Algernon Newton

The Surrey Canal, Camberwell

1935

On loan

Shanghai Art Museum (Shanghai, China): British Landscape

Artist: Algernon Newton 1880–1968
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 718 x 914 mm
frame: 860 x 1062 x 85 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1940
Reference: N05343

Display caption

Newton began to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy summer shows in 1923 and he continued to send paintings for several decades. His chosen subjects were views of London, mostly in the St John's Wood, Hampstead, Kentish Town and Paddington areas. He was particularly fond of including a stretch of water in his compositions and often chose back-street views of canals, as here. He liked the slightly forlorn Regency and early Victorian terraces that faced the canals, and gave them a curiously uninhabited look. He once wrote: 'There is beauty to be found in everything, you only have to search for it; a gasometer can make as beautiful a picture as a palace on the Grand Canal, Venice. It simply depends on the artist's vision.'

Gallery label, August 2004

Catalogue entry

N05343 THE SURREY CANAL, CAMBERWELL 1935

Inscr. ‘acn [in monogram]. 35’ b.l.
Canvas, 28 1/4×36 (71·5×91·5).
Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1940.
Exh: R.A., 1935 (118); International Exhibition, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1936 (103); United Artists, R.A., January–March 1940 (896).
Repr: Hesketh Hubbard, A Hundred Years of British Painting 1851–1951, 1951, pl.95.

A typical example of the artist's many London views.

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