Michael Andrews: The Thames Paintings

This is the first memorial exhibition of paintings by Michael Andrews (1928 - 1995). Interestingly the exhibition takes place exactly forty years after his first solo show in the Beaux Arts Gallery at 1 Bruton Place Wl, the building now occupied by the Timothy Taylor Gallery.

Born in Norwich in 1928, Andrews studied at the Slade School of Art from 1949-52 under William Coldstream. From 1954 he exhibited at the Beaux Arts Gallery run by Helen Lessore, moving to Marlborough Fine Art in 1968 when she closed the gallery. In 1972 he left Marlborough with his friend Lucian Freud to be represented jointly by James Kirkman and Anthony d'Offay. He had his first major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery In 1981 which traveled to the Fruit Market Gallery in Edinburgh and the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. His last one-man exhibition was in 1991 at the Whitechapel Gallery. It traveled to Paris, Edinburgh and New York.

There are three Thames paintings and this will be the first opportunity to see them exhibited together. 

'I want an actual present atmosphere in my painting - I don't mind how I get it'. 

"The Thames at Low tide 1994" is basically the view to the west looking down from Albert bridge, twenty years earlier. A painting of silting and draining away. Partly painted on the floor, with tides of turps and deposits of sediment it is both literal and illusionistic. 

"Thames Painting : The Estuary 1994" is his finale. The ground is stained and raddled , muddied and tied marked. A view from a sea wall at Canvey Island, a group of stocky late Victorians on the end of a jetty are part of a painting that can be either opaque and bleak or radiant and airy. 

"The Source of the Thames 1995" is far from finished ...... or is it? The light is there, the density of the river bank, the roughing up, the greens thrashed with Norfolk grasses and the subject, Thames Head in Gloucestshire is clear. This last painting has never been seen before. 

"The activity is for me the most marvellous, elaborate, complete way of making up my mind". 

This exhibition has been arranged with the help of June Andrews and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an intimate and comprehensive text by William Feaver.