Fred Appleyard (1874-1963)

Fred Appleyard was a British artist known for his landscape paintings, portraits, classical subjects and allegorical compositions.

He had 41 works exhibited during his lifetime by the Royal Academy and painted the mural Spring Driving Out Winter in the Academy Restaurant.

Appleyard was born in Middlesbrough, England on 9 September 1874, the son of Isaac Appleyard, an iron merchant. His uncle was the sculptor John Wormald Appleyard.

Having received his formal education at Scarborough, he attended Scarborough School of Art under the genre and landscape painter Albert Strange.

It was at the Scarborough School of Art that he met Harry Watson, and the two were to remain lifelong friends.

He then proceeded to the National Art Training School at South Kensington, and from there to the Royal Academy Schools, which he entered on 27 July 1897 at the late age of twenty-two.

He was recommended to the R.A. by John Sparkes.

He was awarded the Turner Gold Medal, the Creswick Prize for landscape, the Landseer Scholarship and others.

He carried out mural decorations for the Royal Academy Refreshment Room in 1903, St Mark's, North Audley Street, two large paintings in Nottingham General Hospital and Church of St Peter and Paul, Pickering, Yorkshire.

He worked in South Africa from 1910 to 1912.

During the 1914-1918 war he worked at the Woolwich Arsenal.

He exhibited at the R.A. from 1900-1935 and the R.W.A. from 1918-1954.

He was a painter of subject pictures, landscapes, portraits and allegorical compositions of a decorative kind associated with English Impressionism.

He exhibited widely during his lifetime, at the Royal Academy (forty-one works), the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, (thirteen works), and the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts.

He was at one time a regular exhibitor at The Royal Academy of both oil paintings and watercolours and at the Royal West of England Academy of which he was elected a member in 1926.

Much of Fred Appleyard's work had a decorative inclination and he executed several wall paintings, including "Spring Driving Away Winter" over the door of the Refreshment Room at the Royal Academy which was commissioned by the President and Council.

He is represented at The Tate Gallery by an oil painting entitled A Secret, a Chantrey Bequest purchase from The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1915.

His works are represented in museums at the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, in Bristol, Rochdale and Grahamstown, South Africa. The painting Old Walls is in the Mansion House in Doncaster.

Fred Appleyard is known chiefly for his scenes depicting families of obviously substantial means in outdoor settings, often incorporating ruins in his compositions.

He used a dappling technique which was ideally suited to his frequent depiction of sunlight broken through trees.

He was also fond of incorporating children into his work.

It was after the First World War, where he worked at the Woolwich Arsenal, that the big change in his life took place.

In 1918 he left London and settled in the Hampshire village of Itchen Stoke, near Alresford, Hampshire, where he lived for 45 years as a true artist despising money and fame.

He let his large country house to fishermen from the Stock Exchange to pay his rates and sold his Turner Gold Medal to get electricity installed in the house, while Fred moved into the adjacent barn studio.

Appleyard died at Itchen Stoke on 22 February 1963, and is buried at the back of the St Mary's Church, Itchen Stoke graveyard.

In 2024 Hampshire Cultural Trust was holding a retrospective of the work of Fred Appleyard to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth entitled "Rising Splendour: Fred Appleyard from the Royal Academy to the Itchen Valley". The exhibition includes a first ever catalogue of his work.

A version of the exhibition will subsequently be held in Gosport Museum and Art Gallery from 26 October 2024 to 18 January 2025. | Source: © Wikipedia

Fred Appleyard nacque il 9 settembre 1874 a Middlesborough, nello Yorkshire, figlio di un mercante di ferro.

Da bambino abbandonò il formale "Frederick" e fu sempre conosciuto come "Fred".

Studiò alla scuola d'arte di Scarborough e potrebbe essere stato qui che incontrò per la prima volta la fama del figlio più famoso di Scarborough, Frederic Leighton.

Appleyard passò presto alla Royal Academy Schools di Londra nel 1897, dove Leighton era stato presidente fino all'anno precedente, quando morì.

Appleyard divenne uno studente brillante con l'incoraggiamento di una serie di prestigiosi professori di pittura; William Blake Richmond, Hubert von Herkomer e Val Prinsep.

Vinse la maggior parte dei premi per studenti, tra cui la borsa di studio Landseer, la medaglia d'oro Turner e il premio Creswick per il paesaggio.

Nel 1899 vinse anche il concorso per dipingere un murale nella lunetta sopra la porta della sala rinfreschi dell'Accademia.

Il murale, intitolato Spring Driving out Winter, fu il quadro con cui debuttò alla Summer Exhibition dell'Academy nel 1900 ed è forse il dipinto più noto di Appleyard oggi.

Evitò per un pelo di essere cancellato nel 1934 quando il segretario dell'Academy, Sir Walter Lamb, scrisse ad Appleyard per chiedergli se avrebbe avuto obiezioni a che il murale venisse dipinto sopra, poiché era "piuttosto scuro nei toni e non in accordo con le idee moderne di decorazione murale".

Il fatto che il murale sia rimasto e che Appleyard abbia cessato di esporre all'Academy dopo il 1935, suggerisce che Appleyard avesse forti obiezioni.

Dopo aver concluso gli studi, Appleyard intraprese una brillante carriera, acquistando quadri per i musei di Bath, Bristol, Rochdale, Doncaster e Grahamstown, in Sudafrica, nonché per la National Collection, poi divenuta la collezione Tate.

Stilisticamente il dipinto intitolato The Spirit of the Summit è simile a Lay not Thine Hand Upon the Lad, esposto alla Royal Academy nel 1913 (Christie's, Londra, 8 giugno 2006, lotto 231) che dimostra un'influenza di Lord Leighton e la grandiosità dei grandi dipinti del Salon francese.

Il titolo The Spirit of the Summit è quello di un dipinto di Leighton dipinto nel 1894 (Auckland Art Gallery) e raffigura un'oreade, una ninfa delle montagne.

Nella mitologia greca le oreade erano spesso associate a Pan, il dio delle terre selvagge e ad Artemide, che prediligeva la caccia sui pendii scoscesi: ogni montagna aveva la sua ninfa, tra cui Enone che viveva sul monte Ida e Sinoe che diede il suo nome a quella montagna in Arcadia.