Chideock, Dorset

CHARLES GINNER CBE ARA

Cannes 1878 - 1952 London

Ref: BZ 245

Chideock, Dorset

Signed lower right: C. Ginner

Oil on canvas: 24 x 20 in / 61 x 50.8 cm

Frame size: 30 ½ x 26 ¾ in / 77.5 x 67.9 cm

Painted circa 1920

Provenance:

Miss Hopkinson, 1921 for £45[1]

Lord and Lady Chorley, London, then by descent;

Private collection, UK

Exhibited:

Paris, Galerie E Druet, July 1921

London, RWS Galleries, New English Art Club sixty-fifth exhibition, winter 1921

Belfast, Walter Magee Gallery, Autumn 1922

Literature:

Charles Ginner, Notebook II, p. 49, Tate Archive [TGA 9319/2], as In Dorset, evening (Chideock)

Charles Ginner painted several views of rural Chideock in south west Dorset, a small village close to the English Channel between Bridport and Lyme Regis on the Jurassic coast. Nestled in an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the village of picturesque cob and sandstone cottages is surrounded by pastoral and farmed land, bordered by dense hedgerows and oak trees forming a beautiful irregular patchwork stretching towards the spectacular cliffs. This serene landscape seems to look south-west over Chideock, perhaps from Quarry Hill towards Langdon Hill with Golden Cap possibly on the right, the highest point on the south coast. The low light, pink and mauve sky and long shadows in the present work suggest the painting is recorded as In Dorset, evening (Chideock), 1920, in the artist’s meticulous notebooks.[2] Ginner records painting several other works of the location in the early 1920s, including The Road to Chideock, 1921 (most likely Chideock, Dorset at the Atkinson Art Gallery), The Orchard, Dorset, 1920 in the collection of the University of Hull and the slightly larger, Chideock in Dorset, unlocated.[3]

Wendy Baron writes in her biography of Ginner, that ‘by 1912 he had established the basis of his mature, lifelong, and unmistakable style: the application of loaded paint in small, tightly juxtaposed touches of rich, deep-toned colour to build up a crustily woven surface comparable in texture to silk embroidery…Opulent in texture, meticulously crafted, bold in pattern, and rich in colour, his paintings were less literal and more adventurous than realized at the time.’[4]

Chideock, Dorset                                   The Orchard                             Wear cliffs, Dorset

Oil on canvas: 20 x 17 in         Oil on canvas: 24 x 20 in         Oil on canvas: 20 x 27 in

Atkinson At Gallery,                University of Hull Art              University of Hull Art

Southport                                Collection                                Collection

[1] A price label attached to the reverse of the painting records the original price as £45.

[2] Four autograph notebooks kept by Ginner recording his paintings and drawings from 1908-1950. Tate Archive TGA 9319. Notebook II records artworks dating from 1919-1925.

[3] Notebook II, pp.52, 48, 46.

[4] W Baron, Charles Isaac Ginner (1878–1952), painter. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 24 Jun. 2022, from https://www-oxforddnb-com.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-33410.