Harry Epworth Allen

[dunsbyowl1867]

Never come across this artist before but an impressive, eventful & full life.

http://goldenagepaintings.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/harry-epworth-allen.html

[Alastair]

Harry Epworth Allen deserves to be much better known in his home city.

Here's a photo of him at work and some of his paintings of Derbyshire.

 

"Derbyshire Walls". The only artwork by Harry Allen owned by the city. It was on display at the Graves until this year, no idea why it was removed.

The view is looking towards Foolow and Longstone Edge

"Burning Limestone", the view is Stoney Middleton



"Mayfield Valley in Winter"

 

"The Road to the Hills", unidentified location, but it has to be the Peak District. This one is on display in Derby Art Gallery.

[Lysanderix]

Just come across this…..what a remarkable man and his paintings evoke  the spirit of the places he painted. I am reminded of yet another Sheffield born artist…Arthur Lismer….who was a member of the Canadian Group of Seven .

[Alastair]

Coming up for auction in September is Harry Epworth Allen's painting 'Jordanthorpe Farm - Sir Frances Chantrey's Birthplace'

https://www.davidduggleby.com/auctions/160920222089/0/185/HarryEpworthAllenNorthernBritish18941958JordanthorpeFarmSirF.aspx

[Edmund]

Here's Jordanthorpe Farm in 1973.  I prefer the look of the stone roof in Allen's painting, but the replacement may be more watertight.

[Alastair]

I think it's artistic license. I doubt the stone tiles were ever that big.

[Alastair]

Here's a great article on Harry Epworth Allen from the Sheffield Tribune published earlier this year. It's written by Allen expert Dr John Basford.
 

Harry Epworth Allen: Clerk, soldier, artist

Like so many young men of his time, Harry Epworth Allen’s life was irrevocably changed by the First World War. Born in Broomhall in 1894, he was just eight years old when he won his first art prize in a Sheffield Weekly Independent competition. As well as his artistic abilities he was also a talented student, graduating top of his class before taking up work as a clerk at Arthur Balfour’s steelworks. But his life changed dramatically after he enlisted in the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1915.

His skill in drawing saw him posted to France as an assistant to the observation officer. There he detailed enemy troop and equipment locations by sketching them in the field, and in 1916 was moved to the front line. In 1917, the King Edward VII School Magazine detailed his award of the Military Medal for conspicuous gallantry. The piece also noted he had been badly wounded, with one leg amputated above the knee and the other seriously injured by shrapnel.

Private H.E. Allen (R.G.A.) has been awarded the Military Medal for conspicuous gallantry under heavy shell fire on January 25th, 1917. Under heavy shelling of the enemy he found his officer completely buried in the dug-out, and, though under heavy fire, tried to extricate him. A shell falling within a yard of him buried and bruised him, but he managed to get free and obtain further assistance and save the officer’s life. Unfortunately, Allen himself was badly wounded in both legs, and lies in hospital in France.

“Industrial Landscape, Hope Valley, Derbyshire” by H.E. Allen is owned by the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.
 

A year later he was discharged on medical grounds and returned to Balfour’s. But he continued to pursue art and, after he was made redundant in 1931, decided to try to make a living as a professional. His rise to a degree of fame in the art world was rapid. He made his first public sale in 1932 (Leeds Municipal Gallery bought his painting “Hikers”) and in 1933 he had three works accepted at the Royal Academy.

Dr John Basford is the author of the only book ever to have been written about him: Harry Epworth Allen: Catalogue of His Works (2005). He told The Tribune he wrote it because Allen was a “brilliant man” and nobody had written a book about him before. Of the main Sheffield painters of the time, David Jagger was a popular portraitist and Stanley Royle a highly regarded landscape painter. But, according to Basford, Allen was “trying to do something more”. “I do think he was Sheffield’s best painter,” he tells me.

“When you have seen some Allen pictures of Derbyshire you look at the landscape in a different way,” he says. “That is pretty rare in a painter.” But as well as a talent for capturing the essence of a landscape, Basford believes he can see some of Allen’s experience of war in his “slightly ominous” work. Big holes and gaping chasms feature prominently in his paintings. “I think you can see he had a strange relationship with the earth,” he tells me.

“Summer” by H.E. Allen is owned by the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea.

Looking at his paintings now, the influence of modernism in the repeated patterns and stylised lines is clear. In the early 1940s he was invited to write six articles for The Artist magazine in which he elaborated on his technique and aesthetics. He wrote that the artist is primarily concerned “with rhythm and design, and our colour must be employed for the purpose of reinforcing these fundamentals, and strengthening form”. He continued:

Accurate drawing is not necessarily significant drawing. Some of the world’s greatest pictures contain distortions of the human form, upon which any student of anatomy will immediately pounce. Nevertheless, these apparent distortions are intended to express some underlying rhythmical purpose, and are in harmony with the general scheme.

By the 1980s Allen’s star had waned but a young curator at the Graves Gallery called Janet Barnes liked his highly distinctive work and wanted to give him an exhibition. In 1984, she scoured the country’s art galleries looking for his paintings but in the end, could only find enough to put together a “fairly small show”. “I couldn't work out why I couldn’t find more,” she told us. “But his wife had actually sold many of the really strong ones.”

Because of this, many of Allen’s paintings are believed to have been bought privately, with some owned by well-known collectors including Frank Cohen and the Duke of Devonshire. But some examples of his work can still be found in Sheffield Museums’ collection, at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery and in the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. Sheffield’s Graves Art Gallery has just one of Allen’s paintings, the widely admired “Derbyshire Walls”.

“Derbyshire Walls” by H.E. Allen is owned by the Graves Gallery, Sheffield.

On the rare occasions they come up for auction, Basford says Allen’s larger works can sell for £40,000 or more. “The really characteristic paintings can fetch a lot of money,” he says. “People really like the very stylised Derbyshire pictures. Even the little watercolours can sell for a few hundred each.” In 2021, Tennants sold a hoard of Allen’s smaller works at auction.

Like one of his contemporaries Kenneth Steel, Allen isn’t as well-known in his home city as Basford and Barnes believe he should be. But in the 1930s he was a highly-regarded figure. Writing in 1935, fellow Sheffield artist and long-time critic for the Sheffield Daily Telegraph (imagine that! A local newspaper having an art critic) Bernard Carr identified the qualities that he thought made Allen’s work so special. He wrote:

As the years have rolled on Mr. Allen’s work has shown a thoroughly consistent development. Breadth of vision, a strong sense of design and a striking originality marked his early pastels; it is those same qualities, handled with a finer sense of finesse and a greater measure of technical skill that dominate his greater works of today.

The Tribune would like to thank Dr John Basford for contributing original reporting to this piece. His book, Harry Epworth Allen: Catalogue of His Works (2005) is still available through www.colleybooks.com

[LeadFarmer]

On 20/08/2022 at 15:37, Alastair said:

Coming up for auction in September is Harry Epworth Allen's painting 'Jordanthorpe Farm - Sir Frances Chantrey's Birthplace'

https://www.davidduggleby.com/auctions/160920222089/0/185/HarryEpworthAllenNorthernBritish18941958JordanthorpeFarmSirF.aspx

Anyone know how much it sold for?

[Edmund]

Anyone know how much it sold for?

Lot 185 isn't listed in the results, which jump from 184 to 187, presumably it didn't sell?

[Alastair]

On 17/02/2023 at 16:41, Edmund said:

Anyone know how much it sold for?

Lot 185 isn't listed in the results, which jump from 184 to 187, presumably it didn't sell?

£1300 hammer price, so buyer paid £1627