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 30x41 cm. Including frame 42x53 cm. The artwork has descriptions and multiple exhibition labels on the reverse side.

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 covered to varying degrees 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 first received schooling at Elm Tree House School, then at Richmond Hill School from 1914, and afterwards at King's College School in Wimbledon. In the twenties 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 funded 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, son of Augustus John. Through John he was introduced to the Montparnasse district. He studied with André Lhote.

Hall returned to England in the thirties, where he painted local scenes in Soho and elsewhere. From 1940 he painted Quentin Crisp three times, but the current locations of two of these works are unknown. During World War II he joined an ARP stretcher party near Lots Road, 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 air raids, are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum. His work was also part of the painting competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics.

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

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

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 last 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 Helen Lessore’s Beaux Arts Gallery in 1935 and, after the Second World War, at Roland, Browse and Delbanco (1946, 1947, 1950), the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, the Ashgrove Gallery, the Redfern Gallery, the Goupil Gallery, and the Leicester Galleries (1952). In 1977 a memorial 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.