20.00inch wide
16.00inch high
(50.80 cm wide 40.64 cm high)
External Dimensions
26.75inch framed width
22.75inch framed height
(67.94 cm framed width 57.78 cm framed height)
Literature
D69502
ROSES
DOUGLAS STANNUS GRAY 1890 – 1959
Oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches Framed size 22 ¾ x 26 ¾ inches
Gray was born on 4 June 1890 in London. He wanted to be a painter from an early age and at 17 he was accepted at the Royal Academy and studied under Ernest Jackson and Charles Sims. Gray fell under the influence of the fashionable painter, John Singer Sargent who was a regular visitor and in whose style Gray followed along with Velazquez.
In 1910 Gray travelled to Paris and was awarded a Landseer scholarship in 1912 and British Institute Scholarship in 1914.
From 1914 to 1919 he served in the military during the First World War, he retired with a life pension because of war injuries.
In 1925 he made a second trip to France but this time to the South.
He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1920, his portraiture was a success and he was elected to become a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. He was a founder member of the Portrait Society in 1928, and taught portrait painting at Brighton Art Collage in 1947.
His paintings are known for their immediacy of brushstroke and his handling of outdoor subjects draped in light. When portrait commissions were scarce he turned to painting some of the scenes around him, the family at home, house interiors and outside in the garden. These scenes of flowers and trees, of family and friends relaxing in sun-drenched gardens reminiscent of the Impressionists have made his work popular with the appeal of summers long past.
It is recoded that he was a modest retiring man, much of his work was little known during his lifetime. It was not until his first one man show in 1986 that he emerged from obscurity in to posthumous fame. Enthusiastic press reviews followed and the exhibition sold out.
Many of his flower paintings and garden scenes have been reproduced as greeting cards.
Gray lived at The Hall on Southwick Green, Southwick for the last 20 years of his life. When house-hunting in 1939 he wrote how he and his wife Kathleen were so “charmed” with all its “sweet restful promise of both house and garden”.
Gray continued to paint right up until his death in Chichester, West Sussex at the age of seventy.
He was commemorated with a blue plaque which was unveiled at his home, The Hall on 17 July 1997 by his daughter Virginia Suzanne Douglas Robinson.
A retrospective show of his work took place at Spink & Son in 1980.
Provenance: Spinks London 1988 Exhibition
Work Represented: Tate London has a portrait of Rosalind, his sister.
Bibl: Benezit
Price
gbp 500.00-1500.00 (Pound Sterling)
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