euan uglow: drawings

Euan uglowDrawings

Cover image: Standing Nude IIIThis page: Study for The Quarry, Pignano

15 January – 1 February 2014

Marlborough Fine Art

6 albemarle street

London w1s 4BY

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Euan uglowDrawings

As more time elapses since Euan Uglow’s untimely death in 2000, his position as a radical and inventive painter is increasingly widely recognized. Instead of being seen as a mere follower of a reactionary realistic tendency in mid 20th century British painting, his originality has begun to reassert itself and the universality of his work understood. His paintings, with their unusual meeting of classical and romantic, their crisp shapes and flooded colour, come back upon our senses with renewed force. And at the heart of Uglow’s artistic endeavour lies drawing.

conceptual and aesthetic whole, and this

sometimes involved breaking his own

self-imposed rules. If there was nearly

always some dialogue (if not outright

conflict) between the perceptual and the

conceptual, the aesthetic principle would

always have the final say.

‘I draw almost every day’, he said, ‘but

I’m not compulsive about it, I don’t draw

to pass the time.’ He only ever began a

drawing if he had something to say – or

something to discover – and ideally liked

to have a whole day for drawing, not just

snatched moments between other tasks.

Presentation drawings for exhibition

were made for their own sake, not as

studies for paintings. These could be of

the figure, still-life or the landscape, but

the most usual subject was the female

nude. Uglow only very rarely drew

men or included them in his imagery,

so it is especially interesting to see the

early works Two Male Figures and Study

for David, both included here. A nude

drawing of a girl might go on for as long

as six months, with the model posing

twice a week. It was Uglow’s habit to ask

the model to move around the studio

and see what positions she’d naturally fall

into or assume, rather than immediately

dictate a pose. Inevitably, different girls

had different capabilities, which also

suggested the compositions they might

be able to sustain.

from time to time, the look of a body

from another angle than the chosen pose.

Uglow’s drawings of the model were

frequently about situating the figure

on the paper after (or in the process

of) discovering the proportions of the

best rectangle for that drawing. But the

rectangle was not a fixed entity from

start to finish: it would often change as

the drawing developed, just so long as

the final rectangle was the one most

fitted to the idea and composition. Uglow

felt deeply the need to find an ordered

shape for his images, and much of his

work was involved in that exploration.

On the drawings he tended to initial the

edges of the final rectangle. ‘That’s to

tell the printers, the framers or whoever

it is, that this is my decision, not theirs.’

Nevertheless, having seen some of the

drawings out of their frames, it’s clear that

framers sometimes take liberties with the

mounting board and don’t always adhere

to the artist’s chosen limits.

Uglow also talked of drawing as a

way of making intentions manifest: ‘A

carpenter making a good joint is drawing

beautifully.’ But that did not mean that

he saw drawing simply as a craft, for his

definition of its centrality extended to

imaginative as well as descriptive truth.

In the end, his principal aim was to get

the painting right, to make it work as a

Euan Uglow: A Clear Defined Line andrew lambirth

His drawings are compilations of marks,

of dots and dashes: a system which

sometimes approaches Morse code in

its decisive simplifications, and which

at others throws off all constraints and

embraces a lyricism both unexpected

and rewarding. Precisely measured marks

can sit side by side with wristy scribble.

Some drawings start with an idea, others

are a process of uncovering. Uglow drew

to discover the details, weight and shape

of a body or object. Many, like the sheet

of five parts of figures, are exploratory

studies, intended ‘to see what a form is

doing’. He would also want to investigate,

Two Male Figures

study for David

like the raised surface of Braille. Uglow

was allergic to the word ‘sketching’, and

would never even refer to a ‘sketchbook’,

preferring always to call it a ‘drawing

book’. His friend and sparring partner

Patrick George (born 1923) used to tease

him mercilessly about this dislike. ‘Done

any sketching recently, Euan?’ he would

mischievously enquire. ‘I won’t have

that word in the studio’, was the angry

response. George has thought long and

hard about the two activities, sketching

and drawing, and what these words mean.

After due consideration, he thinks that

sketching is suggestive, whereas drawing

is definitive. George says of his own work:

‘Now I’m very keen about sketching and I

very seldom do drawings.’ Does this throw

any light on Uglow’s practice? Uglow

evidently required the certainty of drawing

in all his earlier work, but it can be said that

the later drawings are far more suggestive

than definitive. Yet again, his work broke

his own rules.

Uglow liked to draw with a B pencil with

a very sharp point so that he could see

the edge as it touched the paper. He

tended to press hard, to make ‘a clear

defined line’. He drew in both natural

and artificial light, deploying his lines in a

variety of spatial dispositions, establishing

limits, connecting forms and moving

from positive to negative as the image

demanded.

