GEORGE WARNER ALLEN (BRITISH 1916-1988)
(I) & (II) TWO STUDIES FOR LOVE IN A VALLEY; (III) STUDY FOR SLEEPING VENUS
each inscribed by another hand with the artist’s name, the titles and dates of each work together with other annotations along the lower edge
(i) black and red chalks and watercolour heightened with white gouache on buff paper; (ii) & (iii) pencil on paper
each approx. 29.5 x 39cm; 11 1/2 x 15 1/2in
all unframed
(3)

Allen's painting Love in a Valley of 1951 was inspired by verses from the eponymous poem by George Meredith (1928-1909):
Under yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward / Couched with her arms behind her golden head / Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly / Lies my young love sleeping in the shade. [...]. Allen’s painting Sleeping Venus painted in 1967-8 is in the collection of Swindon Art Gallery.

George Warner Allen (lots 70-77)

[Allen's] reveries are not worked up into a forced romanticism: they steal upon the mind as naturally as they might in the course of a country walk
(Brian Thomas, 1952)

Introduction
George Warner Allen is celebrated for his landscapes of post-war England transformed into arcadian idylls, combining pastoral, mythical and religious themes to capture the poetic spirit of the English countryside. A great admirer of the work of Charles Ricketts who advocated that style should be based on an intelligent study of the art of the past, and influenced by the strong sense of the local to be found in Stanley Spencer's work, the landscape around Allen's home in Long Wittenham near Wallingford in Oxfordshire became the setting for his verdant compositions in which Allen blended the present with the past.

Allen's distinctive style traditionally falls under the umbrella label of the Neo-Romantics, although it was a moniker that the artist regarded with displeasure. Others so labelled range from Paul Nash to John Craxton. Nash was similarly fascinated by the wooded chalk valley of Wittenham Clumps, captivated by the inherent spirit of the place. The following eight lots are preparatory sketches for some of Allen's most significant compositions including Love in a Valley and Sleeping Venus (lot 70), The Return from Cythera (lot 71) Christ with Martha and Mary (lot 74), Portrait of Mrs Rose Butcher (lot 75), the finished oil of which was the only painting he showed at the Royal Academy, and Picnic at Wittenham (lot 76).

Born in Paris, George Warner Allen was the only son of writer and oenophile Herbert Warner Allen who was the official British war correspondent with the French army and worked for many years for the Morning Post. Allen was educated at Lancing College before attending Byam Shaw School of Art (1933-39) on the advice of the decorative artist Robert Anning Bell. There he was taught by F. Ernest Jackson, regarded as the best drawing teacher of his generation, and fraternised with fellow student and muralist Brian Thomas (1912-1989) whose style he greatly respected and who was later appointed Principle of Byam Shaw (1946-1954).

During the war years Allen was deployed to work in the Camouflage Directorate in Leamington Spa. After the war, he experimented obsessively with the traditional materials and methods used by the old masters, especially Venetian painters. He ground his own paint and applied oil glazes to tempera underpainting to enhance colour and form. He became an associate of the International Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works and a member of the Artworkers Guild.

In 1952 Walker's Galleries in Bond Street mounted the first one-man show of Allen's work, for which Brian Thomas wrote the catalogue introduction. Its success led to a second show at Reading Art Gallery a year later. His style was popular with private collectors, including with poets John Betjeman and T.S.Eliot, the latter an old friend of his father’s and for whom Allen painted a scene from his play The Family Reunion. In 1954 his portrait of Mrs Rose Butcher was shown at the Royal Academy (lot 75).

The strain of these exhibitions, however, drained Allen of energy, and he stopped painting for the next eight years, instead dedicating himself to teaching at Byam Shaw School of Art and to tending his elderly parents. But by the time he returned to painting in earnest in the early 1960s his style had fallen out of fashion. And it wasn’t until the last years of his life that his work once more returned to favour. Shortly after he died Picnic at Wittenham and Christ with Martha and Mary were featured in the 1989 exhibition The Last Romantics at the Barbican Gallery.