Brenda Pye
Encyclopedia
Brenda Pye also known by her earlier married name of Brenda Landon or her maiden name of Brenda Capron (29 November, 1907–26 April, 2005) was an English portrait painter and landscape artist. She exhibited at the Royal Academy
, the Paris Salon
, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
, the Royal Society of British Artists
and the Association of Women Artists; she was also a member of the Association of Sussex Artists.
at the age of 97 on 26 April 2005.
She was the youngest child of a barrister called Walter Capron who was himself the youngest son of a landed gentry
family seated at Southwick
Hall in Northamptonshire. Her mother’s maiden name was Whistler, and through her she was a distant cousin of the English artist Rex Whistler
and his brother the glass engraver Sir Laurence Whistler
; she was also more distantly related to the Anglo-American artist James McNeill Whistler
.
Her earliest years were spent at her birthplace: Shortwood House, Litton, in Somerset
, to which her father had retired from his London practice. A three-quarter length portrait of her in the gardens of Shortwood House in the summer of 1914, was painted by Henry Strachey
, at that time the art critic of the Spectator
, who lived nearby. However, from 1916 until her death, she lived in London
and Sussex
.
Ladies College, Sussex, before taking up a scholarship to study at Eastbourne College of Art. A review of the College's annual exhibition in The Times on 24 June 1925 (p 8 column F) singled out the work of Brenda Capron for "particular mention". At Eastbourne College of Art, her tutors included Eric Ravilious
and she was gold medallist. This entitled her to a further scholarship at Chelsea School of Art in London where she continued her studies as a pupil of Graham Sutherland
and others. She also had a travelling scholarship to Paris
.
of 1932, when she was 24. She had by then (on 12 November 1929) married her first husband, E A R Landon, and is therefore listed in the published volumes of Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905-1970 (1973-82), and in The Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940 (1976)), under her married name of Brenda Landon. The marriage ended in divorce during the Second World War. As a wartime resident of Lewes
, she helped Mrs Byng-Stamper in the well-known art gallery she and her sister set up during the War in the stables of their house at Millers, in Lewes, and through her came across Duncan Grant
, and sat for his life class as a model.
After the war, she was art mistress at Fairdene School for Girls, where she set up a pottery. Later, she established and ran the pottery at Glynde
Place (near Glyndebourne
). Most of her pottery is from this period.
and nephew of the founder of the Pye radio and television manufacturing business. He had a studio built for her in the grounds of his Jacobean farmhouse in Buxted
, Sussex, and Brenda Pye (as she now was), entered her most prolific period as an artist.
She was commissioned to paint many portraits, including the journalist and broadcaster Fyfe Robertson and the Headmaster of the London Oratory School
John McIntosh
OBE. Her portraits were exhibited in London at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
and in Paris at the Paris Salon
.
However, most of her work was now landscape painting in oil on canvas (sometimes, however, with palette knife or on wood), and she particularly loved Ashdown Forest
, which she painted over and over again. She also painted during travels with her husband in Scotland and France, and to a lesser extent in Wales, Portugal, Italy and South Africa.
Her style became softer and more impressionistic than her work during and before the war, but it was only occasionally purely abstract. Her favoured medium was always oil on canvas, but she also painted on board or wood (mainly flowers), and (especially in the later 1970s and 1980s) in watercolour. After her second marriage, she favoured brighter colours and a softer, less precise draughtsmanship than before the War and she was a very rapid worker, whether painting portraits or landscape. She always painted directly from life: never from photographs and usually without preparatory drawings.
Her landscapes and flower paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon
, and in London by the Royal Society of British Artists
and the Association of Women Artists. She also had one-woman exhibitions of her work in Sussex.
in wig and gown, was painted in 1987. After that, she was affected by cataracts in both eyes which, with some physical frailty, forced her to stop painting from life. However, she continued to paint abstract designs in watercolour.
awards an annual prize for portraiture called the Brenda Landon Pye Portrait Prize in her memory. The winners have been:
In 2009, Chelsea College of Art and Design
is also running a series of Brenda Landon Pye Painting Technique Workshops.
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
, the Paris Salon
Paris Salon
The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world...
, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Royal Society of Portrait Painters
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters is a British association of portrait painters which holds an annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London...
