James Bateman, RA

1893-1959

The End of the Day

Ref: 595

Signed and dated l.r.: J.Bateman/1943

Oil on canvas, 24 1/4 by 29 1/4 ins (62 by 74.5 cm)

Provenance: The Kendal Art Society

Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1944, no.169; Kendal Town Hall, James Bateman 1893-1959 (Memorial exhibition), March 1960, no.19; Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, James Bateman, RA, ARWS Centenary Exhibition, April-June 1993 (illustrated on the exhibition’s invitation)

 

 

Bateman’s finest paintings are characterised by a remarkable sense of stillness and a satisfying tone that perfectly captures the season and the time of day. The present work is a particularly good example, with not one of the rambling farmyard’s incidental details left unobserved in this fine evocation of a farm’s day’s end. One of the artist’s major exhibition paintings, this painting was executed in the middle of the Second World War (from which it is a world away in character), a year after he had been elected as a full member of the Royal Academy in 1942.

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James Bateman, RA, ARWS (1893-1959)

 

Bateman was born into a Westmorland farming family and English rural life is at the heart of his work which frequently features life on a farm and depictions of working aspects of the English countryside. Such works were highly popular in Royal Academy exhibitions during the 1930s where their somewhat nostalgic tone struck a chord with the uncertainty of the period. No fewer than three works by Bateman were acquired by the Chantrey Bequest for the Tate Gallery in 1928, 1935 and 1936, an almost unequalled number for an artist of this period. Bateman originally studied sculpture at Leeds School of Art, subsequently winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. An injury during active service in World War One made him turn to painting. He studied at the Slade and was a Rome Scholarship finalist in 1920, later teaching at Cheltenham and Hammersmith schools of art. He was a member of the New English Art Club, an associate of the Royal Watercolour Society and was elected as a full member of the Royal Academy in 1942. 

 


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