Unsung, a special exhibition at British Art Fair 2025, highlights overlooked Modern British artists whose oeuvres are ready for re-evaluation. 

Denton Welch, Self-Portrait, 1934-36, pastel on card, 34 x 28 cm. Courtesy John Swarbrooke Fine Art 

Ray Atkins, Philip White sat on a sofa reading, Liverpool 1963, oil on board, 68 x 79 cm. Courtesy Castlegate House Gallery 

A painter of lyrical abstracts, Henry Cliffe (1919–1983) was an influential teacher at the Bath Academy of Art during the post-war period and was considered on a par with his contemporaries William Scott, Peter Lanyon, Terry Frost, Bryan Wynter, Howard Hodgkin and Adrian Heath who all taught at the Academy.

Ray Atkins (b 1937) was taught by Frank Auerbach in the 1950s, and admired by Leon Kossoff. He taught fairly consistently from 1965 at art colleges in Bournemouth, Reading (from 1970), Epsom and Falmouth (until 1990). Castlegate House Gallery Director, Steve Swallow, feels Atkins has been unjustly overlooked. “I think his decades of teaching probably impacted his drive for further recognition and limited the possibility of further funding through sales,” says Swallow. “Like many good artists who taught, he just slipped through the net.” 

Bigotry 

Unsung reveals talented Modern British artists, whose careers have been impacted by prejudice of one kind or another. Denton Welch (1915-1948) was well known in his day as a writer under the patronage of Dame Edith Sitwell. He was also a remarkable neo-romantic artist, collected by Tate Britain, whose works were shown alongside John Minton and Keith Vaughan at the ‘Last Romantics’ exhibition held at Barbican Art Gallery in 1989. Welch was LGBTQIA+ during a period when homosexuality was illegal. He was also physically removed from society by disability. Two factors which undoubtedly contributed to his work being sadly overlooked.

Alick Riddell Sturrock (1885–1953) was presented for Unsung by The Fine Art Society. “Like many Scottish artists he has been unsung because he was overlooked by a London-centric art world. English critics are selective when it comes to recognising and embracing their Caledonian counterparts,” said Gallery Director, Emily Walsh. Similarly, artist Leslie Moore (1913-1976) was a Welsh neo-romantic artist who participated regularly in the National Eisteddfod and occasional gallery shows in Cardiff and Swansea. His work is represented in national collections in Cardiff and Newport, but he seems rarely to have exhibited beyond Wales which is why, perhaps he has been “seriously neglected”, says British Art Fair dealer, Gwen Hughes. 

Catherine Yarrow, Face (Self Portrait 2), c.1955, colour monotype, 36 x 43 cm. Courtesy Austin Desmond Fine Art 

“Catherine Yarrow (1904–1990) was a woman and a surrealist painter, and as such not taken seriously”, says Catriona College of Austin/Desmond Fine Art. Yarrow met Giacometti while travelling in Europe, studied printmaking with Stanley Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris, befriended Leonora Carrington in Spain after the outbreak of World War Two and then, like Carrington, fled Europe for the Americas (in her case New York) where she resumed her work in etching and gravure. 

Marriage 

With a few notable exceptions, the art market doesn’t tend to support the success of both members of a couple, generally favouring one over the other. One of Unsung’s classic tales is of art students falling in love at college and marrying, only for one party’s career to overshadow the other. This is the case with several Unsung artists, Jean Taprell Clark (1930-1973) who married author/illustrator Raymond Briggs and is represented by Ottocento Fine Art; and Jean Cooke (1927-2008) whose career was marred by her marriage to John Bratby, a domineering and violent character, who had gained fame as a kitchen-sink painter in the 1950s.

Mary Adshead (1904-1995), was a muralist so initially less respected as an artist than her husband, the painter Stephen Bone. However the tables turned after the war when Bone’s more traditional painting style fell out of favour and he turned to writing. Liss Llewellyn Fine Art wrote of her: “Working at a time when expectations of women were still largely confined to issues of domesticity, her prodigious professional output was noteworthy.”

