Born into a working-class family in London's Battersea, David Gommon first studied art at the local Polytechnic when he was sixteen. Aged nineteen, he was taken up by Lucy Carrington Wertheim - the London-based gallerist renowned for adventurously showing work by Christopher Wood, Frances Hodgkins and gifted naive artists - who gave him his first exhibition. Aided by insights from the artist's own evocative writings, Philip Vann's text intricately examines the development of Gommon's predominantly landscape art – infused with mystical delicacy of colour and subtle audacity of composition that often tends towards surrealism – rooted latterly in the paradisical surroundings of the Northamptonshire village of Hardingstone where he and his wife Jean lived for several decades.

Anomie Collections is a London-based initiative that supports the work of contemporary British painters by acquiring works on behalf of a group of private collectors. Since its inception in 2022, Anomie Collections has acquired eighty-six paintings and works on paper by thirteen artists.This publication, accompanying the second edition of scheme, documents the thirty works purchased for this iteration, along with newly commissioned texts by Kathryn Lloyd and an introduction by Matt Price, Publisher at Anomie Publishing and curator of the edition. The works span a variety of genres, from landscapes and interiors to figures and abstractions.The artists featured in Anomie Collections 2 are: Lindsey Bull, Jai Chuhan, Anna Freeman Bentley, Cara Nahaul and Ben Sadler.

Louis de Wet (1930–2018) was an artistphilosopher born in South Africa. Over the course of his life, he created a significant body of meticulously crafted drawings and paintings, using the techniques of the Old Masters to express a contemporary world. This publication, authored by his wife Gabrielle Drake, brings together de Wet’s full catalogue of works with detailed biographical information and recollections from those who knew and worked with him. In 1983, along with his wife, de Wet bought Wenlock Abbey in Shropshire, part of an eleventhcentury priory that was the daughter house of the great Burgundian abbey of Cluny. Considering the house to be his destiny, de Wet served it faithfully, restoring and refurbishing it over the course of thirtyfive years. Wenlock Abbey helped develop de Wet’s artistic vision, substantiating his belief that the best from the past should inform, but not inhibit the future. He enhanced the fabric of the abbey with his own artworks, including a complete scheme of frescoed images of Old and New Testament figures in the chapel, as well as designs for the carved capitals of the oak screen he had inserted there. These capitals are a geographical biography, each carving showing a place of significance in de Wet’s life.This book takes the capitals as its guide, and is organised around the places de Wet lived in during the course of his life: Africa, London, Paris and Wenlock Abbey. Each section starts with pictures of the relevant capital, and includes a biographical overview written by Gabrielle Drake and reproductions of de Wet’s drawings and paintings from that period. There are also facsimiles of his Parisian sketchbook and his fastidiously compiled paint colour book.In additional text contributions, local architectural historian Vivien Bellamy details her personal recollections of de Wet and his extraordinary vision for the house; the architect Andrew Arrol outlines his renovation work on the property; and Christophe Voros, the Director of the Fédération des Sites Clunisiens, recalls his first meeting with de Wet and Gabrielle in 2000, as well as their long collaboration together.Louis de Wet (1930–2018) was born in South Africa and studied at the Beaux Arts and La Grande Chaumière, Paris, before taking British citizenship and settling in London. He remained there for thirty years, drawing, painting, studying and developing his ideas in his studio while travelling extensively around Europe and showing his work in various exhibitions. In 1983, along with his wife, de Wet bought Wenlock Abbey in Shropshire, which he faithfully restored until his death in 2018. It is now home to the Louis de Wet Foundation, which was established to preserve the abbey and offer cultural opportunities.

