Barnett Freedman

Catalogue entry

N05201 STREET SCENE 1933–9
 
Inscr. ‘Barnett Freedman 39’ b.l. and on back of canvas ‘Canvas started Summer 1933 finished drawing Jan. 12th 1937 painting begun Jan. 18th 37, completed Jan. 23rd 39.’
Canvas, 72×84 1/2 (183×215).
Purchased from the artist (Knapping Fund) 1939.
Exh: Arts Council, October–November 1958 and provincial tour (29, repr. pl.3).
Repr: Studio, CXXII, 1941, p.63.

The artist said in 1956 that there had been many preliminary studies, but these had disappeared and he had no record of them. The scene was not a specific street, but a composition based on various sketches done from memory. A drawing of a ‘London Street Scene’ reproduced in the Studio, CIX, 1935, p.90, may be a variation of a similar theme. A squared-up study for the old fiddler dated 1934 was in the Arts Council Memorial exhibition 1958 (52), as well as other studies, ‘People’ 1934 (26), ‘Study for a Street Scene’ c. 1928 (39), and a drawing (unnumbered) lent by Sir Kenneth Clark.

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

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