Uglow required much of his models, but

gave much back in terms of the beauty

he made from them.

Uglow always maintained that he didn’t

draw according to a schema, and that his

drawing was a risky business, a process

of discovery, and that if he got it wrong,

he would have to do it again. (Probably

after liberal use of an eraser.) On the other

hand, he did have a scaffolding or safety

net in his measuring marks. ‘Because I’ve

got a system of measuring, I can dance

all over the drawing’, he said. In some of

the sheets can be found holes made by

dividers which enabled him to navigate

around the surface. These holes and the

deeply incised lines that are especially

to be found in the earlier drawings

(made by repeated marks and the artist

getting cross and forceful in his search

for certainty) give the underside of these

sheets a distinctive texture.

For example, in Two Male Figures the

point of the pencil is used to articulate

the form, in addition to the more usual

linear mapping. Uglow literally stabbed

the paper, either with the sharpened

pencil lead or with dividers. Study for

Musicians is marked with thick clusters

of dots, in a form of monochrome

pointillism. Examining Hefty Nude before

it was framed, it was possible to feel the

stabbings on the reverse of the paper

study for Musicians

He encouraged a healthy state of

emergency in the studio by painting and

drawing models who inevitably changed

over time, flowers that withered and shed

their petals, fruit that decomposed. There

was thus an urgency to their depiction

(because of their time sensitivity) that

he found stimulating.

Threshing in Turkey is full of unusual shapes

and receding planes reminiscent of a

stage set. The profile of the foreground

hillock is like the shoulder and flank

of a figure lying on one side almost

submerged in water. The successive

planes receding into hilly distance are

not as spatially convincing as they might

be, piling up and converging rather than

moving smoothly backwards, yet the

drawing is sensitive and beautiful, and rare

in Uglow’s oeuvre because of its subject.

He painted few landscapes and drew

the countryside very little. His renditions

of towns are more frequent and more

assured. Landscape, Italy is a good example

of the Uglow architectural study and bears

a strong resemblance to a small painting

of Florence formerly in the collection of

the artist’s close friend, Craigie Aitchison.

In Study for David, the hatching takes

the form of thin diagonal lines from

right to left, moving into a scribble stroke

of greater freedom. (‘I hate the idea of

doing formulated shading’.)

On the sheet Uglow has made notes to

himself: “Sunday week” is jotted down,

as are phone numbers (perhaps of

models). He was not at all precious about

his drawings and very often the paper is

crowded with marginalia or calculations.

Another nude drawing is more heavily

scored, but the lines flow into rather than

puncture the paper, and the marks are

faster and more expressive. In Reclining

nude on mattress, which features an arm

depicted with what looks like Hogarth’s

celebrated serpentine ‘line of beauty’,

Uglow has gone over the lines again

and again, impressing the form into the

paper. This strategy, which amounts to a

kind of shallow bas-relief carving, recalls

his teacher William Coldstream’s chief

injunction to carve with the paint into

the space of the picture plane.

A group of three drawings which seem

to date from the mid-1960s explore the

dynamics of composition in intriguing

ways: Three nudes sitting, Room with seated

and reclining figures, and Girl on mattress.

What is the relationship, if any, between

the sitters? In Room with seated and

reclining figures, note the lovely gentle

lyrical quality of the mark-making in the

seated figure, contrasted with the more

angular lying girl. The related Girl on

mattress is all about the angles of feet

and legs and the elbow pushing out to

echo the line of the canted-up mattress.

reclining nude on Mattress

Three nudes sitting

Landscape italy

room with seated and reclining Figures

girl on Mattress

nude seated on armchair

Another drawing of this period, Armchair,

carries a real sense of the body and its

weight sunk into the chair, relaxing its

muscular tensions to make a new formal

whole of figure and furniture.

Compare a much later drawing, Standing

Nude, in which the character of the

mark-making has changed substantially.

Although the earlier control is no

longer in evidence, the effort to make a

determined mark nevertheless required

an exertion both physical and mental/

emotional, and here results in a new

lyricism, a new sense of movement.

The dots, instead of congregating in the

problem or focal areas, are more spread

out and dispersed, forming a notation of

marks which is less obviously linear and

more suggestively volumetric. This febrile

late style can also be seen to good effect

in Study for the lightest picture in the world,

in which Uglow throws out a network of

marks like the sparks rising upward from

a fire.

The later drawings tend to be much

less heavily-worked, but then this might

be not only to do with the changing

character of Uglow’s mark-making

but his use of increasingly high quality

paper. His pencil moves across the

thicker surface rather than penetrating

it. Among the subjects are possible early

versions of such well-known paintings

as Propeller, Articulation or Potiphar’s Wife,

either reversed or not yet in their final

arrangements. Ashtray with matchsticks

is all about the articulation of pictorial

space but has a scale and monumentality

to it which makes it look like a landscape

with megaliths on the horizon. Portraits

are an even greater rarity among the

drawings, but Fragment for head may be

safely identified as a drawing of Uglow’s

friend and erstwhile tutor Claude Rogers,

presumably in a hospital bed.

