Nan Youngman

(1906-1995)

Bonfire and Pageant to Celebrate the Festival of Britain, c.1951   *SOLD*

oil on panel

65 x 81 cm.

in its original frame

Like so many accomplished female artists of her day, Nan Youngman was Slade-trained (under the tutelage of Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer, 1924-1927). However, to earn a living, without a proverbial “room of one's own”, in her own words, she “had to combine part-time art teaching, children and adults, with my own painting”. She was the mastermind behind the Pictures for Schools Exhibitions, with its first show at Victoria & Albert Museum in 1947, and later made tours abroad for the British Council in connection with art education, starting with West Indies in 1952.

This dynamic scene of a pageant celebrating the Festival of Britain in 1951 was painted in the Rhondda Valley, a landscape that provided Youngman with some of her greatest artistic inspiration, but she's incorporated fantastical elements here referencing the festival - including a model of the futuristic, vertical steel “Skylon” structure that was built on the banks of the Thames to commemorate the emergence of Britain from the War. Like the British economy at that time, people joked it had “no visible means of support”, but the festival was very popular, despite fierce opposition from the Tories - led by Churchill - who deemed it to be “three-dimensional Socialism”.