Mary Potter

East Coast Window

exhibited 1959

© The estate of Mary Potter

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Not on display

Artist: Mary Potter 1900–1981
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 737 × 914 mm
frame: 847 × 1040 × 77 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1963
Reference: T00584

Display caption

Mary Attenborough studied at the Slade School of Art from 1918-21 and married the writer Stephen Potter in 1927. During the 1930s they lived at Chiswick where she painted views of the river. In 1951 they moved to the Red House, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, selling it in 1957 to Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. Mary Potter then lived in Crag House on the Aldeburgh sea front while a studio was built for her in the Red House garden. This is a view from Crag House, painted in Potter's distinctive pale and delicate colours.

Gallery label, August 1999

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Catalogue entry

T00584 EAST COAST WINDOW c. 1959

Not inscribed.
Canvas, 28×36 (71×91·5).
Chantrey Purchase from the Beaux Arts Gallery 1963.
Coll: Purchased by the Beaux Arts Gallery from the London Group exhibition 1959.
Exh: London Group, 1959 (97); R.A., 1963 (86).

The artist wrote (4 September 1963) that the picture was not exactly painted from the window of Crag House, her then home at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, but that ‘my studio is right on the sea, and I sort of half paint what I see and half make it up’.

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