Masterpiece 2019

The Redfern Gallery will be showing again at Masterpiece, where a number of works are being offered for sale for the first time.

Among the highlights is a black and white portrait by David Hockney of the American abstract expressionist Paul Jenkins, painted c. 1963. Jenkins was a significant early collector of Hockney's work, and in 1970 lent six major paintings to the Whitechapel Gallery for its Hockney retrospective. This portrait has remained in Jenkins' collection since it was made.  In that same approximate timeframe, a 1968 acrylic on canvas by Paul Jenkins, Phenomena Dervish Teller, painted about 5 years after the Hockney portrait, is on view.

Also on show is Paysage Anthropophage, recently described as SW Hayter's "surrealist masterpiece" by Simon Martin of Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. Commenting on the work in 1981, the poet and critic Eduard Jaguer wrote: "the superb Paysage Anthropophage of 1937 remains one of the most forceful canvases of the pre-war period of surrealism". The painting was first shown at the Mayor Gallery, London, in 1938, and has since been included in various survey shows of Surrealism, especially in France and Spain, from 1981 onwards.

Peter Sedgley’s Colour Pulse III,one of a number of important ‘target’ paintings that the artist began in the late 1960s, will be on show in its own dedicated stand. Ithas been included in several museum exhibitions, including Dynamo – A Century of Light and Movement in Art 1913-2013, Grand Palais, Paris, 2013, as well as Electronic Superhighway, at the Whitechapel Gallery, 2016. A related work is currently on show at Tate Modern, having been purchased by the Tate in 1970.

Other highlights include David Inshaw's striking portrait of the art critic Beatrice Phillpotts, which was first shown at the Brotherhood of Ruralists' Definitive Nude exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1983. Patrick Procktor RA will be represented by an early, gestural oil painting that was first shown in the acclaimed New Generation: 1964, curated by Bryan Robertson and which featured Patrick Caulfield, Hockney, John Hoyland and Riley, among others. 

An early portrait from 1949 by Eileen Agar RA will be shown, having last been seen in Surrealism in England: 1936 and after – an exhibition to celebrate the 50^thanniversary of the First International Surrealist Exhibition in London 1936, which toured the UK including the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, in 1986. In addition, important paintings Paul Feiler, which were selected by the artist for his Tate St Ives retrospective in 1995, will be shown.  

Other artists whose paintings will be on view include Adrian Heath, Patrick Heron CBE, John Hoyland RA, Paul Jenkins, Margaret Mellis, Keith Vaughan, Bryan Wynter, as well as a selection of sculpture in various media by John Carter RA, Lynn Chadwick CBE, Norman Dilworth, Colin Figue, George Kennethson, and Henry Moore OM. 

Masterpiece 2019 runs from 27 June to 3 July.