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WILLIAM NEWCOMBE (1907 – 1969)

“Hanging in Air”

Watercolour. Signed. 18 7/8” x 28”

Also signed, titled and dated London Dec. 1960 on reverse IMAGE

“Reflections”

Watercolour, Pencil & Chalk. Signed. 15 ¾” x 19 ¼”

(irregular shape) IMAGE

William Newcombe was a versatile artist, born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where he attended King Edward High School, Vancouver. Although he had some lessons from F.H. Varley, he was mainly self-taught, his early career encompassing commercial art, cartooning and staff artist for The Province, Vancouver. In 1941 he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and flew as an air-gunner in many missions over Europe He broke his leg while parachuting after his plane was shot down and was discharged back to Canada where he began to exhibit. He also exhibited in America. From 1946 he lived for a year in Mexico. In 1955 he returned to Europe and settled in England, although he paid a visit to Canada in 1958. He took part in many group shows, including Nicholas Treadwell Gallery in 1965 and held extensive solo exhibitions in Britain and abroad, including London where he lived. He had a series at the Obelisk Gallery from 1956 and the New Vision Centre Gallery from 1958. He also exhibited at Manchester City Art Gallery in 1961 and Elizabethan Manor House Gallery, Ilkley in 1962. The Manchester Guardian critic W.E. Johnson compared Bill Newcombe's work with that of Sam Francis, and mentioned the bent matches and pieces of rope that were sometimes included and praised its rightness, evoking "a sensual pleasure somewhere midway between the coldly clinical pure mathematics of the Constructivist and the passionate heat of the Fauve". Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, Boston Museum of Fine Art in America, the National Gallery of Israel in Tel-Avis and many other international collections hold examples of work by William Newcombe. His Abstract Expressionist works were shown at Obelisk Gallery in 1988.

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