Clifford Hall (1904-1973) - San Marco Square

The San Marco Square in Venice. Oil on canvas on board. Signed and dated 1948. Size without frame 30 x 41 cm. Including frame 42 x 53 cm. The artwork has descriptions and multiple exhibition labels on the reverse.

Clifford Hall, ROI, NS, (January 24, 1904 – December 25, 1973) was a British painter of street scenes and bohemian life. One of his most recognizable post-war periods was that of people who were, to varying degrees, covered with a towel or blanket. Some have their face turned away from or hidden from the viewer.

Clifford Eric Martin Hall was born in Wandsworth, London, and spent his youth in Richmond, first on Sheen Avenue and later on Mount Arras Road. He initially studied at Elm Tree House School, then at Richmond Hill School from 1914, and then at King's College School in Wimbledon. In the 1920s he studied at Richmond Art School under Charles Wheeler and at Putney Art School under Stanley Anderson. From 1925 to 1927 he studied at the Royal Academy Schools, where he won a Landseer Scholarship and began taking portrait commissions, which financed his studies and lodging in Twickenham. He was influenced by Charles Sims and Walter Sickert. From 1928 he lived in Paris, where he shared a studio in Malakoff with Edwin John, the son of Augustus John. Through John he was introduced to the Montparnasse district. He studied with André Lhote.

Hall returned to England in the 1930s, where he painted local scenes in Soho and elsewhere. From 1940 he painted Quentin Crisp three times, but the current whereabouts of two of these works are unknown. During World War II he joined an ARP stretcher party in the Lots Road area, Chelsea, and contributed independently to the War Artists Advisory Committee. In May 1941 a exhibition of Clifford Hall’s war drawings, titled “Bombs On Chelsea,” was held at the Army Gallery on Old Bond Street, London, W1. Some of his drawings from that period, depicting the effects of bombing raids, are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum. His work also figured in the painting competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics.

Hall’s most characteristic work comes from his later life, when, from the mid-1960s onward, he began painting portraits of women who were almost entirely draped in towels or other fabrics, their faces hidden. These works reflected Hall’s many earlier pieces in which women were portrayed with their heads down, brushing their hair so that the hair concealed the face, or with their backs to the viewer, which he had previously alternated with conventional portraits of the full face.

The contents of Hall’s studio were sold posthumously in 1982 by Christie’s in London, and his paintings thus became fairly widely distributed. They can be found in many British institutional collections, some foreign collections, and frequently appear at auctions.

Exhibitions
Hall exhibited with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI), the New English Art Club, the Royal Society of British Artists, the London Group, the National Society of Painters, Sculptors and Printmakers (NS),[1] and the Chelsea Art Society (CAS). In the latter years of his life Hall served on the boards of three of these art societies: the ROI, the NS, and the CAS.

As for galleries, Hall had a solo show at Beaux Arts Gallery, Helen Lessore’s gallery, in 1935 and after the Second World War with Roland, Browse and Delbanco (1946, 1947, 1950), the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, the Ashgrove Gallery, the Redfern Gallery, Goupil Gallery, and the Leicester Galleries (1952). In 1977 a commemorative exhibition was held at the Belgrave Gallery. Three more exhibitions of Hall’s work were held at the Belgrave Gallery in 1982, 1989 and 1997.