Page 28 - Studio International - March 1966

John Cecil Stephenson 1889-1965

A pioneer British abstract painter
Opposite
Cecil Stephenson died last November at the age of 76 The lathe c.1933
Oil on board Interpenetration 1934
after a long illness. All his working life had been spent 18 x 14 in. Oil on canvas
in the same studio—one of the famous Mall Studios in 23 1/4 x 36 in.
Hampstead—which he had taken over from Sickert in
1919. Others in the same row were to be occupied
during the 30's by Moore, Nicholson, Hepworth and
Herbert Read, and during these years Stephenson
found himself at the centre of a movement. His own
first abstract pictures were painted in 1932. He exhibited
with the 7 & 5 Group and at the major group shows of
abstract art, but his reputation did not prosper.
He had been teaching life-drawing at the Northern
Polytechnic since 1922 and, with the 2nd World War,
he returned for a while to figurative painting, executing
several pictures recording the Blitz. After the war he
was involved with mural commissions—for the Festival
of Britain, and the Brussels Exposition of 1958, the
latter in ply-glass. In these works he was recapitulating
on a new scale motifs which he had explored in the
late '30s. During his last active years he worked in a
freer, more painterly abstract idiom, often in thick paint
worked with the knife. It was these pictures which
featured in his only one-man show, held at the Drian
Gallery in 1960.
When his earlier work was seen last year at the Marl-
borough Fine Art Anthology of the '30s, it was realised
by many that his contribution to that decade had been
inimitable and distinguished. Cool, precise, highly-
controlled, it epitomises the aspirations of the period—
and unlike much else in a comparable idiom it has
retained its life, a crisp sparkling vitality. q

No title 1934 No title 1936
Oil on canvas Egg tempera on canvas
24 x 18 in. 25 x 18 in.
98