Stanley Simmonds
{{short description|English painter}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2017}}
{{Use British English|date=May 2017}}
{{Infobox artist
| name = Stanley Simmonds
| honorific_suffix = ARCA
| image = Stanley_simmonds.jpg
| image_size =
| caption = Simmonds alongside one of his portraits of Charles Causley
| birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1917|10|29}}
| birth_place = Droitwich, Worcestershire, England
| death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|2006|6|22|1917|10|29}}
| death_place = Launceston, Cornwall, England
| nationality = British
| spouse = Cynthia Kathleen King
| education = {{unbulleted list| Royal Grammar School Worcester | Birmingham College of Art | Royal College of Art}}
| field = Painter, Art teacher
| website = {{URL|stanleysimmonds.com}}
}}
Stanley Wilfred Simmonds ARCA (29 October 1917 – 11 June 2006){{sfn|General Register Office|2006}}{{sfn|Probate Service|2016}} was a British painter and art teacher.
He was born in Droitwich, Worcestershire, England, in 1917, the third and youngest son of a relief signalman and a dressmaker.{{sfn|Moncrieff|2013}} After a scholarship to the Royal Grammar School Worcester, he attended Birmingham College of Art from 1934 to 1939. During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Navy, where he encountered the poet Charles Causley, who was to remain a lifelong friend.{{sfn|Moncrieff-Bray Gallery|2015}} He painted a number of portraits of Causley, and the poet dedicated his 1970 book of poems for children, Figgie Hobbin to Simmonds and his wife.{{sfn|Green|2013|p=152}} Serving aboard the aircraft carrier {{HMS|Arbiter|D31|6}}, he observed the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.{{sfn|Wells|Hazelgrove|2011|p=79}} Service in the Far East awoke an interest in oriental art, which is reflected in the colour-palette of some his later paintings.{{sfn|Artemis Arts|2016}}
After the war, he studied at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1948 with the ARCA in Painting.{{sfn|Artemis Arts|2016}} It was around this time that he married the artist Cynthia King, whom he had met at the college.{{sfn|Moncrieff-Bray Gallery|2015}}
In 1949 he began teaching art at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School, where he was to remain for the entirety of his teaching career.{{sfn|Moncrieff|2013}} Among his pupils was Quentin Blake, who has paid tribute to him as a mentor:
He was enormously helpful and valuable to me, as I am sure he was to many others, because his commentary on your work was not a question of marks and assessment but an adult exchange about what you had actually done.{{sfn|Blake|2013}}
This is supported by the school's historian, who notes that Simmonds fought against the headmaster's "relentless drive for academic laurels".{{sfn|Wells|Hazelgrove|2011|p=96}}
Style
File:Doitwich_Orchard_small.jpgHis early work was purely figurative, with portraits, urban and country scenes, exemplified by Droitwich Orchard. These early works were praised by a reviewer as
lavish landscape oil paintings, which could be equated to the eloquence of Wordsworth in a frame. Typical of his early work, the luscious strokes of deep greens and bursts of colour capture England’s delicate wilderness beautifully.{{sfn|Read|2014}}
In the post-war period, his paintings developed a more abstract approach, though still reflecting the physical world,{{sfn|Artemis Arts|2016}} as seen in a series of paintings of Billingsgate Market and its porters:
His paintings of the market document his journey from figuration through to abstraction, exploring blocks of colour and tonal valuation but all imbued with the light and atmosphere of the market at dawn.{{sfn|Moncrieff-Bray Gallery|2015}}
In later years he started to embrace a more complete abstraction, seen, for example, in the Untitled painting shown here, originally exhibited in 1960.
Of Simmonds's development, Quentin Blake commented:
The Billingsgate paintings were evidently the fruit of many studies made on site; but it wasn’t, you felt, the detail of everyday life that took the artist’s attention as much as, together with substantial reality, the architecture of forms supplied by the porters and their surroundings. Those pictures were soon followed by a remarkable development into abstraction. What was formerly substance becomes atmosphere. It is a world of movement, distance, luminosity, but one which the architecture of the canvas is still disposed with authority.{{sfn|Moncrieff-Bray Gallery|2015}}
File:Stanley Simmonds Untitled 1960.jpg
His retirement to Cornwall saw a return to more representational work, such as the paintings of the Barbican harbour in Plymouth, though these still had a strong abstract flavour.{{sfn|Moncrieff-Bray Gallery|2015}}
Exhibitions
He exhibited at the Royal Academy and with the London Group. In 1958, he was part of the Contemporary British Landscape Painters exhibition at the Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford, along with John Piper, John Bratby and Ivon Hitchens, and he had a number of further exhibitions at that gallery. In 1963 Hertford College, Oxford, hosted a joint exhibition of work by Simmonds and Quentin Blake.{{sfn|stanleysimmonds.com|2013}}
In 1978, Simmonds was awarded The George Rowney Prize for Oil Painting in "The Spirit of London Competition2. Alongside his work as a painter, he undertook book illustration and theatre design. {{sfn|Artemis Arts|2016}}
Later life
