To enter Mary Fedden's world is to enter a zone of carefree joy in the simple beauty of everyday things, meticulously arranged, but as if released from gravity in a dream, a happy, uncomplicated dream. From 15th May, Richard Green's New Bond Street Gallery becomes that carefree zone with a major exhibition for the artist, who died last year aged 96. Twenty-two oil paintings and thirteen watercolours painted between 1965 and 2006 have been assembled by the gallery over several years.

Mary Fedden was born in 1915, studied at the Slade School of Art from 1932 - 36, but stopped painting during the 2nd World War, serving instead in the Land Army, the Women's Voluntary Service and, at the end of the war, as a NAAFI driver in France and Germany. When she took up painting again after the war she settled on the still lifes and landscapes that were to preoccupy her for the rest of her life.

From the start her eye focused on closely observed objects in domestic or interior settings, not painted from life, but from her imagination. At the Slade she had been influenced by the Russian theatre designer, Vladimir Polunin, who had worked for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. He introduced her to a sense of drama in colour and composition that she acknowledged as leaving a lasting impression on her vision.

Fedden in turn became an influential teacher herself, working at the RCA from 1958-1964 where she was appointed the first woman tutor in the painting school. Her students there went on to become some of the best-known names in British art: David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj, Patrick Caulfield and Allen Jones. From 1964 to 1974 she taught at the Yehudi Menuhin School.

As with many mid-century British artists, a favourite subject was the still life of a jug or pot of flowers on a window ledge looking out at the landscape beyond. Her style reflected a number of influences, from Braque, Matisse and Picasso and, at home, the likes of Henri Hayden, Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Anne Redpath and William Scott.

Among them was also the artist, Julian Trevelyan, whom she married in 1951 and then lived and worked with in blissful harmony until he died in 1988. Their home, Durham Wharf, Chiswick, on the river Thames, left its impression on all who visited and was the constant scene of dedicated work and merrymaking amongst friends such as the parties held annually in the garden on Boat Race day. A painting in the exhibition (ex no 15) is a rare portrait of Trevelyan sitting in profile dangling his legs over the riverside wall, cat at his side, looking across to the towpath on the far bank. Behind him, the houses follow the north bank of the river at high tide as it curves around to Hammersmith Bridge in the distance. A vigilant seagull stands guard over the scene from the top of the mooring pole. Although she often painted landscapes when she and Trevelyan travelled, this is very much a portrait of a man and his own landscape, an artist and his subject, inseparable in her eye.

By the 1970s, Fedden had arrived at her mature, distinctive style: the unmixed chromatic colour (clarity of colour), the establishment of a specific colour key to each painting, "the scatter of separated objects across the pictorial stage without regard for rules of perspective, (abandonment of strict perspective) the schematic flattening of some objects, often chosen for intrinsic decorative appeal" (Mel Gooding). Her colours have become stronger and more varied and her compositions featuring carefully choreographed objects: flowers, shells, vases, whole or cut fruit, boxes, jugs and striped pebbles. A mixture of the natural and the man-made.

In his book about her work, Mel Gooding describes her "repertoire of objects" arranged like a cast of characters. "They are like familiar actors, called upon to play different parts in a table-top still life repertory theatre, against landscape backdrops."

Never pretentious or burdened by theory, Fedden's unabashedly decorative art has captured the imagination of millions to become one of the most recognisable and popular in Britain. Placed beside her peers and influences there are similarities, but there is no mistaking her unique handprint.

Mary Fedden was elected to the Royal Academy in 1992, and was appointed OBE in 1997.

Richard Green Gallery
33 New Bond Street
London W1S 2RS United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 74933939
richardgreen@richard-green.com
www.richard-green.com

Opening hours
Monday - Friday
From 10am to 6pm
Saturday by Appointment