Robert Bevan 1865-1925
Peasants at Mass c.1894
Lithograph on thin cream paper laid down on thick white woven backing 4¾ x 8 inches (12.1 x 20.3 cm)
Signed with monogram b.r.
Edition of 6
PROVENANCE:
By descent to the Artist’s Son, R.P. Bevan; by descent; Private Collection.
EXHIBITED:
Robert Bevan Memorial Exhibition, Goupil Gallery, London, 1926 (no.31); Robert Bevan, 1865–1925, Arts Council touring exhibition, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1956, Arts Council Gallery, London, 1956, Southampton Art Gallery, 1957, Plymouth Art Gallery, 1957, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, 1957 (no.71); Robert Bevan Centenary Exhibition, The Minories, Colchester, 1965 (no.47); Robert Bevan: The Complete Graphic Works, Colnaghi, London, 1974 (no.10); From Sickert to Gertler: Modern British Art from Boxted House, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 2008, Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, 2008, Brighton Art Gallery and Museums, 2010 (n.n., p.75); A Family Collection from Boxted House Works by Robert Bevan and other Modern British Art from the collection of Bobby and Natalie Bevan, The Fine Art Society, London, 2013 (no.1, repr.)
LITERATURE:
Graham Dry, Robert Bevan 1865–1925 Catalogue Raisonné of the Lithographs and Other Prints, London 1968 no.10; Robert Bevan: The Complete Graphic Works, Colnaghi 1974, no.10; Frances Stenlake, Robert Bevan: from Gauguin to Camden Town, London 2008, pp.46, 47 repr.
This is an extremely rare print of which there are only six impressions. This is one that Bevan himself retained, and remained with his descendants. This impression has been exhibited in all Bevan’s survey exhibitions.
Of all Bevan’s Breton prints, this lithograph shows the most direct influence on him of the Pont-Aven school. The choice of subject is a familiar one – Gauguin’s Vision after the Sermon (1888) being the most famous source – but it probably owes most to Emile Bernard’s Breton Women in a Green Meadow (1888) which depicts a group of women seated in a similar arrangement. Bevan made eight Brittany lithographs, drawn on the stone at Pont-Aven between 1891 and 1894. The surviving proofs were probably made in France and no editions appear to have been printed for sale. Bevan is believed to have seen this scene at the Chapelle de Tremalo, Pont-Aven