Henry Ward (b.1971) is an artist, educator and writer based in London. This monograph documents a major new body of work created during and following a residency at the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, Connecticut, in 2023, and a subsequent residency in the Morvan, Burgundy, in summer 2024. Ward is interested in line, shape, form and colour relationships. He works primarily as a painter, but also makes drawings and small sculptures. He explores the language of paint by investigating the threshold between abstraction and representation. During the two months he spent at the Albers Foundation, Ward took advantage of the vast studio space and began pinning together cut painted pieces to make assemblages. While there, he produced fifteen paintings on canvas and wood, forty paintings on paper, sixty drawings, twenty ‘cut-outs’ and a full sketchbook. Exclusively working with acrylic paints, he began experimenting, using masking tape and mixing in different mediums so that he could ‘push the paint around’.The publication includes reproductions of many the works Ward made during his stay at the Albers Foundation, organised into ‘Paintings’, ‘Works on Paper’ and ‘Drawings’. The final section, ‘After Bethany’, brings together twenty-two acrylic paintings on canvas that the artist created the following year, including during a two-week residency in France.In his foreword, Fritz Horstman, Education Director of the Albers Foundation, sets the scene in Bethany, detailing the studio buildings and the rural winter landscape, as well as Ward’s ‘exciting path of exploration and growth’ during his time there. While in residence, Ward travelled to nearby New York to meet the artist Amy Sillman in her Brooklyn studio. An edited transcript of their conversation is included here, in which they discuss their individual approaches to painting, writing and language. In his essay, the curator and writer Jonathan Watkins charts Ward’s thirty-year career as an artist and teacher, drawing out his belief that ‘art is, by its very nature, educational’. In her contribution, Jenni Lomax interviewed Ward in his Woolwich studio about the works he created during both residencies, and the lasting impact they have had on his practice.Edited by Matt Price and designed by Joe Gilmore, the book is published by Anomie Publishing, London.

Anna Freeman Bentley (b. 1982) is an artist based in London. Her painting practice explores the built environment, architecture and interiors, inviting emotive, psychological and semiotic readings of space. This publication, Complete Reality, documents Freeman Bentley’s latest series of paintings, which she created after visiting the film set for My Driver and I (2024), a coming-of-age drama set in the port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.Over the course of the shoot, Freeman Bentley took over two thousand photographs, which she edited and worked from in her London studio. The paintings show lavish rooms, filled with fringed lamps, dusty chandeliers, vast mirrors and ornate furniture, juxtaposed with the incongruous signs of a film set: screens, leads, computers and plastic chairs. Exploring the relationship between ‘reality’ and ‘fabrication’, the series continues the artist’s interest in spaces that have an inherent tension or transience.Alongside the paintings that comprise Complete Reality, the publication also includes a series of oil studies on paper that explore additional rooms, angles and spaces from the film set. Installation images of the artist’s most recent solo exhibitions – Video Village at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, Paris (2024), make shift at Monica de Cardenas, Zuoz (2024), and Complete Reality at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (2024–25) – showcase the works staged in different configurations and gallery environments.In her introduction, Jennifer Higgie considers the interiority of Freeman Bentley’s elusive scenes, and her interest in temporary and unreal spaces. The curator and writer Elisabetta Fabrizi interviews Freeman Bentley about the interplay of reality and illusion in her paintings. They reflect on themes of authenticity and narrative tension, and discuss Freeman Bentley’s earlier explorations of cinema, particularly Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). Kathryn Lloyd writes about the conceptual and historical relationships between cinema, photography and painting. She analyses how Freeman Bentley forges an interdependence between these three distinct media, creating an unmistakably painterly language that somehow distils the essence of both film and photography.In an interview with Michele Robecchi, the artist discusses her recent solo exhibition in Switzerland, make shift. Freeman Bentley reflects on her personal connections to the work, the significance of the temporary and transitory nature of the film set and her use of triptychs, mirrors and fragmentation to disrupt conventional readings of space. In her contribution, the film producer Georgie Paget offers a speculative film script based on the exhibition Video Village at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, Paris.Edited by Matt Price and designed by Joanna Deans, the book is published by Anomie Publishing, London.

