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John Armstrong:
Sailors and Girls, design for the American bar in the Royal Hotel, Scarborough, 1935-6
Framed (ref: 5226)

Signed with initials JA lower right
gouache on board
18.5 x 54.6 cm (7 1/4 x 21 1/2 in.)

Tags: John Armstrong gouache panel murals

Provenance: The Artist’s Estate 

Literature: Andrew Lambirth, John Armstrong, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2009, p.166; British Murals and Decorative Painting 1920-1960, Sansom & Co, 2013, pp 276-289

Tom Laughton commissioned Armstrong to paint a mural for the American bar in the Royal Hotel, Scarborough in the mid-1930s. The mural no longer
survives but is recorded in this white on blue study. ‘Although there is something of the flavour of Christopher Wood and Edward Burra about it, this intricate linear decoration has a formidable crispness and structure to it, a pictorial logic, which is Armstrong’s own,’ (Andrew Lambirth, British Murals & Decorative Painting 1920-1960, Sansom & Co, p.277)