Astronaut with a one inch hole

Thanks to Boo Gilbraith I was sent the above picture with the story that this oil painting by Dave Pearson, clearly from the Astronaut series of 1960, was sold for £320 last week at an auction at Cheffins in Cambridge.

£320 might seem like a major bargain, and it is of course, but the painting was (to quote the catalogue) 'found in a barn and had a one inch hole in it and was in a dirty and distressed condition. Needs a proper frame'. 

Apparently it is signed on the reverse 'D. Pearson/Rome and Abbey in Painting' - Dave's submission for the Rome and Abbey Scholarship.

So, a fascinating story and thank you, Boo. I wonder what the events were that led to an early student work by Dave Pearson ending up in a barn?

In the plan chests

Another visit to 54 today, and an opportunity to see what Ella has uncovered in her work cataloguing Dave's work. 

At the moment she is working her way through the plan chests on the top floor. There are six of these, and another three on the middle floor. Each has about 5 or 6 drawers (they vary a little), and at the moment she is going through a drawer that holds a lot of work from Dave's school and student years. So far there have been 200 drawings in this one drawer. Of course the quality varies massively, and some drawers have more work, most less - but all are particularly interesting to us as Margaret and I have never had the time to go through them systematically, so there are lots of discoveries to be made.

The drawing above of a farmyard is a very nice example, but not untypical, and probably done by Dave in the late 1950s. It's on ruled paper from a large notebook. 

Add up the numbers and it could be that the plan chests alone contain 5 (drawers) by 9 (plan chests) by 200 (drawings) = 9000 pieces just in these plan chest drawers. 

This coloured pencil drawing will be from his days at art school, and if it's not directly part of the work for the 'Astronauts' series it appears to relate to it - so probably done by Dave in about 1960.

Sifting through...

Over the past two Mondays Julian Williams of the See Gallery has been at 54 with a collector friend going through the many unsorted files, folders and cases of works on paper that neither Margaret Mytton or I have had time to check through. In the course of doing this he has put some work aside, either because Dave, our collector friend, was interested in buying them, or because he considered that we might be particularly interested in them for a variety of reasons.

Above Julian is looking at some work from Dave's student days including a self-portrait drawing and a drawing from the Astronaut series (from, probably, the late 1950s).