Osbert Lancaster

Catalogue entry

N05379 GREENERY YALLERY 1939
 
Not inscribed.
Pen and ink, 14×10 (35·5×25·5); the drawing only occupies c. 10 1/2 (26·5) of the height of the paper.
Presented by the artist 1942.
Coll: Messrs John Murray.
Lit: Osbert Lancaster, Homes Sweet Homes, 1939, p.44, repr. p.45.

An illustration to the artist's own book Homes Sweet Homes, a survey of domestic taste, published by John Murray in 1939. ‘Greenery Yallery’ shows an interior of the late nineteenth century, reflecting the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris's Medievalism, the Far East and the style of the Queen Anne period. ‘Surrounded by such testimonies to her inspiration...the intellectual young woman’, who is modelled on Rossetti's types, ‘could safely relax and lend a properly appreciative ear to the patter of Pater and the whispers of Wilde’ (Lancaster, loc. cit.).

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

Read more