Lot 416: FRANCIS HENRY NEWBERY 1855-1946

signed l.r.: Francis H Newbery.

oil on canvas

110 1/2 by 74 cm., 45 1/2 by 29 in.

Possibly, Royal Academy, 1890, no. 1133 as 'A Summer's Day'

Francis Henry Newbery was born on the 15th May 1855 in Membury in Devon, where many years later in 1926 he painted a triptych for the local church of The Holy Spirit and St. Edward. He was raised in Dorset and trained to be an Art Master at Bridport until 1875 when he progressed to the National Art Training School at South Kensington where he studied under Edward Poynter. It was his association with the Glasgow School of Art which led to his greatest success from the early 1880s onwards. By 1885 at the age of thirty he had taught in virtually every class at the Glasgow School of Art, where he was known as Fra Newbery and was made Headmaster of the influential school. It was under his direction that the Glasgow School of Art prospered, with the likes of Jessie Marion King, Frances MacDonald, Herbert MacNair and Charles Rennie Mackintosh encouraged by his great support and with teachers like Jean Delville, Maurice Greiffenhagen and Adolphe Giraldon attracted to the school. It was his insistance upon Mackintosh designing theTurin Exhibition of Decorative Art in 1902 that led to an enthusiasm for the work of the Glasgow School and for this he was awarded the honour of the Italian equivalent of a knighthood, the order of the Cavaliere Ufficiale dell' Ordine della Corona d'Italia. Under his influence, the school became one of the most progressive and important academy's in Europe, with a particular emphasis on the encouragement of women artists and designers.

A Summer's Day was painted at Walberswick on the Suffolk coast, where from 1890 onwards Newbery holidayed every year, often with fellow artists like Mackintosh. The view is towards the neighbouring town of Southwold on the Blythe estuary, an area of Dorset which had been favoured for artists for many years. It was here that Edward Stott and and Philip Wilson Steer often painted on the beach and the surrounding area. The female figure sitting in the doorway of A Summer Day is probably Newbery's wife Jessie Wylie Rowat (1853-1946), the principle at his school, who he married in 1889. She was a skilled designer and taught enamelling, needlework, mosaic and book illustration between 1894 and 1908 at her husband's school. Newbery exhibited a portrait of Jessie at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Art in 1893. The Newbery's marriage lasted for fifty seven years and they had two daughters one of whom appears to have been Miss Mary Newbery who exhibited floral studies at the RGI from 1911 to 1949. Jessie survived her husband by only sixteen months.

Newbery exhibited widely, at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Scottish Academy and Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts and at the Paris Salon. He was particularly admired in Italy and his work can be found in the museum at Turin. His exhibition with works by the Glasgow Boys led to a close association with him and John Lavery, E. A. Walton and James Guthrie. The Glasgow School of Art retain a large archive of documents relating to Newbury's time at the school, before his retirement to live at Corfe Castle in Dorset in 1918.