In 1983, he retired from teaching, and he and Cynthia moved to South Petherwin, near Launceston in Cornwall, home of his friend Charles Causley.{{sfn|Moncrieff-Bray Gallery|2015}} There, he set up a studio in a former Bible Christian chapel,{{sfn|Gillbard|2013|p=82}} where he continued to paint until his death in 2006.{{sfn|Moncrieff-Bray Gallery|2015}}{{sfn|Telegraph Announcements|2006}} Cynthia Simmonds died in 2012.{{sfn|Telegraph Announcements|2012}} Retrospective exhibitions of his work were held in Launceston in 2012, organised by the Charles Causley Society,{{sfn|stanleysimmonds.com|2013}} Lewes in 2014{{sfn|Artemis Arts|2016}} and Egdean, Sussex, in 2015.{{sfn|Moncrieff-Bray Gallery|2015}} The Lewes retrospective was described by Quentin Blake as "an eloquent tribute to an exemplary life in art".{{sfn|Artemis Arts|2016}}
Publications
- {{cite book |last=Causley|first=Charles |title=Six Women| others=illustrated by Stanley Simmonds| series= Keepsake Poem 14|publisher=Keepsake Press|year=1973 |location=Richmond, Surrey}}
- {{cite book |last=Causley|first=Charles |title=Here we go round the Round House| others=illustrated by Stanley Simmonds| publisher=New Broom Press|year=1976 |location=Leicester |isbn=0901870234}}
- {{cite book |last=Savage|first=Toni|title=Dancing Grace| others=illustrated by Stanley Simmonds| publisher=Toni Savage|series=Phoenix Broadsheet 115|year=1976 |location=Leicester }}
References
{{Reflist |30em}}
Sources
- {{cite web |url=http://www.artemis-arts.co.uk/stanley_simmonds.html |title=Stanley Simmonds ARCA 1917–2006. A Retrospective Exhibition |author=Artemis Arts |date=15 June 2016 |website=Artemis Arts |publisher= |access-date=7 May 2017 }}
- {{cite web |url=http://stanleysimmonds.com/ |title=An introduction to Stanley Simmonds by Quentin Blake|author-first=Quentin|author-last=Blake |year=2013 |website=stanleysimmonds.com |publisher= |access-date=9 May 2017 }}
- {{cite web |url=http://search.findmypast.co.uk/record?id=bmd%2fd%2f2006%2f6%2f87337837 |title=England & Wales Deaths 1837–2007 |author=General Register Office |year=2006 |website=Findmypast |publisher= |access-date=9 May 2017}}(subscription required)
- {{cite book |last=Gillbard|first=John|title=South Petherwin Parish Past & Present No 1| publisher=Gillbard Press|year=2013 |location=Redruth|isbn=978-0957609648}}
- {{cite book |last=Green|first=Laurence|title=All Cornwall Thunders at My Door: A Biography of Charles Causley| publisher=Cornovia Press|year=2013 |location=Sheffield |isbn=978-1-908878-08-3}}
- {{cite web |url=http://stanleysimmonds.com/about/ |title=A short biography of Stanley Simmonds|first=Elspeth |last=Moncrieff |year=2013 |website=stanleysimmonds.com |publisher= |access-date=7 May 2017 }}
- {{cite web |url=http://www.moncrieff-bray.com/press-releases/stanley-simmonds-1917-2006-paintings-from-his-cornish-studio |title=Stanley Simmonds (1917–2006) Paintings from his Cornish Studio |author=Moncrieff-Bray Gallery |date=6 October 2015 |website=Moncrieff-Bray Gallery |publisher= |access-date=7 May 2017 }}
- {{cite web |url=https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/Wills?Surname=simmonds&SurnameGrants=simmonds&YearOfDeath=2006&YearOfDeathGrants=2006&IsGrantSearch=True&IsCalendarSearch=False#wills |title=Find a will |author=Probate Service |year=2016 |website=GOV.UK |publisher= |access-date=9 May 2017 }}
- {{cite web |url=http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/11215567.display/ |title=Brighton Fringe: Stanley Simmonds: A Retrospective 1917–2006, Lewes House, Lewes, until May 25|last=Read|first=Rebecca |date=15 May 2014|website=The Argus |publisher= |access-date=28 June 2017 }}
- {{cite web |url=http://stanleysimmonds.com/previous-exhibitions/ |title=Stanley Simmonds. A list of previous exhibitions|author=stanleysimmonds.com |year=2013 |website=stanleysimmonds.com |publisher= |access-date=8 May 2017 }}
- {{cite web |url=http://announcements.telegraph.co.uk/deaths/8353/simmonds |title= Deaths>Simmonds |author=Telegraph Announcements |year=2006 |website=Telegraph Announcements |publisher= |access-date=11 May 2017}}
- {{cite web |url=http://announcements.telegraph.co.uk/deaths/147798/simmonds |title= Deaths>Simmonds |author=Telegraph Announcements |year=2012 |website=Telegraph Announcements |publisher= |access-date=11 May 2017}}
- {{cite book |author-last1=Wells|author-first1=Charles |author-last2=Hazelgrove|author-first2=John |title=Past Purple: A History of Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School| publisher=Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School|edition=2|date=2011 |location=London |isbn=978-0-9569063-0-4}}
External links
- [http://stanleysimmonds.com/ Official Web Site]
- [https://artuk.org/discover/artists/simmonds-stanley-19172006 Art UK: Stanley Simmonds]
- [https://www.askart.com/artist/artist/11130628/artist.aspx?q=11772015 askART: Stanley Simmonds]
- [https://www.webofstories.com/play/quentin.blake/8 Quentin Blake: Stanley Simmonds and preparing to read English at Cambridge]
- [http://images.archant.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.2235854.1371153608!/image/3914142866.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/3914142866.jpg Portrait of Charles Causley Stanley Simmonds]
- [http://broadwaybaby.com/shows/stanley-simmonds/36967 Review of the Lewes retrospective by Duncan Grindall]
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Category:20th-century English male artists
Category:20th-century English painters
Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Art
Category:English male painters