LIONEL BULMER (BRITISH 1919-1992)
TWO WOMEN READING ON THE SOFA
oil on canvas
38.5 x 61cm; 15 x 24in
unframed

LIONEL BULMER (LOTS 40-55)

Introduction
Lionel Bulmer’s coastal views of summer on the Suffolk coast came to define his career. His impressionistic style was ideally suited to evoking the realism of a hot summer's day on the sand dunes. The critic Ian Collins noted of Bulmer’s work: ‘the season appears to be one of permanent summer.’

The son of an architect, Bulmer's studies at Clapham School of Art were interrupted by being conscripted at the outbreak of the Second World War. On being de-mobbed he studied at the Royal College of Art, at that time relocated in Ambleside in the Lake District, where he met fellow artist and life partner to be Margaret Green (see lots 56-67). When the RCA returned to Kensington Bulmer and Green were taught by, among others, Ruskin Spear and Carel Weight. When Green received an RCA travel scholarship the couple embarked on a tour of discovery, painting their way through France and Ireland for the best part of a year.

On their return to London they settled in Chelsea, Bulmer taught at Kingston School of Art while Green taught at Walthamstow School of Art and they both exhibited at the Royal Academy and New English Art Club. Tiring of the austerity and smog of post-War London they sought out life in the countryside. Initially they lived above a boat house in Littlehampton, on the Sussex coast, but soon moved to an ancient thatched cottage surrounded by run down gardens in Shelland, near Stowmarket, Suffolk, which they lovingly restored. From there they set out on their frequent painting expeditions to the coastal communities of Southwold and Walberswick.

Untouched by heavy industry, the area represented a rural idyll that was to become the central motif of Bulmer’s work. Popular since the 18^th century as a destination for seawater swimming, and following in the footsteps of the painter Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942), Bulmer was drawn to recording beach scenes and bathers. Steer had made the East Coast his painting ground after returning from studying on the Continent and brought Impressionist painting to England. Bulmer’s pointillist style reflects both Steer's influence and also more directly that of the Neo-Impressionists, Georges Seurat (1859-1891) in particular.