Henry will be opening his home gallery again for an Open House on Saturday 27 July 2024. If you've never been to an Open House before, it is the best place to view Henry's collection. A large selection of works will be displayed over two floors within Henry’s own period home. We hope you'll be able to make it. Please RSVP below if you would like to attend.
Below is a small selection of works that will be on show. If you are unable to attend, or would like information about any of the works here or on the website, do not hesitate to get in contact with Henry.
George Cayford, (British b.1931), 'David', c.1980s, pastel on paper, signed and titled (lower right), 49cm x 76cm, (62cm x 89cm framed), £1,950
Cayford, now retired, was a graphic designer and illustrator working in London in the postwar period. His works of the male form were shown predominantly in London, and are in many private collections.
Keith Vaughan, (British 1912-1977), Seated Figure in Interior, c.1960s, Pencil on paper, studio stamp (verso), 11cm x 12cm, (33cm x 33cm framed), £2,750
Vaughan was a British artist, whose work is held in the collections of the Government Art Collection, National Galleries Scotland, National Portrait Gallery, Tate and Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK. In the 1940s, with his friend John Minton, he was one of the leading exponents of Neo-Romanticism, characteristic works of this time being coloured drawings of moonlit houses. His later work, in which he concentrated on his favourite theme of the male nude in a landscape setting, became grander and more simplified, moving towards abstraction.
David Hockney, (British b.1937), According to Prescriptions of Ancient Magicians (Illustrations for Fourteen Poems from C.P. Cavafy), 1966, etching, signed and dated (lower right) and marked 'A.P. (lower left), 35cm x 23cm (plate size), 47cm x 33cm (sheet size), (62cm x 45cm framed), £8,500
In 1966, Hockney created a series of delicate line drawings of intimate scenes between men, inspired by the writings of the Greek Egyptian poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933). “Of course Cavafy’s poems are about gay love, and I was quite boldly using that subject then. I was aware that it was illegal, but I didn’t really think much about that at the time. I was living in a bohemian world, were we just did what we pleased. I wasn’t speaking for anybody else. I was defending my way of living.” (David Hockney).
Glyn Warren Philpot, RA., (British 1884-1937), Figure Study, pen and ink on paper, 20cm x 16cm, (36cm x 31cm framed), £2,750. Provenance: from the collection of the artist Michael Leonard (British 1933-2023)
First exhibiting at the RA in 1904, Philpot was elected as an Academician in 1923. Like many artists of his generation, he enjoyed a comfortable income from portraiture, which enabled him to paint less commercially successful and perhaps more personal subjects. His interest in the male nude and portraits of young men – thought to be friends, models and lovers – portrays his gradual acceptance and expression of his own homosexuality. Some of these later works were considered controversial because of their homosexual imagery. He was the subject of major exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in 2022.
Bror Hillgren, (Swedish 1881-1955), Male Nude in Landscape, c.1940s, oil on canvas, 100cm x 67cm (118cm x 86cm framed), £12,500
A Swedish artist who studied at the Swedish Art Academy and in Paris in the first part of the 20th century, he is better known for his more traditional paintings and his work as an illustrator. However, throughout his career, he also created a far more homoerotic series of pictures, featuring male nudes, often in landscapes or outside. Placing the male nude outside, enabled an artist to create an alibi that he was painting in the tradition of Romanticism, thereby lessening the impact the picture would have otherwise had, in more reserved times.