SOLDThe Fair (Punch and Judy), circa 1960
Unmounted (ref: 5504)
Pen and ink and watercolour
11 1/2 x 15 1/4 in. (29 x 38.7 cm)
SOLDProvenance: with the artist until 1980; thereafter with his son.
Rhoades made a number of studies of this composition eventually turning it into a large oil painting (collection of the artist's son).
Rhoades was a painter in oil, watercolour and a variety of graphic media, a printmaker
and also a very successful and loved teacher. Born in London,
Rhoades studied painting at Clapham
Art School
1915-7, then after World War I service in the Mercantile Marine attended the
Slade School of Fine Art under Henry Tonks 1919-23. His landscapes, figure
studies and flower paintings reflect his love of natural history and interest
in the classical world. When Rhoades left the Slade Tonks said: "You've
something I haven't - imagination," and Rhoades' inner life did nourish
his work throughout his career. His pictures are unmistakeably English in their
understatedness. In the mid-1920s Rhoades completed murals and other work for
the owners of Stoke Rochford House, in Lincolnshire.
During the Second World War, he lived close to and was friends with the group
of artists, including Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, who moved to Great Bardfield
in Essex. He held a series of teaching
posts, notably at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford, 1953-72. He exhibited at the NEAC, RI
and Goupil Gallery and had one-man shows at Maltzahn Gallery, Ashmolean Museum,
Mall Galleries and Sally Hunter Fine Art, 1987. The Tate Gallery, Ashmolean Museum, Victoria
& Albert Museum and provincial galleries hold his
work. He lived in Cuddington, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