, the Royal Society of British Artists
Royal Society of British Artists
The Royal Society of British Artists is a British art body established in 1823 as the Society of British Artists, as an alternative to the Royal Academy.-History:...
and the Association of Women Artists; she was also a member of the Association of Sussex Artists.
Early life
She was born on 29 November 1907, and died in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
at the age of 97 on 26 April 2005.
She was the youngest child of a barrister called Walter Capron who was himself the youngest son of a landed gentry
Landed gentry
Landed gentry is a traditional British social class, consisting of land owners who could live entirely off rental income. Often they worked only in an administrative capacity looking after the management of their own lands....
family seated at Southwick
Southwick, Northamptonshire
Southwick is a small village and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It is approximately north of the town of Oundle and is set in a valley of the river Nene. The village falls within the Non-Metropolitan District of East Northamptonshire, which itself lies within the East Midlands region...
Hall in Northamptonshire. Her mother’s maiden name was Whistler, and through her she was a distant cousin of the English artist Rex Whistler
Rex Whistler
Reginald John 'Rex' Whistler was a British artist, designer and illustrator.-Biography:Rex Whistler was born in Eltham, Kent, the son of Henry and Helen Frances Mary Whistler...
and his brother the glass engraver Sir Laurence Whistler
Laurence Whistler
Sir Alan Charles Laurence Whistler, CBE was a British poet and artist who devoted himself to glass engraving, on goblets and bowls blown to his own designs, and on large-scale panels and windows in churches and private houses...
; she was also more distantly related to the Anglo-American artist James McNeill Whistler
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...
.
Her earliest years were spent at her birthplace: Shortwood House, Litton, in Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...
, to which her father had retired from his London practice. A three-quarter length portrait of her in the gardens of Shortwood House in the summer of 1914, was painted by Henry Strachey
Henry Strachey (artist)
Henry Strachey was an English painter and art critic.He was born in 1863, the son of Sir Edward Strachey and was a cousin of Lytton Strachey....
, at that time the art critic of the Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
, who lived nearby. However, from 1916 until her death, she lived in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
.
Education
She was educated privately and at EastbourneEastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...
Ladies College, Sussex, before taking up a scholarship to study at Eastbourne College of Art. A review of the College's annual exhibition in The Times on 24 June 1925 (p 8 column F) singled out the work of Brenda Capron for "particular mention". At Eastbourne College of Art, her tutors included Eric Ravilious
Eric Ravilious
Eric William Ravilious was an English painter, designer, book illustrator and wood engraver.-Career:Ravilious studied at Eastbourne School of Art, and at the Royal College of Art, where he studied under Paul Nash and became close friends with Edward Bawden.He began his working life as a muralist,...
and she was gold medallist. This entitled her to a further scholarship at Chelsea School of Art in London where she continued her studies as a pupil of Graham Sutherland
Graham Sutherland
Graham Vivien Sutherland OM was an English artist.-Early life:He was born in Streatham, attending Homefield Preparatory School, Sutton. He was then educated at Epsom College, Surrey before going up to Goldsmiths, University of London...
and others. She also had a travelling scholarship to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
Early work
Her paintings at this time were mainly figure paintings in oil on canvas, but she also excelled in pencil portraits and studies, and a pencil nude was her first major exhibited work, at the Royal Academy summer exhibitionRoyal Academy summer exhibition
The Summer Exhibition is an open art exhibition held annually by the Royal Academy in Burlington House, Piccadilly in central London, England, during the summer months of June, July, and August...
of 1932, when she was 24. She had by then (on 12 November 1929) married her first husband, E A R Landon, and is therefore listed in the published volumes of Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905-1970 (1973-82), and in The Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940 (1976)), under her married name of Brenda Landon. The marriage ended in divorce during the Second World War. As a wartime resident of Lewes
Lewes
Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England and historically of all of Sussex. It is a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-oriented town...
, she helped Mrs Byng-Stamper in the well-known art gallery she and her sister set up during the War in the stables of their house at Millers, in Lewes, and through her came across Duncan Grant
Duncan Grant
Duncan James Corrowr Grant was a British painter and designer of textiles, potterty and theatre sets and costumes...
, and sat for his life class as a model.
After the war, she was art mistress at Fairdene School for Girls, where she set up a pottery. Later, she established and ran the pottery at Glynde
Glynde
Glynde is a village in the Lewes District of East Sussex, United Kingdom. It is located two miles east of Lewes.-Estate:The estate at Glynde has belonged to four interlinked families: the Waleys , Morleys, Trevors, and Brands...
