Large early 20th Century French Village landscape, oil on canvas by Charles Ginner. Excellent quality and condition view of the small French village set within a rural valley. Old label verso identifying the artist. Presented in a period frame.
Measurements: 38" x 33" framed approx
Provenance: A private Gloucestershire collection, UK
Artist Biography
Charles Ginner worked in an architect's office in Paris for three years before joining the Acadmie Vitti in 1904 under Paul Gervais. He momentarily defected to the cole des Beaux-Arts following a clash with Gervais, but returned to complete his studies at the Acadmie. Following a trip to Buenos Aires in 1909, where he staged his first solo exhibition, Ginner settled in London. He soon became an active member of Sickert's Fitzroy Street Group from which the more formal exhibition society, the Camden Town Group, emerged. In 1913 this became part of the London Group and in 1914 Ginner joined with close associates Robert Bevan and Harold Gilman to found the Cumberland Market Group.
In 1914 he published a manifesto entitled 'New Realism' in the New Age review voicing the need for a new expression of everyday life that resisted venerating the decorative impact of Post-Impressionism alone. The artist should not seek to remove the very personal emotional charge in a given scene, he felt, but instead encourage necessary formal choices and welcome impartiality. This article was reprinted in the catalogue of an exhibition of Ginner and Harold Gilman's work held at the Goupil Gallery in London.
Ginner is above all remembered for his cityscapes and landscapes in oils and watercolour. In his oil paintings, he meticulously and deliberately filled the canvas with a thick application of bold pigments in tight brushstrokes. These paintings demonstrate his debt to Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters such as Van Gogh and Czanne.
Ginner was employed as an official war artist in both world wars. In World War I he served in the Canadian War Records making detailed drawings of a munitions factory in Hereford. During World War II he was employed by the War Artists' Advisory Committee to document the effects of the war on the British landscape.
Group Exhibitions
1978, Cityscape 1910-1939: Urban Themes in American, German and British Art, Royal Academy of Art, London
2007, British Vision: Observation and Imagination 1750-1950, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent
2008, Modern Painters: The Camden Town Group, Tate Britain, London
2008, From Sickert to Gertler: Modern British Art from Boxted House, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Solo Exhibitions
1953, Charles Ginner: Paintings and Drawings, Arts Council of Great Britain, London
1985, Fine Art Society, London
Museum and Gallery Holdings
Brighton (Hove Mus. & AG): Lancaster from Castle Hill Terrace (c. 1947, oil on canvas)
Brighton (Mus. & AG): Leicester Square (1912, oil on canvas)
Huddersfield (AG): The Dressmaking Factory (c. 1917)
London (Imperial War Mus.): Deserted House, Pimlico (1943, watercolour on paper); Building a Battleship (oil on canvas); The National Physical Laboratory, Teddington (oil on canvas)
London (National Portrait Gal.): Charles Ginner (1940s, pen and ink and watercolour)
London (Tate Collection): The Caf Royal (1911, oil on canvas); Piccadilly Circus (1912, oil on canvas); other paintings
Manchester (City AG): Flask Walk, Hampstead (1922, oil on canvas)
Southport (Atkinson AG): Victoria Station. The Sunlit Square (1913, oil on canvas)
Worcester (City Mus.): The Malvern Hills (oil on canvas)
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