Frank Brangwyn, “The Blacksmiths”, One of Four Panels, Oil on Canvas, 165.1 x 205.7 cm, Gallery of Leeds, Leeds, England
Frank Brangwyn was an Anglo-Welsh artist, painter, and progressive designer. As well as paintings and drawings, he produced designs for stained glass, furniture, ceramics, glassware, buildings and interiors. He received some training from his father, and later from Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo and in the workshops of William Morris. However, he was largely an autodidact without a formal artistic education.
This panel is from the decorations that Frank Brangwyn carried out in the Venice International Exhibition of 1905. He designed the whole scheme in the British section, including its woodwork and its furniture. There were four large oblong panels and two smaller ones, representing forms of present-day labour — potters, navvies, smiths, and workers in steel. It was hoped in Venice that these decorations would remain permanently there, in the Municipal Gallery: however, an English patron of art, Mr. S. Wilson, purchased them for the City Art Gallery of Leeds. A fifth panel “Weavers” was commissioned to bear them company in the Brangwyn room.
The group of the smiths is perhaps the finest of the four original panels. Here the scheme of lighting is reversed, and the two foreground figures stand out in the warm, golden light from the forge, while the two on the opposite side of the anvil sink into a greyish-blue shadow. A strong note of blue is seen in the glimpse of the afternoon summer sky which one gets through the opening beyond.
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