Hugh St Clair’s extensive career both as a designer and a journalist puts him in the best position to provide advice for artists, designers and old established British brands who wish to re position for the twenty first century. Hugh St Clair was an Associate of Arts Public relations company Theresa Simon and Partners
Hugh St Clair skillfully navigated us through the London art world, advising us where to advertise, how to write our catalogue to attract collectors in Britain and America and offered personal contacts interested in Fauve paintings.
Alexis and Guilia Pentcheff, Galerie Pentcheff Marseille.
Lucy Harwood: Bold Impressions
2 December 2023 – 14 April 2024
Further details coming soon at www.firstsite.uk
Renowned arts journalist and biographer of Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett Haines, Hugh St Clair, says: “Lucy Harwood was a key part of The East Anglian School and also a dedicated and serious artist who found her own inimitable colourful style and striking technique. The show aims to bring to life her independent spirit and courage through her diaries that will be quoted from. There will also be a display of some of her favourite things that formed the inspiration for her Still Life paintings. Visitors will also be able to interpret some of the local landscapes she depicted that can be shown alongside her originals.”
Harwood described herself as a dedicated Post-Impressionist with a clear affinity for artists such as Van Gogh and Gauguin.
Harwood was born into a Suffolk landowning and farming family As a child, Lucy had shown considerable talent as a pianist, but complications from an operation on her right arm left her partially paralysed on her right side, and her ambition to become a professional musician had to be abandoned. In place of the piano, Harwood turned to painting and, prior to the outbreak of World War One, enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.
In 1937, at the age of 45, Harwood continued her studies at the East Anglian School of Printing and Drawing in Dedham, run by Cedric Morris and his partner Arthur Lett-Haines. Here artists were encouraged develop their own style without formal instruction. However, it had to be closed after one of her fellow pupils, Lucian Freud (1922-2011) allegedly set fire to the building. Harwood remained with the school when it relocated to Benton End, a Grade II listed 16th-century house on the outskirts of Hadleigh, Suffolk, in 1939.Her relationship with Benton End continued for many years, where she mentored the younger students, including Maggi Hambling (b.1945).
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