Just five years after her death at 80, Prunella Clough, a shy, discreet artist for whom self-promotion was anathema, is at the centre of a row she certainly would not have enjoyed.
The problem is the forthcoming exhibition of Clough’s work at the Olympia Fine Art Fair. This, the latest in a series featuring Modern British artists at the Spring fair, is pitting a number of dealers against curator Angus Stewart. Depending on who you talk to, the show, in the Olympia fair (“on red flock walls,” sneers one) is either “not fitting for [Clough’s] memory” (David Juda); or the chance to bring her work to the attention of a much wider public (Mr Stewart).
David Juda, whose gallery has sold Clough for many years, has shunned preparations. “We thought a show would be better at Tate Modern, as planned within a few years,” he says. “I don’t think Prunella would have liked this venue. Mr Stewart has organised this with a couple of collectors and focuses only on the early work.” This is strenuously denied by Mr Stewart.
Previous shows of Modern British art at Olympia, featuring the likes of Vaughan, Burra or Sutherland, have certainly boosted the artists’ profiles. The field has been seeing sharp increases in price and Richard Green has recently entered the market with panache.
Most specialists see Clough as undervalued compared to her contemporaries. She started her career as a neo-Romantic before quickly moving to abstraction. Her earliest works, mainly small-scale landscapes, date from the 1940s. By the 1950s she was painting urban scenes, ports, lorry drivers and fishermen. These larger-scale figurative works fetch the highest prices today. The current auction record stands at £38,400 for “Lorry with ladder”, sold at Sotheby’s last year (est. £8/12,000; it will be on display at Olympia).
Although Clough moved towards abstraction, Peyton Skipwick of the Fine Art Society says, “Her work always had a reference in reality, her themes were abstracted from something concrete so they are not really non-figurative.” The gallery held a small show of Clough works from the estate of Thomas Sutherland last year, and still has two oils: “Electrical installation, 1”, 1959, (£28,500) and “Bonfire” 1967, (£15,000) for sale.
David Juda thinks the abstract works best represent the artist. “She’s certainly not about her early work,” he says. “It’s like judging Mondrian by his early pieces.” Why then are the highest prices given for the figurative pieces? “Because those are the ones which appear most frequently at auction,” he says.
Specialist Susannah Pollen of Sotheby’s notes that British buyers–and Clough is still a local market—are still not comfortable with purely abstract work, although she says that in the last few years it has been getting easier to sell.
Clough’s paintings are muted and subtle, with an “Englishness that is not just about charm,” according to Ms Pollen. Clough is still unknown outside Britain, although at least one work from the Fine Art Society exhibition was sold to a US buyer.
Richard Green, who has been buying heavily into this market, has not purchased any Clough works yet but, according to Penny Marks of the Richard Green gallery, “This could change, it all depends on what comes up.”
Olympia Fine Art Fair, 2-7 March;
www.prunellaclough.com
Originally appeared in The ArtNewspaper as 'Will a controversial show put this artist on the map?'