Aldeburgh

Margaret Green (1925 - 2003)

Watercolour on paper

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© Margaret Green

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Image of Aldeburgh
  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Government Art Collection
    A light yet cloudy sky dominates this diagonal view onto the sea front in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, with its row of beach huts evocative of British seaside holidays. Young children lounge on the sand near boats pulled out to dry. A fisherman attends to a cage in the middle ground, while a woman stares at the sea with a small dog by her side.

    The holiday life of the region's dunes and beaches was a key element in Margaret Green's work, her figurative painting focusing on country life and domestic interiors in typically small formats. In the 1950s Green and her husband, artist Lionel Bulmer purchased a wilderness-surrounded thatched cottage at Onehouse, near Stowmarket, Suffolk, while always retaining a base in London. Their carefully planned, largely self-sufficient garden produced flowers and fresh produce, as well as a compelling pictorial subject.

    East Anglia has long been an artists' haven with its long, uncluttered vistas and huge, open skies providing a focus for the early 19th century Norwich School artists such as John Crome and John Sell Cotman. The tiny coastal resort of Walberswick, which Green particularly enjoyed, attracted painters associated with the New English Art Club in the late 19th century, such as Fred Brown, Walter Sickert and Philip Wilson Steer.
  • About the artist
    Born in West Hartlepool in 1923, Margaret Green studied at the Hartlepool School of Art before going to the Royal College of Art (1944–47) where she met her future husband Lionel Bulmer. Green taught at Walthamstow College of Art, taking up the role of Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools in the 1960s. Green was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, but was never made a member, though she did become a member of the New English Art Club. She also showed regularly with the London Group, the Leicester Galleries and the New Grafton, where she had a solo show in 1972. Her work slipped briefly from public view, but her reputation was revived by a major joint retrospective which was held at Messum's Cork Street gallery in 2002.
  • Explore
    Places
    England, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, North Sea
    Subjects
    rest/sleep, topography, seascape/coastal scene, dog, beach, man, woman, girl, flag, flagpole, beach hut, deckchair
    Materials & Techniques
    paper (as artists material), watercolour (as artists materials), watercolour (as object name)
  • Details
    Artist
    Margaret Green (1925 - 2003)
    Title
    Aldeburgh
    Date
    Medium
    Watercolour on paper
    Acquisition
    Purchased from Leicester Galleries, September 1953
    Provenance
    Consigned by the artist to Leicester Galleries, London; from whom purchased by the Ministry of Works in August 1953
    GAC number
    2270