell. He was also a remarkable neo-romantic artist, collected by Tate Britain, whose works were shown alongside John Minton and Keith Vaughan at the ‘Last Romantics’ exhibition held at Barbican Art Gallery in 1989. Welch was LGBTQIA+ during a period when homosexuality was illegal. He was also physically removed from society by disability. Two factors which undoubtedly contributed to his work being sadly overlooked.

Emily Walsh, Gallery Director of The Fine Art Society believes that a bias exists against Scottish artists and cites the career of Alick Riddel Sturrock (1885-1953) as an example. “Like many Scottish artists he has been unsung because he was overlooked by a London-centric art world. English critics are selective  when it comes to recognising and embracing their Caledonian counterparts.” She said. Sturrock stretched between two centuries and the birth of Modernism. When he died, the Royal Scottish Academy wrote that “Sturrock was a ‘Modern’ in that he belonged to his time, and a ‘Traditionalist’ in that his roots were deep in the native school”. His landscapes are sometimes compared stylistically to the brothers Paul and John Nash. 

Art dealer, Patrick Bourne, feels the same bias exists towards William Wilson (1905-1972) . Bourne staged exhibitions for Wilson in the 1980s, and says Wilson “like a lot of Scottish artists, is commercially unsung”. After an apprenticeship in glass staining Wilson attended Edinburgh School of Art, and then was part of the Etching Revival.  His work combines medieval and modern styles with bold lines, and was shown in a retrospective in 2022 by the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture.  But recognition of his talent has not yet filtered through to the wider market. The auction records for his prints (£1,000), watercolours (£5,000) and stained glass panels (£10,000) have all been set by Scottish auctioneers.

William Burns (1921-1972). Today, as collectors and curators reassess the undercurrents of Scottish modernism” says Tommy Zyw of The Scottish Gallery, “William Burns stands as a quietly radical figure, a figure overdue for reassessment.” Burns was given a one man show at the Scottish Gallery during the Edinburgh Festival in 1968.  That was just as his painting was shifting from traditional landscapes to semi-abstract.  He became one of the most radical painters working in post-war Scotland, using a distinctive arial perspective derived from his time flying with the RAF in WWII. He had been lecturing on art in Aberdeen after studying at the Glasgow School of Art.  But after that show, in 1970 he quit teaching to focus on producing paintings for sale and exhibiting in Scottish commercial galleries.  Tragically, his life was cut short when died in a flying accident two years later, aged 51.

Artist Leslie Moore (1913-1976) was a Welsh neo-romantic artist who participated regularly in the National Eisteddfod and occasional gallery shows in Cardiff and Swansea. His work is represented in national collections in Cardiff and Newport, but he seems rarely to have exhibited beyond Wales which is why, perhaps he has been “seriously neglected”, says British Art Fair dealer, Gwen Hughes.

Marriage (to another artist)

With a few notable exceptions, the art market doesn’t tend to support the success of both members of a couple, generally favouring one over the other. One of Unsung’s classic tales is of art students falling in love at college and marrying, only for one party’s career to overshadow the other. This is the case with several Unsung artists, Jean Taprell Clark (1930-1973) who married author/illustrator Raymond Briggs and is represented by Ottocento Fine Art; and Jean Cooke (1927-2008) whose career was marred by her marriage to John Bratby, a domineering and violent character, who had gained fame as a kitchen-sink painter in the 1950s.
 
Gertrude Harvey (1879-1966) was brought up in the artist’s colony of Newlyn in Cornwall. She was largely self-taught, learning her skills by observation through her experiences as an artist’s model at the Forbes School of Painting. Here she met leading local artists such as Harold Harvey, whom she married, and Harold and Laura Knight. Whilst Gertrude occasionally exhibited with her husband, he was far better known, overshadowing her reputation. That imbalance persists in the market today where his record price at auction is over £100,000, whilst hers is just £1,400.

Trends
Many artists have been victims of fashion; either because they were working in a style that was not on trend at the time, or because – for whatever reason – they became unfashionable later on in their career or posthumously. These artists are grouped together in Unsung as it is the peaks and troughs of artistic and critical taste rather than merit that have caused them to be overlooked.

Peter Lowe (b.1938) made constructivist reliefs just as conceptual art was becoming fashionable. Op artist Victor Anton (1909-1980) was already in his mid-fifties in the 1960s when his style of work – precise perspex sculpture and Op Art images in black and white – took off. Gallerist Dominic Kemp believes that he was simply of the wrong generation to fit in with the cool set. Geoffrey Clarke (1924-2014) was an avant-garde sculptor in the 1950s, but he also had interests in mosaics and stained glass. His reputation as progressive artist became confused with that of a decorative and ecclesiastical artist in a secular age where religious association was unfashionable.

Another artist whose works Unsung presents as neglected due to fashion is Patrick Procktor (1936–2003). Procktor was arguably as famous and successful as Hockney in the early 1960s, with sellout shows at The Redfern Gallery and inclusion in the trend-setting New Generation exhibition at the The Whitechapel Gallery in 1964 together with Hockney, Bridget Riley, John Hoyland and Patrick Caulfield. But by 1970, increasingly identified as an unfashionable figurative and topographical watercolourist, the slow descent into what the art critic John McEwen in his obituary described as “thirty years of comparative eclipse” had begun.

The best known artist in Unsung is Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) who joins the group simply because he is currently out of fashion, with most works selling below estimate at auction. Dealer Christopher Kingzett reminds us that “Sutherland was considered more significant than Francis Bacon in the early 50s, and throughout that decade had strong claims to be Britain’s best-known artist.”

Politics
Unsung reveals that overtly political content in art can sometimes prove a barrier to popular appreciation. James Hyman Gallery is presenting Peter de Francia (1921-2012) to Unsung. His powerful graphic style of critical social realism found favour with left wing intellectuals such as John Berger, but he suffered from critical commercial neglect as a consequence.

Arthur Wragg (1903-1976), was a freelance commercial illustrator whose dramatic chiaroscuro is comparable to the high art woodcuts of the German Expressionists. A committed socialist and Christian, Wragg tended to provide heavily politicised content for left wing publications. British Art Fair dealer, Harry Moore-Gwyn Fine Art says that this was “a touch too hard-hitting to have become terribly commercial.” Adding “But there is a case to be made for these striking black and white drawings.”

Unsung presents works by 30 artists for reassessment and asks visitors to consider the elusive qualities about an artist’s work or life that add up to success in the commercial art world.

Unsung at British Art Fair, 25-28 September 2025, Saatchi Gallery, London www.britishartfair.co.uk