Following the success of The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting in 2018 and The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting 2 in 2021, a third volume has been created to showcase solo exhibitions that have defined contemporary painting since the second volume. This new, even larger anthology presents the work of eighty-five artists born or living in Britain through documentation and discussion of solo exhibitions of their work in museums and galleries nationally and internationally. Featuring artists at different stages of their careers, from senior figures exhibiting at major museums to emerging artists presenting some of their first commercial gallery exhibitions, The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting 3 offers an overview of recent activity in the medium of painting in Britain. Artists and venues featured in this new volume include Andrew Cranston at Ingleby, Edinburgh; Jadé Fadojutimi at The Hepworth Wakefield; Sahara Longe at Timothy Taylor, London; Kathryn Maple at The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Mohammed Sami at Camden Art Centre, London; Lucy Stein at Spike Island, Bristol; Caroline Walker at the Fitzrovia Chapel and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; and Jonathan Wateridge at Nino Mier, Brussels.The anthology, which features cover artwork by Louise Giovanelli from her autumn 2021 exhibition at GRIMM, New York, has been selected by London-based publisher and writer Matt Price, who in addition to editing dozens of catalogues, monographs and books including Phaidon’s international anthologies of painting and drawing Vitamin P2 and Vitamin D2, authored the first two volumes of The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting.The publication, which has been project edited by Birmingham-based editor, curator and writer Anneka French, features text entries by Amah-Rose Abrams, Melissa Baksh, Holly Black, Lauren Dei, Yasmina Floyer, Anneka French, Kathryn Lloyd, Anna McNay, Matthew James Holman and Matt Price.

Susie Hamilton’s dynamic practice is concerned with a wide range of subjects but often focuses on solitary people in impersonal public spaces or natural wildernesses. From the heroic, isolated exploits of astronauts and Arctic explorers to lone shoppers in supermarkets, all subjects are equal under her gaze. Other works turn attention towards crowds on beaches and in hotel dining rooms, who, as in Hamilton’s paintings of single figures, are invaded by blooms and veils of paint. Comprising over 300 paintings in oil and acrylic and numerous works on paper, Hamilton’s work is here divided into thematic sections that bring insight to her research. As critic and broadcaster Charlotte Mullins observes, ‘Hamilton often uses literature as a springboard for her work. Her paintings draw out the ambiguities of Shakespeare, the fragmentary chaos of TS Eliot, the melancholy of Andrew Marvell.’ From the power of her transmutative, barely human figures presented at the Ferens Art Gallery (2002), to the more recent progression of Hamilton’s solitary forms which move across desert, tundra and forests under attack from natural and unknown forces, her often otherworldly figures remain resilient.As Mullins reflects in her introduction, however, Hamilton’s work is not all ‘pain and suffering.’ Nor is it solely concerned with the human figure. Mullins writes, ‘There is joy too, particularly when she turns her probing eye to the natural world. She captures the quizzical gaze and lightning speed of monkeys, white paint splattering the surface as they race through salt flats. We see the lethal precision of a shark in the depths, the pale camouflage of an owl in a snowstorm, the perfect balance of an ape as it leaps from vine to vine.’The development of Hamilton’s work further unfolds in an enlightening interview with writer and broadcaster Louisa Buck, from the night-time desolation of motorways and petrol stations to an evolving interest in human and animal figures. Buck’s in-conversation also details Hamilton’s series ‘Plumpers’ and ‘Mutilates’, uneasy figures who border categories of abstraction and representation.Writer, editor and international curator Anna McNay, in her eight-part extended essay commissioned for the publication, discusses Hamilton’s literary influences in detail, drawing out the ways that Hamilton’s own biography shapes the work and informs her perspectives on landscapes, people and animals.Designed by Hyperkit and edited by Anneka French, the publication has been produced by Hurtwood and published by Anomie, London.Susie Hamilton (b. London, 1950) studied Fine Art at St Martins School of Art and Byam Shaw School of Art. She read English Literature at London University, gaining a PhD in Shakespeare studies (1989). She lives and works in London and has been represented by Paul Stolper Gallery since 1996. Since 2018 Hamilton has been commissioned by mental health charity Hospital Rooms to create wall-paintings in psychiatric intensive care units and made three works for the central staircase of the new Springfield Hospital, London (2022).Recent solo exhibitions include Unbound, Paul Stolper, London (2022);in atoms, Paul Stolper, London (2016);Here Comes Everybody, St Paul’s Cathedral, London (2015);Black Sun, Studio Hugo Opdal, Flø, Norway (2009);World of Light, Triumph Gallery, Moscow (2008);New Paintings, Galleri Trafo, Oslo (2007);Leisure Paintings, Paul Stolper, London (2006);Dissolve to Dew, St Edmund Hall, Oxford (2005);Immense Dawn, Paul Stolper, London (2003);Paradise Alone, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (2002);Mutilates, St Giles’ Cripplegate Church, London (2001).Hamilton’s work is represented in collections including Government Art Collection, British Museum, Science Museum, Imperial College Healthcare Art Collection, Richard Heaton Collection, Murderme Collection, Deutsche Bank, St Paul’s Cathedral, The Women’s Art Collection, Brehman Collection, The Methodist Modern Art Collection, The Priseman Seabrook Collection and The Groucho Club.

