
Artists Inspired by Nature - S R Badmin RWS RE AIA FSIA (1906-1989)
I don’t know the title of this painting but it’s a lovely pastoral picture painted I guess sometime in the late 1940s early 50s. The cows appear to be red and white which helps date the picture perhaps to before 1950, as black and white Friesian cows didn’t become popular until then. It is most likely somewhere in the south of Britain - like the South Downs. Like many of his paintings of rural life there’s a lot going on. I think it depicts a time of change in agriculture as there are both horses and tractors working with a traditional hayrick in the mid-centre of the painting while in another field there seems to be a tractor and baler.
Throughout his career, S R Badmin used his great talents – as etcher, illustrator and watercolourist – to promote a vision of the English countryside and thus of England itself. By underpinning his idealism with almost documentary precision and detail, he was able to produce images that appealed to all, and could be used for a great variety of purposes, from education through to advertising. The well-being suggested by each rural panorama is all the more potent, and pleasing, for the accuracy of each tree and leaf, and the plausibility of the slightest anecdotal episode.
He was born in Sydenham, London in 1906. He studied at Camberwell School of Art (1922-24) and the Royal College of Art (1924-27), and began his career by contributing illustrations to The Graphic (1927) and The Tatler (1928). In 1928, he qualified as a teacher, and supplemented his income by teaching at Richmond School of Art (1934) and St John’s Wood School of Art (1936). However, he worked increasingly as an etcher and watercolourist, and was soon elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (ARE 1931, RE 1935) and the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours (ARWS 1932, RWS 1939). He was also a member of the Artists’ International Association. In 1933, he received a major commission – from the American magazine Fortune – to depict various towns in the United States; the results were exhibited in New York (1936). An important development in Badmin’s illustrative style was marked soon after his return to England by Highways and Byways of Essex (1937), a collaboration with F L M Griggs. Even before the Second World War, he made a mark as an educational illustrator and was particularly admired for his accurate depiction of trees. Before working in the war, for the Ministry of Information and the Royal Air Force, he made a major contribution, in 1940, to Recording Britain – a term which might well be applied to his work as a whole.
From 1945, Badmin worked increasingly as a commercial artist, designing advertisements and posters, and producing illustrations for greeting cards and calendars. Equally in demand as an illustrator of books and periodicals, he published Trees for Town and Country (1947) and contributed to the Radio Times. Only from the mid 1950s was he able to paint two or three major pieces for each RWS exhibition, and hold a show at the Leicester Galleries (1955). Even then, he found time to embark on projects for Shell: Geoffrey Grigson’s The Shell Guide to Trees and Shrubs (1958) and four volumes of the series of ‘Shell Guides to the Counties’. In 1959, he and his family moved to Bignor, near Pulborough, West Sussex, from where he continued to paint and exhibit. He held a further solo show, at the Worthing Art Gallery in 1967. In 1984, his achievement was honoured by the RWS in devoting a part of its Autumn Exhibition to his work.
His etchings are represented in numerous public collections, including the British Museum; the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford); Aberystwyth University School of Art; and the Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University (NY). Chris Beetles has been the leading authority on S R Badmin for the last 30 years, since he mounted a large-scale exhibition and published S R Badmin and the English Landscape (1985). Earlier this year, he presented a further major exhibition of over 200 unseen works, mostly from the Badmin Estate. This was accompanied by the catalogue, S R Badmin RWS: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, which includes a second edition of Chris Beetles’ catalogue raisonné of the prints, a newly-researched chronology,bibliography and a list of exhibitions.
What a gorgeous landscape!
It is isn’t it – I love it. I am old enough to remember, as a child, helping make hayricks and riding the horses bareback in the fields and drinking homemade lemonade …
I think the painting is of somewhere in the south of Britain like the South Downs and would have been before 1950, when the cows were still predominantly red and white, and farming hadn’t yet become fully mechanised.
They have just cut, turned, baled (big round bales wrapped in black plastic) and stacked, hay cut from fields around home in just a couple of days. It would have taken a good few days and more back in the time this picture was painted.
Interestingly coming back from Anglesey early this morning I passed a field with one or two bales of hay standing in the middle and in the far corner a good ‘old fashioned’ baler – who would have thought it! A rarity nowadays.
The patchwork of the landscape in the painting reminds me of some of the countryside here in Northern Ireland. Lovely painting! And thank you for bringing him to our attention.
It’s a patchwork now lost to much of Britain – it reflected a way of life not much changed since the enclosures. I’m glad you still have some Countryside like it in Northern Ireland.
Here is another of his paintings: Spring Near Midhurst – 1977
https://artin.artinnature.co.uk/songs-from-wood-spring/#more-117
From his book S R Badmin and the English Landscape (1985), published by Chris Beetles, who is widely recognised as the leading authority on him.
I’m not surprised his paintings are in numerous public collections, Clive. Such rich detail and excellent use of colour!
I agree Cynthia – his paintings always have a lot going on – I love the Shepherds hut and his portrayal of a time of change in farming with both horse power and mechanised farm machinery detailed; a couple of tractors and the elevator used to convey loose hay up to the top of the rick.
I hadn’t heard of Badmin, but it looks as though he was a great chronicler of the countryside, this is one of those wonderful paintings that you can look at for ages because there is so much happening.
That’s what I love about it, Andrea – each cameo of activity is like a window onto a much bigger scene. I grew up in the countryside so this painting takes me right back there … sitting on the steps of the shepherds hut; guiding the horses as they pulled the carts full of loose hay; the noise and clatter of the old elevator taking forkfuls of hay to the top of the hay rick …