MORLEY BURY (1919 – 1999)
“Le Jardin Publique”
Oil Painting on Canvas. 30”
x 40” (762 x 1016mm)
Signed with monogram and
dated ’65 (1965)
Titled on reverse. IMAGE
Morley Bury was a painter in oil and was also a teacher. He was
born in Bournemouth and christened John Morley Bury. He grew up in Holdenhurst and “made up my
mind to be an artist while I was still at the village school.” After Bournemouth School he attended
Bournemouth Municipal College of Art from 1937 to 1939, where his teacher Johnny
Walker was a strong influence. He then
attended Reading University from 1939 to 1940.
He spent six years in the Army, with a tank regiment in the Western
Desert and was then a prisoner of war in Italy and Germany, being freed by
Russian troops and repatriated. After
the war Bury returned to Reading University, where he met his wife, art
historian Shirley Bury. He also attended
Regent Street Polytechnic and Goldsmiths College as well as studying textiles
at evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. He also attended a course of lectures at the
Courtauld Institute. He taught part time
at Emanuel School, Wandsworth, from 1948 to 1958 and then part time at Hornsey
College of Art until retirement in 1984.
Mixed shows included the New English Art Club in 1950; the London Group
and Daily Express Young Artists, both in 1954; Vision and Reality, Wakefield
City Art Gallery in 1957; 3 Artists, South London Art Gallery in 1961; Centaur
Gallery, 1970 and the Forgotten Fifties, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield and tour
1984. Bury also showed with AIA,
Hampstead Artists’ Council, Heal’s Mansard Gallery and Everyman Foyer,
Hampstead where he had a series of solo exhibitions from 1960. Public collections include the Victoria and
Albert Museum, Salford Art Gallery, Nuffield Foundation and various education
committees, plus Cambridge University, and corporate collections include
Staveley Industries, Lintas and Rank Xerox.
The Tate Gallery archive holds Bury’s self-portrait. His interest in figure subjects in the 1950s
changed to landscape in the 1960s, landscapes “not real but a collection of
seen ideas. Gradually texture of the
paint became more important.” He wrote
that “studies in the organisation of colour relationships and the optical
qualities which create a sense of space” were important to him. He lived in London.