Looking at this formidable array of

drawings and ways of making marks tell,

the viewer is impressed by a sense of

searching: the constant urge in Uglow’s

work to find a grail. He wanted, above

all, to transmit some of the passion he

himself felt for the beauty of the world

– for how marvellous things look. He

wrote: ‘Drawing is the most immediate

way of making your ideas, sensations, and

information, explicit.’ His ability to make

things explicit (but also oddly mysterious)

is irrevocably manifest in this exhibition.

1. Landscape Italy 38.1 x 28 cm

2. Landscape Italy 21 x 26 cm


4. Threshing in Turkey 1966 17.5 x 27 cm

5. Standing Nude c. 1960 38 x 28 cm

6. Standing Nude II c. 1960 34 x 28 cm not illustrated

7. Standing Nude III c. 1960 36 x 28 cm

8. Standing Nude from the Back 23 x 22 cm not illustrated

9. Study for David 38 x 28 cm

10. Two Male Figures c. 1949 23 x 38 cm on reverse: Head and shoulder

11. Study for Musicians c. 1949 18 x 16 cm

22. Three seated Figures 1965 32.5 x 32.5 cm

23. Nude seated on Armchair 1966 22.5 x 30 cm

24. Figure Studies 39 x 36 cm

25. Nude on a Square 38 x 33 cm not illustrated

26. Idea for Painting – Nude with outstretched Arms c. 1983 38 x 53 cm

27. Reclining Nude on Mattress 24 x 34 cm

28. Male Nude lying on Mattress 1961 29.8 x 44.2 cm

29. Nude 1970 18.4 x 28.9 cm

30. Study for Narcissus 22.9 x 31.8 cm

31. Fragment for Head 19.7 x 29.5 cm

32. Standing Nude 22 x 18.5 cm not illustrated

12. Nude Sitting on Chair 33 x 25.5 cm

13. Nude Study Sitting 18 x 13 cm not illustrated

14. Skeleton 26 x 20 cm not illustrated

15. Hefty Nude 22 x 14 cm not illustrated

16. Mother and Child and two Studies 30.5 x 24.5 cm not illustrated

17. Standing Nude c. 1960 38 x 28 cm not illustrated

18. Art School Model 33 x 31 cm not illustrated

19. Room with seated and reclining Figures 23.5 x 35.5 cm

20. Girl on Mattress 1966 21 x 33.5 cm

21. Nude drawing 28 x 40 cm not illustrated

List of Works all works are pencil on paper

33. Study for Egyptian Spearess c. 1986 21 x 15 cm

34. Curve 21 x 34.5 cm

35. Standing Nude 22 x 15 cm

36. Sitting Nude 22 x 18 cm


38. Girl, Breast and Head 1972 21 x 33 cm

39. Idea for Painting 21 x 30 cm not illustrated

40. Ashtray with Matchsticks 23.5 x 32 cm

41. Liberty Stool 1986 26 x 35.2 cm

42. Study for The Diagonal 1977 18 x 26 cm

43. Study for Nuria c. 1999 17.5 x 23.8 cm not illustrated

44. Study for The Quarry, Pignano c. 1979 24 x 37.5 cm

45. Study for Articulation c. 1992 18 x 30 cm not illustrated

46. Girl on arms and knees 25 x 39 cm

47. Room with Reclining Nude 21 x 25.5 cm

48. Reclining Nude 27 x 40 cm not illustrated

49. Curved Nude c. 1996 21.2 x 30.5 cm inscribed : JANA upper right

50. Study for the Lightest Picture on Earth 1989-93 28 x 26 cm

51. Study for Potiphar’s Wife c. 1998 31 x 45 cm



2. Landscape Italy 21 x 26 cm

4. Threshing in Turkey 1966 25.2 x 29 cm

11. Study for Musicians c. 1949 18 x 16 cm

9. Study for David 38 x 28 cm

5. Standing Nude c. 1960 38 x 28 cm

10. Two Male Figures c. 1949 23 x 38 cm

19. Room with seated and reclining Figures 23.5 x 35.5 cm

20. Girl on Mattress 1966 21 x 33.5 cm


12. Nude sitting on Chair 33 x 25.5 cm

24. Figure Studies 39 x 36 cm

27. Reclining Nude on Mattress 24 x 34 cm

23. Nude seated on Armchair 1966 22.5 x 30 cm


30. Study for Narcissus 22.9 x 31.8 cm

31. Fragment for Head 19.7 x 29.5 cm

28. Male Nude lying on Mattress 1961 29.8 x 44.2 cm

29. Nude 1970 18.4 x 28.9 cm

36. Sitting Nude 22 x 18 cm


33. Study for Egyptian Spearess c. 1986 21 x 15 cm

34. Curve 21 x 34.5 cm

40. Ashtray with Matchsticks 23.5 x 32 cm


41. Liberty Stool 1986 26 x 35.2 cm

38. Girl, Breast and Head 1972 21 x 33 cm

