VALLANCE JEAN GREGSON (BRITISH 1911-1992)
RADIAL FORMS
signed and dated V.J Gregson 1967 lower right
gouache on paper mounted on board
37.5 x 41.5cm; 14 3/4 x 16 1/4in
51 x 54.5cm; 20 x 21 1/2in (framed)

Vallance Richard Gregson & Vallance Jean Gregson (lots 78-96)

Introduction
The fascinating art of Vallance Richard Gregson and Vallance Jean Gregson, father and son respectively, appears in the Studios sale as a remarkable tribute to two painters now little known outside their family, a small number of acquaintances and professional associates. There are no records of work by either artist having been offered for sale at auction before.

Vallance Richard Gregson, a highly capable painter, remained an amateur and never exhibited his work in public during his lifetime. However, a representative collection of his portraits, landscapes and still-lifes in the Whitaker, Whitaker Park, Rossendale in Lancashire, amply bears witness to his considerable artistic talents. The Whitaker collection includes his composition Kissing the Shuttle – revered as a rare record of the technique of threading a shuttle on an industrial weaving loom. There is also a portrait by him in Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery.

In contrast, his son Vallance Jean Gregson who trained as a commercial artist as well as a painter, exhibited his work regularly during his lifetime, including in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and Manchester City Art Gallery in the 1930s, and the Royal Academy in London in 1952, 1954 and 1980. Yet, unlike his father, his work appears to be completely unrepresented in public collections now.

Vallance Richard Gregson was the son of Thomas Gregson and Margaret Gregson of Bacup, Lancashire, a mill town long associated with the cotton and woollen industries. He was baptised at St Mary the Virgin, Blackburn, on 14th February 1892, when his father was recorded as a 'Hawker’. By 1901 the family had moved to Clitheroe, Lancashire, where Thomas worked in a cotton factory. Vallance Richard married Jennie Taylor in 1910, with whom he fathered Vallance Jean Gregson (1911–1992). During the First World War he was a bombardier in the Royal Field Artillery, fought at the Somme and was awarded the Victory Medal and the British War Medal. He re-married after the War in 1922 Emily Ashworth (1887–1936), with whom he had two further sons. By the late 1930s he was living once more in Bacup, employed as a 'Sheeting Weavers Cotton Operator’.

Vallance Jean Gregson worked in a local slipper factory in Rossendale, but, unlike his father, later enrolled in the nearby art school: Rochdale School of Art. After his studies he worked for a shoe company in London, drawing their shoes to use in advertising, whilst continuing to develop his own work, painting a large modernist oil Feline Fantasy. In 1938 he enlisted in the Royal Artillery and during the Second World War served in the 1st Army Corps in North Africa. He exhibited the sketches and watercolours he completed while abroad of Algeria and Tunisia at Salford Art Gallery in the autumn of 1943. The following May he exhibited Watercolour Drawings of the Middle East at the Corporation Gallery in Rochdale.

After the War he continued to ply his trade as a commercial artist. Later he moved to live in Church Stretton, South Shropshire where he produced the artwork for Tanners Wine Merchants, Shrewsbury, still in use today and the design for the souvenir brochure of the South Shropshire Arts Festival while also pursuing his own work. Locally he is remembered fondly both for his ownership of a LE200 Velocette and his great gifts as a teacher, especially in the life-drawing classes that he ran.

As the present works attest, Vallance Jean Gregson was comfortable using a range of different media, from oil on canvas to highly detailed works on paper, collage and print while exploring a remarkably diverse number of styles. His strong interest in Surrealism stands out, and seems to have influenced his father too: in his final years Vallance Richard explored the style for himself (lots 90-92).