James Dickson Innes

Arenig, Sunny Evening

c.1911–12

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Not on display

Artist: James Dickson Innes 1887–1914
Medium: Oil paint on wood
Dimensions: Support: 229 × 324 mm
frame: 382 × 480 × 90 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1942
Reference: N05367

Display caption

During his short life Innes stayed for several seasons in North Wales, close to the Arenig mountains, where he painted these small landscapes on wooden panels. Often they have peculiarly vivid colours, and he simplified the outline of the mountains to a single profile that he drew many times. North Wales was then remote and rarely visited by artists, and was imagined by Innes as a primitive land.
Innes was a pioneer in Britain of these directly painted landscapes in strong colours, which he first used in Collioure in the South of France in 1908. He exhibited with the Camden Town Group in 1911, but like Augustus John was only a fringe member.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

N05367 ARENIG, SUNNY EVENING c. 1911–12

Inscr. on the back ‘Arenig Sunny Evening’.
Oil on plywood, 9×12 3/4 (23×32); 1/4 in. of board on right not painted on.
Purchased from the Redfern Gallery (Benson Fund) 1942.
Coll: Sir Cyril Kendall Butler; Redfern Gallery.
Exh: Augustus John, J. D. Innes, Derwent Lees: Paintings 1910–14, Redfern Gallery, February–March 1939 (52).

As Innes painted a number of pictures of Arenig it is not possible to trace the provenance of this work with certainty, but it was probably No.82 in the Innes Memorial exhibition at the Tate Gallery, 1921–2, as ‘Arenig: Sunny Evening’, lent by Horace de Vere Cole. See also N03578 and N04385.

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