Dod Procter

The Orchard

1934

On loan

Laing Art Gallery (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK): The Enchanted Garden

Artist: Dod Procter 1892–1972
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1016 x 1270 mm
frame: 1190 x 1452 x 77 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1937
Reference: N05325

Display caption

This was painted from life in the artist's garden at North Corner, Newlyn, Cornwall. The model is probably Eileen Mayo, a London-based professional model whom Dod Procter invited down to Cornwall and made the subject of several other paintings. All the other paintings of Mayo show her in an interior, this is the only canvas which depicts her nude in the open air. Procter produced numerous paintings of nude women and young girls during the decade 1925 to 1935 which were highly acclaimed for their objectivity and simplicity. What was, and still is, unusual is that these female nudes were painted by a female artist.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

N05325 THE ORCHARD 1934

Inscr. ‘Dod Procter. 34’ b.l.
Canvas, 40×50 (101·5×127).
Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1937.
Exh: R.A., 1934 (708); The Nude in British and French Art, Leger Galleries, February–March 1936 (75 or 78, untitled).
Repr: Royal Academy Illustrated, 1934, p.86; Apollo, XXIII, 1936, p.116.

This picture, representing a recumbent nude, was painted in the artist's garden at Newlyn. In a letter of 12 October 1958 Mrs Procter wrote: ‘The idea behind (very much behind!) the Orchard seems to have been Renoir, but that is not the point. I feel, or rather hope, that the pictures themselves will explain.’

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