BONE Stephen (1904 – 1958)
“Clare College Bridge, Cambridge”
Oil Painting on board. 13 ¾” x 10 ¼”. Signed
Exhibited Leicester Gallery London – Exhibition
of work by Stephen Bone, March 1943, No. 112
Also exhibited City of Manchester Art Gallery No. 195. From the collection of Miss D.B. Fumeaux.
Bears original exhibition
labels
IMAGE
Stephen Bone was a painter, wood
engraver, illustrator, critic, broadcaster and writer. He was born in Chiswick into a family of
writers and artists. His father was the painter
Sir Muirhead Bone and Stephen married the artist Mary
Adshead. After
Bedales School he studied
at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1922 to 1924. From 1920 he began showing with the New
English Art Club and won a gold medal for wood engraving at the 1925 Paris
International Exhibition. In 1926 he
shared a show with Robin Guthrie and Rodney Burn at the Goupil
Gallery and two years later painted a decoration for Piccadilly
Circus underground station (eventually replaced by
advertisements). He travelled
extensively with his wife in the British Isles and on the
continent and exhibited widely in the 1930s, including the Fine Art Society, Lefevre Gallery and Redfern
Gallery. In the late 1930s he was active
in the AIA, helping German refugees to settle in England and find
work. During World War II he became an
officer in camouflage operations in Leamington Spa, and from 1943-45 he served
as an official war artist attached to the Royal Navy. He speciality was
the small oil panel “snapshot”. They
brilliantly evoke the scenes of his wide travels and illustrate his book Albion: An Artist;s Britain, published
in 1939. After the war he concentrated
on his ability to communicate with words.
Bone could be a spellbinder, with a prodigious memory for facts. He served as art critic for the Manchester
Guardian in 1948 and wrote articles for the Yorkshire
Post and Glasgow Herald. He
broadcast on radio and television, in such programmes at The Critics and The Brains
Trust and he wrote children’s books, sometimes working with his wife. In 1957 he was appointed director of Hornsey
College of Art. The Tate Gallery holds
his work. A retrospective exhibition was
held at Sally Hunter Fine Art in 1986.
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