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Charles Mahoney:
The Artist's Garden, circa 1940
Unmounted (ref: 2488)
Pen and ink and wash

Tags: Charles Mahoney ink pen and ink Garden

Provenance: The Artist's Studio

During his years as a student Mahoney lodged at a succession of addresses – an inconvenience that his recurrent ill health coupled with financial hardship and unscrupulous landlords did little to relieve. It was against this background that Oak Cottage, his home from 1937, came to represent such permanence in his life and art. Acquired in 1937, Oak Cottage, in Wrotham, Kent, was very much Mahoney’s spiritual as well as actual home. It was also a home for his mother, Bessie, after she left Anerley in 1937. Charles lived at Oak Cottage from 1937-40, during which period he renovated it, and again from 1945 until his death in 1968. Once the garden that he planted had matured, he seldom worked anywhere else. For Mahoney, Oak Cottage had something of the quality with which Stanley Spencer imbued his childhood home, Fernlea; in both cases the frequent pictorial references to elements of the architecture and garden gives the location an almost mystical quality.

For drawing, Mahoney liked a textured paper, soft to the touch, such as Ingres, or still better, hand-made papers from firms such as Hayle Mill or Barcham Green. Occasionally he bought cheap sketchbooks from Woolworth’s because he found the paper so sympathetic as a surface for drawing. For his earliest drawings he used mainly B or 2B pencils, but he later preferred Black Prince or carbon pencils. He often used charcoal, adding white or red crayons to highlight drawings. Sometimes he combined these with conté crayons or pastels. For his later drawings he preferred pen and wash, taking great trouble to mix and dilute his inks until he achieved the required tone and colour. His drawing pens were either reservoir nibs in holders or else cartridge pens.