Edna Ginesi

Landscape, North Wales 1937

N04969

Oil on canvas
639 x 812 (25 1/8 x 32)

Inscribed in red paint, 'E.Ginesi 37' b.r.

Presented by Mrs Hazel King-Farlow (subsequently Mrs Hazel McKinley) 1938

Provenance:
Purchased from the artist by the donor 1938

Exhibited:
London Group, Nov.-Dec. 1938 (151, as North Wales)

Literature:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, Tate Gallery: The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, I, London 1964, p.238

Landscape, North Wales shows a view near Portmadoc on the edge of Snowdonia. It was painted after Ginesi and Coxon had travelled to Penrhyndeudraeth on the first of their numerous trips to Wales. Ginesi has recalled that on these trips she and Coxon would pitch a tent, to protect their paintings as much as themselves, from which they would walk for miles in different directions to work in isolation.1 Though she did not specifically recall painting Landscape, North Wales she was certain that it was painted on the spot, not least because she saw it as 'a bit crude'. This is borne out by the rapid and rough nature of the underdrawing, visible around the top of the mountain, and of the application of the paint itself. In addition to Wales, the two artists also made similar repeated trips to the Pennines and the Lake District, because in these places, Ginesi said, 'the landscape moves ... it moves up and down, and round about'.2 Raymond Coxon's Mountain Landscape which, though similar to Landscape, North Wales, was painted in the Pennines, is also in the Tate Gallery collection (N04968).

The paint in Landscape, North Wales has been applied in multiple layers over a thick white ground. The use of such a ground gives the colours a rich luminosity which, with the expressive brushwork, creates the picture's characteristic vivacity. In this regard it recalls some of the earlier work of artists associated with the 7 & 5 Society like Ivon Hitchens and Frances Hodgkins. It also indicates Ginesi's knowledge of French painting: her use of short brushmarks reveal her debt to Cézanne and the overall tenor of the painting is similar to the landscapes of André Derain whose work was widely exhibited in London in the 1930s.

Both Landscape, North Wales and Everglades (Tate Gallery T00688) were purchased by Mrs Hazel McKinley (formerly Mrs Hazel King-Farlow) for presentation to the Tate Gallery. She presented Landscape, North Wales at the same time as Raymond Coxon's Mountain Landscape, a month after the board of trustees had accepted her gift of Kandinsky's Cossacks (N04948). A painter herself, Hazel McKinley (1903-1995) was taught by Coxon and Ginesi while they were still at the Royal College of Art. The sister of the famous collector Peggy Guggenheim, she lived, at various times, in London and America and for a period had a gallery in Hollywood. An exhibition of her views of London in 1965 included a number of paintings of Hammersmith Terrace, where the Coxons had their home.

Chris Stephens
March 1996

1 Interview with the author, 7 Feb. 1996
2 Ibid.