James Dickson Innes

Arenig, North Wales

1913

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Not on display

Artist: James Dickson Innes 1887–1914
Medium: Oil paint on plywood
Dimensions: Support: 857 × 1137 mm
frame: 1159 × 1441 × 108 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Rowland Burdon-Muller 1928
Reference: N04385

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Innes and Augustus John painted together at Nant-Ddu in autumn 1911 and summer 1912. John wrote that Innes 'was never happier than when painting in this district'. Arenig is the name of the mountain to the north-west of Lake Bala, the shore of which can be seen in the foreground, viewed from Nant-Ddu. This is the largest and latest of all Innes's known paintings of Arenig, and it may have been completed in London rather than on site in North Wales. It shows the influence of pictures by Matisse and Le Douanier Rousseau, which Innes may have seen in Paris.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

N04385 ARENIG, NORTH WALES 1913

Inscr. ‘J D Innes 1913’ b.r.
Oil on plywood, 33 3/4×44 3/4 (86×114).
Presented by Rowland Burdon-Muller 1928.
Coll: John Quinn, New York, sold American Art Association, New York, 11 February 1927 (506, repr.), bought by W. M. Crane; sold to R. Burdon-Muller of Boston 1928 for presentation to the Tate Gallery.
Exh: Chenil Galleries, 1913 (12) (according to a label on the stretcher; the catalogue has not been traced).
Lit: John Rothenstein, Modern English Painters: Lewis to Moore, 1956, p.72.
Repr: Burlington Magazine, LXXXII, 1943, p.6; Fothergill, 1946, pl.48.

‘Completed winter-spring 1913’ is inscribed on a label. Augustus John, in his Introduction to the Innes Memorial exhibition at the Chenil Galleries 1923, wrote: ‘In North Wales he discovered the mountain of Arenig and made it his own. On and around it he did his first and most inspired work.’

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