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Kenneth Rowntree:
View from the Studio (Putney), c. 1959
Framed (ref: 6774)
Oil on panel

Tags: Kenneth Rowntree oil panel maritime 1.PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST Modern British Art at Mercers' Hall Kenneth Rowntree - A Kind of Simplicity

Provenance: The Artist's Estate; Jennings Fine Art

Literature: John Milner, Kenneth Rowntree, Lund Humphries, 2002, p 60.

Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.81.

Between 1950 and 1970 Kenneth Rowntree and his family lived in Putney:

In a Chronology compiled  for the 2002 Lund Humphries book, written by John Milner, Diana Rowntree recalled, We found a house on the Thames, upstream of Putney Bridge, and turned the attic into a studio.  Its comfort permanently slowed Kenneth's working speed from the swift tempo demanded by one-day forays into distant landscapes.

The Thames provided Rowntree with a steady stream of subjects - views from his window,paintings of  Putney Reach, and night time scenes such as Putney Bridge, Nightpiece, (an example of which is in the Government Art Collection) which, in a twentieth century modernist idiom, recall Whistlers night paintings.

Rowntree designed his own frames, often using, for works on paper, a moulding favoured by Ravilious with a wooden slip. For  oil and acrylic  paintings  he favoured a tray-frame within which images would float over a  hessian ground.  In a letter to the Tate Gallery Conservation Department (dated 12 March 1985), the artist records that he designed and refinished the surface of his frames  many of which were made by Mr Davey, joiner and undertaker of Great Bardfield'. 'The painted slips', he added, 'are part of the original frame'.