An unrepeatable Sheila Fell (RA) painting and Craig Simpson reminder
16th May, 2025
An epic museum quality Sheila Fell painting
We have just acquired a very special painting by the late Sheila Fell (RA), which is awaiting its next custodian. Hillside with Farms was painted in 1958, around the time of her second solo exhibition at Beaux Arts, in London.
Currently on exhibition
One of the key works on show in the major retrospective exhibition “Sheila Fell: Cumberland on Canvas”, recently at Tullie, Carlisle, now on until June at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, Hillside with Farms is one of the artist’s largest works (101 x 167.5 cm) and a triumph of her 1950s oeuvre, displaying all that built her critical and commercial reputations. The farmhouse and associated buildings, nestled to the foreground, dominated by the forbidding fells, with the almost vertical bank of rain blowing into the composition right-to-left-facing; it’s a masterpiece not just of Sheila’s oeuvre but of the wider context of British twentieth century painting.
Owned for the past thirteen years in a private London collection, it's now ready for its new home.
Craig Simpson - doors open on Saturday
Just a reminder that we open the doors tomorrow (Saturday 17th) to Craig Simpson's solo exhibition, Our Sanctuary; the Familiar and the Absurd. All twenty paintings are listed online but there’s no substitute for seeing the exhibition in the flesh, if able to do so. We’ll be hosting an informal reception between 12-2pm tomorrow, so please do come along if able. The gallery will be open tomorrow from 10-5pm and the exhibition will run until 7th June. We hope to see some of you for the opening and many more over the next three weeks.
Steve and Christine
