James Dickson Innes (1887-1914)

James Dickson Innes (1887-1914) was a Welsh painter who is best known for his Post-Impressionist landscape paintings of Wales. His burgeoning artistic career was tragically cut short by his death aged 27 from TB, but his output of paintings was nevertheless prolific. This is the first book to provide an overview of his art and life and is published to coincide with an exhibition at the National Museum Wales marking the centenary of his death. Innes was born in South Wales and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, from 1905 to 1908, where he met fellow artist Derwent Lees. In 1907 he began a friendship with Augustus John, and with John and Lees Innes wandered over a remote and unfashionable part of North Wales in pursuit of a romantic freedom. He also made several trips abroad in order to paint, most importantly to Collioure, France, in 1908 and 1911. This new book, which incorporates a catalogue of all his known works, provides Innes' growing following of collectors with a definitive source of reference on his work. The scope of the book, while providing an analysis of Innes' stylistic developments, also touches upon, and illustrates, the work of some of his close friends and collaborators, Derwent Lees, Albert Rutherston, John Fothergill and Augustus John. Through the inclusion of accounts of Innes by his male contemporaries, a picture of his personality and his industry is revealed as well as their sense of loss at his early death at the age of 27.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Foreword; Chapter 1: The Inneses of Llanelli; Chapter 2: 1905-7; Chapter 3: 1908; Chapter 4: 1909; Chapter 5: 1910; Chapter 6: 1911; Chapter 7: 1912; Chapter 8: 1913; Chapter 9: 1914; Catalogue of works; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author :
John Hoole wrote his undergraduate thesis on Innes, Augustus John and Derwent Lees at the University of East Anglia in 1973 and subsequently organised an exhibition of Innes' work for Southampton Art Gallery in 1977. He was curator of Barbican Art Gallery, London from 1982 to 1998, where he organized or commissioned over 100 exhibitions on a wide range of British and international artists and movements, including Francis Bacon, Eric Gill, Patrick Heron, Alphonse Mucha, Pablo Picasso, Stanley Spencer and Vincent Van Gogh. Margaret Simons was born in Llanelli in 1935 and lived close to Innes' first two homes. She began her research on Innes to satisfy her curiosity about an artist whose Welsh landscapes are her own.

Review :
Nominated for the William M. B. Berger Prize for British Art History 2013/14 John Hoole (with contributions from MargaretSimons), has brought together the fruits of a further thirty years' research in a volume which finally allows the full extent of Innes's all-too-brief flowering to be seen and understood' (Timothy Wilcox, Burlington Magazine, CLVI, September 2014) 'Since colour is the very essence of Innes's claim to fmae, this achievement [the inclusion of colour plates of so many of the artist's works] is greatly to be welcomed, and will enable his work to be apreciated in a wider, international context, as it surely deserves.' (Timothy Wilcox, Burlington Magazine, CLVI, September 2014)