Tags: Kenneth Rowntree acrylic panel Canney Abstract Art landscape 1.Master Designs Garden Museum Kenneth Rowntree: A Centenary Exhibition RCAGardenMusuem Slade Garden Museum Kenneth Rowntree - A Kind of Simplicity
Provenance: The Artist's Family
Literature: Kenneth Rowntree, A Centenary Exhibition, Moore-Gwyn Fine Art and Liss Llewellyn Fine Art, 2015, Cat. 50, p.95; Christopher Woodward, Sanctuary: Artist-Gardeners, 1919–1939, published by Liss Llewellyn, 2020
Exhibited: Tyne and Wear Museums, Kenneth Rowntree: paintings, drawings and collages, December 1976 – January 1977, cat no.71; Fry Art Gallery, Kenneth Rowntree, A Centenary Exhibition, 2015, no 26; Sanctuary, Artist-Gardeners, 1919-39, Garden Museum, London, 25th February – 5 April, 2020
Kenneth Rowntree and his family lived in Putney between 1950 and 1970. Diana Rowntree later 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 Whistler's night paintings.
