Paul Feiler

(British, 1918-2013)

Landing Stage, Falmouth 30.5 x 51 cm. (12 x 20 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
With Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, 3 January 1953, where acquired by
Professor Lawrence Ogilvie, thence by family descent to the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, Leicester Galleries, 1952 (catalogue untraced)
Bristol, Royal West of England Academy, Centenary Exhibition, January 1953, cat.no.421
London, Redfern Gallery, Paintings by Paul Feiler, 29 January-21 February 1953, no.49
Bristol, Bristol City Art Gallery, 1987-1990 (on loan)
Bristol, Royal West of England Academy, A Cornish Perspective, June 2009

Literature
The Studio, October 1954 (ill.b&w)

In 1937 Paul Feiler abandoned studies in medicine to pursue an art education at the Slade, also attending evening classes at the Euston Road School. Once he was able to fully apply himself to artistic pursuits in the waning years of the war, he quickly carved out a reputation as one of the country's most promising young artists. Examples of his then post-impressionistic styled works were accepted to the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition and included in group shows at the NEAC, Leicester and Redfern Galleries. In 1949, the very public conversion of his former Euston Road mentor Victor Pasmore to abstraction (see lot 59) had a seismic impact on Feiler's approach. He latterly recalled that Pasmore 'had a great influence on me as far as my changing from being a very willing student doing academic work to becoming a bit of a revolutionary, on a very minor scale... I felt that if he can do it, so can I' (Paul Feiler, Abstract Artists in Their Own Words, BBC films, 2014).

Landing Stage, Falmouth (1951), is one of the earliest and most accomplished fruits borne from such influence. Whilst Feiler has retained an element of representational quality with beams of a jetty, a diagonal landing stage and the suggestion of distant roofs, these have been redesigned to form a sophisticated and abstracted interplay of juxtaposed planes and lines. Such interpreted compositions, often as in this case depicting coastal arrangements, became the fundamental concern for Feiler across the next decade. The present painting holds further significance as it represents one of his earliest Cornish works (see following lot), and due to its loan by Lawrence Ogilvie to Feiler's first one-man, critically acclaimed exhibition.


Born in 1898 in the remote fishing village of Rosehearty, Scotland, Lawrence Ogilvie attended Aberdeen Grammar School, where his interest in natural sciences began to flourish. He completed degrees in Botany, Zoology and plant pathology at Aberdeen University and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Upon moving to Bristol in late 1928, he became the leading British expert on cereal and vegetable diseases, particularly vital for advising farmers during WWII and the post-war challenge of feeding Britain.

Alongside his acclaimed career in the sciences, Lawrence Ogilvie was a keen supporter of the arts. Notably, Ogilvie was a founding member and a chairman of the Friends of the Bristol Art Gallery and was also on the founding committee of Bristol's Arnolfini Gallery.

Further works from the Ogilvie Collection, including Ben Nicholson's St Ives Rooftops (Salubrious) Oct 19 – 51 (Lot 75 £283,250) were sold in these rooms on the 30th May 2012.