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.
BACK