Place (near Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne is a country house, thought to be about six hundred years old, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England. It is also the site of an opera house which, with the exception of its closing during the Second World War, for a few immediate post-war years, and in 1993 during the...
). Most of her pottery is from this period.
As Brenda Pye
In 1961, she married again. Her second husband, with whom she was to live for the next 33 years, until he died in 1994, was Cecil Pye, the stepfather of the playwright Sir Alan AyckbournAlan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...
and nephew of the founder of the Pye radio and television manufacturing business. He had a studio built for her in the grounds of his Jacobean farmhouse in Buxted
Buxted
Buxted is a village and civil parish in the Wealden District of East Sussex in England. The parish is situated on the Weald, north of Uckfield; the settlements of Five Ash Down, Heron's Ghyll and High Hurstwood are included within its boundaries...
, Sussex, and Brenda Pye (as she now was), entered her most prolific period as an artist.
She was commissioned to paint many portraits, including the journalist and broadcaster Fyfe Robertson and the Headmaster of the London Oratory School
London Oratory School
The London Oratory School is a Catholic secondary comprehensive school in Fulham, London. The Headmaster is David McFadden. It has around 1,365 pupils. It is not to be confused with The Oratory School, a Catholic boarding school...
John McIntosh
John McIntosh (OBE)
John McIntosh, OBE, MA, FRSA, HonFCP, HonFASC was Headmaster of The London Oratory School for 29 years until his retirement on 31 December 2006.He was educated at Ebury School, Shoreditch College and Sussex University...
OBE. Her portraits were exhibited in London at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Royal Society of Portrait Painters
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters is a British association of portrait painters which holds an annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London...
and in Paris at the Paris Salon
Paris Salon
The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world...
.
However, most of her work was now landscape painting in oil on canvas (sometimes, however, with palette knife or on wood), and she particularly loved Ashdown Forest
Ashdown Forest
Ashdown Forest is an ancient area of tranquil open heathland occupying the highest sandy ridge-top of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is situated some south of London in the county of East Sussex, England...
, which she painted over and over again. She also painted during travels with her husband in Scotland and France, and to a lesser extent in Wales, Portugal, Italy and South Africa.
Her style became softer and more impressionistic than her work during and before the war, but it was only occasionally purely abstract. Her favoured medium was always oil on canvas, but she also painted on board or wood (mainly flowers), and (especially in the later 1970s and 1980s) in watercolour. After her second marriage, she favoured brighter colours and a softer, less precise draughtsmanship than before the War and she was a very rapid worker, whether painting portraits or landscape. She always painted directly from life: never from photographs and usually without preparatory drawings.
Her landscapes and flower paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon
Paris Salon
The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world...
, and in London by the Royal Society of British Artists
Royal Society of British Artists
The Royal Society of British Artists is a British art body established in 1823 as the Society of British Artists, as an alternative to the Royal Academy.-History:...
and the Association of Women Artists. She also had one-woman exhibitions of her work in Sussex.
Final years
Her last full scale portrait, of a young barristerBarrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
in wig and gown, was painted in 1987. After that, she was affected by cataracts in both eyes which, with some physical frailty, forced her to stop painting from life. However, she continued to paint abstract designs in watercolour.
Brenda Landon Pye Portrait Prize
Chelsea College of Art and DesignChelsea College of Art and Design
Chelsea College of Art and Design, the erstwhile Chelsea School of Art, is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation...
awards an annual prize for portraiture called the Brenda Landon Pye Portrait Prize in her memory. The winners have been:
- 2006 Tom Downes and Adelita Husni-Bey (joint winners)
- 2007 Keiji Ishida
- 2008 Margot Sanders
- 2009 Lindsey Bull and Connie Sides (joint winners)
- 2010 Tom Anholt and Arthur Owen (joint winners)
- 2011 Joe Walker
In 2009, Chelsea College of Art and Design
Chelsea College of Art and Design
Chelsea College of Art and Design, the erstwhile Chelsea School of Art, is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation...
is also running a series of Brenda Landon Pye Painting Technique Workshops.
Sources
- Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905-1970 (1973-82)
- Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940 (1976)
- The Society of Women Artists Exhibitors 1855-1996 (1996)
- Interview in Sussex Express 10 May 1968
- Brenda Landon Pye Portrait Prize website