Gertrude Harvey (1879-1966) was brought up in the artist’s colony of Newlyn in Cornwall. She was largely self-taught, learning her skills by observation through her experiences as an artist’s model at the Forbes School of Painting. Here she met leading local artists such as Harold Harvey, whom she married, and Harold and Laura Knight. Whilst Gertrude occasionally exhibited with her husband, he was far better known, overshadowing her reputation. That imbalance persists in the market today where his record price at auction is over £100,000, whilst hers is just £1,400. There is no more qualified gallery than Messums, a driving force in Newlyn market research and scholarship, to spot that imbalance and remedy it.

Kathleen Guthrie (1905-1981) was a painter, printer, textile designer, muralist , writer and illustrator of children’s books. She could turn her hand to any art form, and indeed to any style. Her early work, when married to artist Robin Guthrie, was figurative and decorative, but after she married her second husband, the abstract painter Cecil Stephenson, she turned to geometrical abstractions. She was multi-talented and versatile, yet being a woman, she never achieved critical status.  

Kathleen Guthrie, Red Centre, c.1970, acrylic on canvas, 51 x 61 cm. Courtesy Quad Fine Art 

Trends Many artists have been victims of fashion; either because they were working in a style that was not on trend at the time, or because - for whatever reason - they became unfashionable later on in their career or posthumously. These artists are grouped together in Unsung as it is the peaks and troughs of artistic and critical taste rather than merit that have caused them to be overlooked. 

Peter Lowe (b.1938) made constructivist reliefs just as conceptual art was becoming fashionable. Op artist Victor Anton (1909-1980) was already in his mid-fifties in the 1960s when his style of work – precise perspex sculpture and Op Art images in black and white – took off. Gallerist Dominic Kemp believes that he was simply of the wrong generation to fit in with the cool set. Geoffrey Clarke (1924-2014) was an avant-garde sculptor in the 1950s, but he also had interests in mosaics and stained glass. His reputation as progressive artist became confused with that of a decorative and ecclesiastical artist in a secular age where religious association was unfashionable.

The best known artist in Unsung is Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) who joins the group simply because he is currently out of fashion, with most works selling below estimate at auction. Dealer Christopher Kingzett reminds us that “Sutherland was considered more significant than Francis Bacon in the early 50s, and throughout that decade had strong claims to be Britain’s best-known artist.” 

Graham Sutherland, Study Limestone Quarry, Drilling Rocks, 1943, pencil, ink and chalk, 26.7 x 26 cm. Courtesy Christopher Kingzett 

Another artist whose works Unsung presents as neglected due to fashion is Patrick Procktor (1936–2003). Procktor was arguably as famous and successful as Hockney in the early 1960s, with sellout shows at The Redfern Gallery and inclusion in the trend-setting New Generation exhibition at the The Whitechapel Gallery in 1964 together with Hockney, Bridget Riley, John Hoyland and Patrick Caulfield. But by 1970, increasingly identified as an unfashionable figurative and topographical watercolourist, the slow descent into what the art critic John McEwen in his obituary described as ‘thirty years of comparative eclipse’ had begun. 

Politics

Unsung reveals that overtly political content in art can sometimes prove a barrier to popular appreciation. James Hyman Gallery is presenting Peter de Francia (1921-2012) to Unsung. His powerful graphic style of critical social realism found favour with left wing intellectuals such as John Berger, but it was out of step with the avant-garde of the time. Art Informel and Abstract Expressionism were the dominant styles of the period, and de Francia suffered from critical neglect as a consequence. 

Arthur Wragg (1903-1976), was a freelance commercial illustrator whose dramatic chiaroscuro is comparable to the high art woodcuts of the German Expressionists. A committed socialist and Christian, Wragg tended to provide heavily politicised content for left wing publications. British Art Fair dealer, Harry Moore-Gwyn Fine Art says that this was “a touch too hard-hitting to have become terribly commercial.” Adding “But there is a case to be made for these striking black and white drawings.” 

There is a case for each one of the artists in Unsung which visitors will find on the second floor atrium at Saatchi Gallery during British Art Fair 25-28 September 2025.