Stanley Roy BADMIN

(Sydenham 1906 - Bignor 1989)

St. Ives, Cornwall

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Watercolour over pen and black ink, heightened with touches of gouache.
Signed and inscribed St. Ives. / S.R. Badmin at the lower right.
277 x 344 mm. (10 7/8 x 13 1/2 in.) [image]
287 x 386 mm. (11 3/8 x 15 1/4 in.) [sheet]
Badmin produced a handful of views of the picturesque fishing port and seaside resort of St. Ives in Cornwall. Another watercolour view of the town, inscribed by the artist ‘A Corner of St. Ives’ and ‘The Room with the View’, was on the London art market in 1985, while a view of St. Ives from Porthminster was included at the Autumn 1953 exhibition of the Royal Watercolour Society.







A prolific landscape watercolourist, etcher and lithographer, S. R. Badmin studied at the Camberwell School of Art and the Royal College of Art. After graduating in 1928, he began to establish a reputation for his landscape watercolours and etchings, and earned his first one-man exhibition in London in 1930. In 1931 he was elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, and the following year, at the age of twenty-six, became one of the youngest Associate members of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours. At the exhibition of the Society in April 1932, the first to which he contributed, Badmin’s work was singled out for particular praise by several reviewers, one of whom noted that ‘The most interesting drawings in this show are provided by S.R. Badmin, a young etcher who uses line with almost an etcher’s delicacy and precision. Badmin is almost miniaturist in the fineness of his work he packs into a small picture area, but in spite of all this wealth of beautifully designed detail, he contrives, with the aid of washes of tender colour, to preserve a seemly order in all his drawings.’ Badmin enjoyed a second successful London gallery exhibition in 1933, this time at the Fine Art Society. A review of the exhibition noted of the artist that ‘the most wonderful thing about his work is that, while he is scrupulous – but not over-scrupulous – in his precise drawing of minute detail, he contrives to combine this quality with breadth and simplicity of effect.’



Badmin is best known for his watercolour landscapes; charming and affectionate depictions of the English countryside. As one recent author has noted of Badmin, ‘his craft has been based on hard work and experience, and his talent on a love for and deep knowledge of the British countryside.’ In the 1940’s and 1950’s he illustrated a number of books on pastoral or topographical themes, notably Village and Town and Trees in Britain, published in 1939 and 1942 respectively, and The British Countryside in Colour, which appeared in 1951. Badmin also contributed to the Shell Guide to Trees and Shrubs, published in 1958. Among his other commercial projects were designs for Shell posters depicting the various counties of England, as well as covers and illustrations for Reader’s Digest and Radio Times magazines, advertising images, calendars, and designs for over a hundred greeting cards.

Provenance

Possibly The Leicester Galleries (Ernest Brown & Phillips), London, in 1955 W. Frank Gadsby, Ltd., Leicester.

Exhibition

Possibly London, The Leicester Galleries (Ernest Brown & Phillips), S. R. Badmin, R.W.S., The English Landscape: An Exhibition of Water-Colours, March 1955, no.27 (‘St. Ives, Cornwall’).

Stanley Roy BADMIN

St. Ives, Cornwall