Mary Potter, OBE (9 April 1900 – 14 September 1981) was an English painter whose best-known work uses a restrained palette of subtle colours. After studying at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

, Potter began her career, exhibiting in London by the early 1920s. From the 1950s, her work became increasingly abstract, and she gained wider notice.

Early life and career

Potter was born Marian (Mary) Anderson Attenborough in

Beckenham Beckenham () is a town in Greater London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley, in Greater London. Until 1965 it was part of the historic county of Kent. It is located south-east of Charing Cross, situated north of Elmers End and E ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

. Her parents were Arthur (John) Attenborough (1873–1940), a solicitor, and his wife, Kathleen Mary, ''née'' Doble (1872–1957). Potter attended St Christopher's school in Beckenham, and the Beckenham School of Art. She studied under

Henry Tonks Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher. He was one of the first British arti ...

at the

, beginning in 1918, where she won many prizes including the first prize for portrait painting After leaving school, she shared a studio in Fitzroy Street in London's

bohemian Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to: *Anything of or relating to Bohemia Beer * National Bohemian, a brand brewed by Pabst * Bohemian, a brand of beer brewed by Molson Coors Culture and arts * Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, origin ...

Fitzrovia Fitzrovia () is a district of central London, England, near the West End. The eastern part of area is in the London Borough of Camden, and the western in the City of Westminster. It has its roots in the Manor of Tottenham Court, and was urban ...

neighborhood, became a member briefly of the

Seven and Five Society The Seven and Five Society was an art group of seven painters and five sculptors created in 1919 and based in London. The group was originally intended to encompass traditional, conservative artistic sensibilities. The first exhibition catalogue ...

and exhibited with The New English Art Club and

The London Group The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was for ...

. She worked in oil paint and watercolours. She was married to the writer and radio producer Stephen Potter from 1927 to 1955, and the couple had two children, Andrew (born 1928) and Julian (born 1931). Her first solo exhibition was in 1932 at the Bloomsbury Gallery in London. During the Second World War, the family moved out of London but returned soon afterwards. Her paintings ranged from still lifes and landscapes to portraits, including one of

Joyce Grenfell Joyce Irene Grenfell OBE (''née'' Phipps; 10 February 1910 – 30 November 1979) was an English diseuse, singer, actress and writer. She was known for the songs and monologues she wrote and performed, at first in revues and later in her solo s ...

Later years

In 1951, Potter moved with her husband to

Aldeburgh Aldeburgh ( ) is a coastal town in the county of Suffolk, England. Located to the north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the composer Benjamin Britten and remains the centre of the international Alde ...

on the east coast of Suffolk and lived in The Red House which she swapped, in 1957, for Crag House, owned by

Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...

, with whom she became a close friend after her divorce in 1955. With her children grown, she spent long hours painting. By mixing paint with beeswax, she achieved a "chalky luminous quality" using a "pale and subtle" range of colours, and her work grew increasingly abstract. In his essay for the catalogue of her 1965

Whitechapel Art Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the ...

exhibition, ''Mary Potter Paintings 1938–1964'', museum director

Kenneth Clark Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television ...

said Potter's works "exist in the domain of seeing and feeling; we know that they are exactly right in the same way that we know a singer to be perfectly in tune"; he described her paintings as "enchanting moments of heightened perception". In the 1960s and 1970s Potter gained increasing recognition. From 1967 she had seven solo shows with the New Art Centre in London, which continued to champion her work following her death, holding a further five Mary Potter exhibitions. She was awarded an OBE in 1979, and major retrospective exhibitions of her work were shown at the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

in 1980 and the Serpentine Gallery in 1981, which opened to great critical acclaim a few months before her death. In a review of that exhibition in ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, w ...

'', Marina Vaizey wrote: "The results over the past several decades have been paintings of the most exquisite tensile webs of pale resonant colour, the subjects almost vanished, but the echoes imaginatively suggesting the fullness of life: an evanescent evocation of the shapes and surroundings in which people live. The very delicacy is paradoxically full-blooded". Also in 1981 Potter won the John Moores prize. The John Moore prize was awarded by The Walker Gallery to encourage lesser known artists to participate in the art world. William Packer the art critic commented on Mary Potter’s art work, for the ''Financial Times'', after one of her shows calling it, “very English, and very good.” He compared her work to Victor Pasmore, “Those much-vaunted paintings of his, of the Thames along Chiswick Reach made just after the war, are more than equalled by her comparable and contemporaneous images of the breezy, spray-swept front at Brighton, and her views of Regent's Park and in the Zoo." She died of lung cancer, at age 81, at her home in Aldeburgh.

Selected collections

(five paintings) * Imperial War Museum *

Southampton City Art Gallery The Southampton City Art Gallery is an art gallery in Southampton, southern England. It is located in the Civic Centre on Commercial Road. The gallery opened in 1939 with much of the initial funding from the gallery coming from two bequests, o ...

(five paintings) *

Norwich Castle Museum Norwich Castle is a medieval royal fortification in the city of Norwich, in the English county of Norfolk. William the Conqueror (1066–1087) ordered its construction in the aftermath of the Norman conquest of England. The castle was used as a ...

* The

Government Art Collection The Government Art Collection (GAC) is the collection of artworks owned by the UK government and administered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The GAC's artworks are used to decorate major government buildings in t ...

(six paintings) *

Kirklees Kirklees is a local government district of West Yorkshire, England, governed by Kirklees Council with the status of a metropolitan borough. The largest town and administrative centre of Kirklees is Huddersfield, and the district also includes ...

museums and galleries

Solo exhibitions

* 1964

retrospective * 1967 to 1989 New Art Centre, London * 1980 Tate Gallery * 1981 Serpentine Gallery (organised by The Arts Council of Great Britain)

References

External links