Signed l.r.: C.Ginner

Oil on canvas, 43 by 55 cm (17 by 21 ½ ins)

Provenance: acquired by Viscountess Helburn at the Goupil Gallery in 1925; acquired by the previous owners at the Fine Art Society, New Bond Street, in 2011

Exhibited: Goupil Gallery, London, November – December 1925, no.37; Fine Art Society, London, Camden Town Group Centenary Exhibition, June-July 2011, no.22

Ginner lived for most of his later life on Hampstead High Street and the immediate area including Flask Walk opposite and the Heath itself feature as a subject in many of his London pictures. Having been a founder member of the Camden Town Group in 1911 and a leading light in the London Group that grew out of it, Ginner went to have a longer and (at times) more successful artistic career than many of his contemporaries. Along with Harold Gilman he wrote a manifesto in 1914 in which they coined the term “Neo-Realism” – a form of painting characterised by a rigorous observation of nature. It was this that came to define his work. Ginner’s paintings are notable for their thick use of impasto which helps in conveying the texture, colour and tone of their subject.

Ginner used the present work as the inspiration for a woodcut of Hampstead Heath from 1930 (see fig, 1 below).

Fig.1. Charles Ginner - On the West Heath, Hampstead, 1930, original woodcut in black ink, 210 by 260 mm