Artist     John Aldridge
Title      First Frost
Date      1950's
object    Painting
Media    oil
Size       63.5 x 76cm
Ref         182

Purchased in the 107th RWA Annual Exhibition in 1959

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First Frost
John Aldridge was born in 1905 into a wealthy military family in the military garrison town of Woolwich After attending Uppingham School he took ‘Greats’ at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, graduating in 1928. He taught himself to paint and had his first group exhibition in 1931, with his first solo show at the Leicester Galleries in London two years later. The following year he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. he later exhibited with the Seven and Five Society alongside artists such as Ben Nicholson, Ivon Hitchens, David Jones and John Piper. During the 1930s he was closely associated with the poet Robert Graves and the group of poets and artists centred around him in Deyá. In 1933 he moved to Place House in Great Bardfield, Essex, where he became a friend of the painter Edward Bawden, a near neighbour, and also knew Eric Ravilious who was equally enthralled by the Essex landscape. Both Aldridge and Bawden collaborated in designing ‘Bardfield’ wallpapers during the late 1930s, these were distributed by Cole & Sons. His pencil sketches of Bardfield scenes are still to be found in many of the village houses and he took great pleasure in developing the Place House garden, an interest that is reflected in many of his paintings. Aldridge ‘appears’ in No.10 of Bawden’s village paintings leaning on the bar of the Bell pub.

In the Second World War Aldridge was commissioned into the Army Intelligence Corps. After demobilisation he returned to his plein air landscape painting; his favoured subjects were the Essex landscape and his much-loved garden, which is the subject for the painting in the RWA collection. His pictures are built up out of the commonplace ingredients that any observant person could have found in the villages and fields and back gardens of Essex. Aldridge proved again, what so many artists have proved before him, that subject matter is no more than a starting point for adventure. (1)

In the early 1950s more artists moved to Great Bardfield, creating something of an artist’s colony in the village. Aldridge was one of the chief organisers of the ‘open house’ summer exhibitions in the village, which attracted thousands of visitors to north Essex. The community fragmented in the 1960s, but Aldridge remained. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1963.

In 1980 the New Grafton Gallery in London held a retrospective exhibition of his work, three years before Aldridge’s death. His work is in many public collections including: the British Council, Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum, the RWA, and the Royal Academy of Arts (who elected him ARA in 1954 and a RA in 1963). The major holding of his work is in the North West Essex Collection of the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden, Essex. The artist’s work has since been shown in two exhibitions at the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden: a show of his oils in 1999 (with a catalogue essay by Ian Tregarthen Jenkin) and an exhibition highlighting his drawings and prints in 2000.

(1) From the British Council website: http://collection.britishcouncil.org

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