Evelyn Dunbar

Winter Garden

c.1929–37

On loan

St Barbe Museum (Lymington, UK): The Seasons

Artist: Evelyn Dunbar 1906–1960
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 305 × 914 mm
frame: 383 × 995 × 54 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1940
Reference: N05212

Display caption

Dunbar's parents lived at Strood near Rochester in Kent and this picture is a record of their garden. Between 1929 and 1933 the artist attended Rochester Art School, Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London and remembered that this painting was begun before arriving in London as an art student and finished off around 1937. In that same year Dunbar wrote and illustrated the book 'Gardeners' Choice', along with the painter Charles Mahoney, who had been her teacher at the Royal College. Dunbar also executed murals at Brockley School, near Lewisham in the mid 1930s and was an Official War Artist during the Second World War.
This painting was chosen by Eleanor Bron.

Gallery label, September 2004

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Catalogue entry

N05212 WINTER GARDEN c. 1929–37

Inscr. ‘Evelyn Dunbar’ b.r.
Canvas, 12×36 (30×91).
Purchased from the artist (Knapping Fund) 1940.
Exh: Cross-Section of English Painting 1938, Wildenstein, March–April 1938 (1).

The artist wrote (7 May 1956): ‘Begun before I came to London as a student, and finished later, about 1937. It was painted in the garden of my parents' home at Strood, Rochester, Kent.’

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I