PALM TREES AND CHURCH, ST EWE, CORNWALL
signed Edward Bawden lower right; signed, dated and inscribed Edward Bawden / 1981 / St. Ewe Church / & Palms / Cornwall on the reverse
pen and ink and watercolour on paper
50 x 63cm; 19 3/4 x 24 3/4in
65.5 x 78cm; 25 3/4 x 30 3/4in (framed)

Property from the Collection of John Holden

Provenance
Estate of the artist
A gift from the above to the present owner for being co-executor of Edward Bawden's estate

Exhibited
Penzance, Newlyn Orion, Looking West, 1987
London, Fine Art Society, Edward Bawden, Retrospective Exhibition, 1989, no. 26
London, Fine Art Society, 1988 & 1990

Although Bawden lived in Essex all his life, he was of Cornish ancestry, and often travelled to Cornwall for a few weeks in the summer in the company of the printmaker and illustrator Christopher Brown. There is a photograph of Bawden in front of St Ewe, next to his ancestor's gravestone taken by Brown. In the present watercolour a First World War Memorial in the style of a granite celtic cross on which Bawden's relatives are engraved is faintly visible through the fronds on the left of the composition. Bawden gives the small tombstones on the right blue shadows, and uses soft greens and blues even for the stonework of the church, bringing the setting harmoniously together. Bawden seldom dated his watercolours, the present work appears to have been painted in the 1980s.

We are grateful to Peyton Skipwith for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.