Work Reginald William Gammon (1894-1997)
Reginald William Gammon (1894-1997)
Gammon was born the son of a local builder in the village of Petersfield, Hampshire, in January 1894. In 1911 he became apprenticed to a black-and-white illustrator, Frank Patterson. Gammon's talent was spotted by the art establishment and he was offered a place at the Slade but declined, as Art school in central London would have been purgatory for such an outdoors-loving young man. Instead he chose the precarious life of a freelance illustrator and writer, specialising in country topics.
Following the Second World War, Gammon moved to the Black Mountains in South Wales, where he set himself up as a hill farmer in the Llanthony valley. Gammon happily scratched a meagre living from his 40-acre farm for 20 years. This period was of lasting value to him as an artist. Now he got to grips with the harsher realities of the land and its people. He kept up his painting and it was during the final Llanthony years that he made the momentous change to oils. At last he could follow the trail blazed by his heroes Rouault, Bonnard, Chagall and, above all, Gauguin.
He moved to Somerset but his increasingly sure, colour-charged landscapes were not of the Somerset levels which surrounded him. Instead he painted Brittany, remote Scotland, wild Ireland, and the Welsh hills . . . romantic but unsentimental landscapes dominated by peasant figures working the land. He exchanged his illustrative disciplines in perspective and in colour for a wholly Expressionist view. Donkeys were blue. Calves became bright green. Red was ever-present . . . it was his favourite colour.
Gammon's close association with the Royal West of England Academy was formalised by his election as a full member in 1966. He had a healthy distrust of popularity, but his reputation grew and in 1986, the year after an outstanding retrospective at the RWA, came his first London one-man show, at the New Grafton Gallery. The reviews were excellent and four one-man exhibitions at the New Grafton followed, before a 100th birthday retrospective at the RWA.
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