42. Study for The Diagonal 1977 18 x 26 cm

46. Girl on arms and knees 25 x 39 cm

47. Room with Reclining Nude 21 x 25.5 cm

44. Study for The Quarry, Pignano c. 1979 24 x 37.5 cm

49. Curved Nude c. 1996 21.2 x 30.5 cm

50. Study for the Lightest Picture on Earth 1989-93 28 x 26 cm

51. Study for Potiphar’s Wife c. 1998 31 x 45 cm

1932 Born 10 March in London

1948-50 Attended Camberwell School

of Arts and Crafts, awarded

David Murray Scholarship

1951 Received State Scholarship

for the Slade School of Fine Art,

University College, London.

First exhibited with the

London Group

1952 Received Spanish State

Scholarship to work in

Segovia, Spain

1953 Awarded Abbey Minor

Scholarship, the Prix de Rome.

Travelled to France, Holland,

Belgium; spent six months

in Italy

1954 Did building work and farming

as a conscientious objector

1957 Worked in Spain and France.

Visited Giacometti with

David Sylvester

Euan Uglow: 1932 – 2000 Biography

1959 Moved to studio in Battersea

1960 Elected member of the

London Group

1961 Part-time teaching at the Slade

and Camberwell School of Arts

and Crafts

Second prize in junior section

of John Moores exhibition,

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

1962 Worked in France and Italy

1963 Worked in Morocco

1968 Worked in Turkey

1970 Won Edwin Austin Abbey

Premier Scholarship

1972 Won first prize for the

painting Nude, from Twelve

Regular Vertical

Positions from the Eye, 1967,

John Moores 8, Walker Art

Gallery, Liverpool

1972-74 Worked in Italy during the

summer months

1976 Worked in Italy

1980 Worked in Cyprus


1984 Invited by the British Council

to visit India for the exhibition

The Proper Study, Lalit Kala

Akademi, New Delhi


1987 Invited to teach and work

in China

1990-95 Artist Trustee, National Gallery,

London 1997

Honorary member of The

London Institute

2000 Died 31 August in London

One-Man Exhibitions

1961 Paintings and Drawings,

Beaux Arts Gallery, London

1969 Drawings, Gardner Centre,

Sussex University, Brighton

1974 Euan Uglow, Whitechapel Art

Gallery, London

Euan Uglow: Drawings,

Colnaghi, London

1977 Euan Uglow: Recent Paintings

and Drawings, Browse &

Darby, London

1983 Euan Uglow: Paintings

and Drawings, Browse &

Darby, London

1989 Euan Uglow: Euan Uglow’s

Nudes, Whitechapel Art

Gallery, London

Euan Uglow: Drawings,

Browse & Darby, London

1991 Euan Uglow: Ideas, 1952-1991,


1993 Euan Uglow, Salander O’Reilly

Gallery, New York, in association

with Browse & Darby

1997 Euan Uglow, Browse &

Darby, London

1999 Euan Uglow: Drawings,


2001 Euan Uglow: Night Paintings,


2002-3 Euan Uglow, Bury St. Edmunds

Art Gallery, and tour (Arts

Council Spotlight exhibition)

2003 Euan Uglow: A Retrospective,

Abbot Hall Art Gallery,

Kendal, Cumbria

Euan Uglow: Drawings, Browse

& Darby, London

2006-7 Euan Uglow – A personal

choice by Craigie Aitchison,

The Holburne Museum of Art,

Bath, 14 October 2006 – 28

January 2007

2007 Euan Uglow Paintings and

drawings from the estate,

Marlborough Fine

Art, London, 16 May -15

June 2007

Euan Uglow, The Complete

Paintings, Catalogue Raisonné

by Catherine Lampert with

essays by Richard Kendall

and Catherine Lampert, Yale

University Press, New Haven

and London 2007

London

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Madrid

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Marlborough

Design: Shine Design, London

Print: Impress Print Services Ltd.

Photography: Frances Ware, Georgia Georgallas

ISBN-978-1-9099707-03-0

Catalogue no. 631

© 2014 MarlboroughBack cover: Study for The Diagonal

Euan uglowDrawings

euan uglow: drawings

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