Daniel Crews-Chubb (b.1984) is a London-based painter whose mixed-media works wrestle with the human condition and modes of selfexpression. This monograph, Out of Chaos, ispublished to coincide with his solo exhibition at Timothy Taylor, New York, which brings togethernew paintings and works on paper. Crews-Chubb’s paintings exist somewhere between figuration and abstraction. They drawon a wide variety of references, including ancient cosmologies, historic artefacts and sculpture,pre-Columbian deities, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and Hellenic myth. He intertwinescanonical sources and classical allusions in his paintings, creating a highly personal, idiosyncratic lexicon of human, celestial and bestial figures.Out of Chaos takes its title from the ancient Greek notion that chaos is a state of undifferentiated matter from which the universe emerged. The paintings that form this series feature urgent, gestural marks and passages of vivid colour, centred around the figure as a motif. The bodies that he depicts are ageless, nongendered and non-racial – conduits for feeling, rather than signifiers of individuals.This publication reproduces Crews-Chubb’s paintings from 2015 to 2024, starting with hisearly works and subsequently organised into seven series. Notable among these are the recentImmortals (2022–) and Out of Chaos, which is the focal point of his solo exhibition. The book also features an introduction by the writer Jennifer Higgie, an essay by art historian Matthew Holman and an interview with writer Amah-Rose Abrams. Daniel Crews-Chubb was born in Northampton in 1984. He completed his BA at Chelsea College of Arts, London, in 2009 and undertook the Turps Studio Programme, London, in 2013. He lives and works in London. His first solo museum exhibition will take place at the Long Museum, Shanghai, in November 2024.

Joy Labinjo (b.1994) is a British-Nigerian artist based in London. Bringing together paintings made between 2017 and 2024, this monograph coincides with her institutional solo exhibition We Are Briefly Gorgeous at Southwark Park Galleries, London, which opened in July 2024. Labinjo uses the human figure as a vehicle to explore topics such as storytelling, identity and race, and how they intersect with wider social, cultural and political contexts. Her work is informed by her experiences growing up as both a Londoner and as part of the African diaspora. Her large-scale figurative paintings often depict Black bodies from the past and present – both real and imagined. Working from personal and archival imagery, including family photographs, found images and historical material, she captures scenes of joy, leisure and perseverance in everyday life. As a painter fundamentally concerned with people’s stories, she expands the dialogue around contemporary Black culture.For We Are Briefly Gorgeous, Labinjo produced a new body of work in response to the multicultural area of Southwark in South London. Rendered in her distinctive style of flat layers of colour and graphic patterning, the paintings capture families, friends and individuals in Southwark Park and Bermondsey. Developed from site visits and taken and found photographs, the intimate scenes document the physical, social and lived experiences of local communities.Alongside installation views and reproductions of the exhibited paintings, the book documents Labinjo’s works from 2017 onwards. Organised thematically, it explores the artist’s interests in ‘Family, Friends and Community’, ‘Social Criticism’, ‘Historical Animation’ and ‘Self-portraiture’. The paintings grouped together in the second section mark the beginning of the artist’s more satirical, politically engaged approach, instigated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd in 2020. ‘Historical Animation’ compiles Labinjo’s paintings of Black historical figures, such as Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Olaudah Equiano, Francis Barber and Charles Ignatius Sancho. In this series, the artist explores the histories of British portraiture, and the erasure of Black identities through the white gaze.An introduction by Dr Christine Checinska, the inaugural Senior Curator of African and Diaspora Textiles and Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, contextualises Labinjo’s figurative practice in relation to a lineage of Black British painters, including Claudette Johnson and Lubaina Himid. An essay by curator and writer Dr Jareh Das expands on this, unpacking the artist’s recent works and analysing her ability to represent stories that connect cultural identities across time and geographies. An interview between Labinjo and Adelaide Bannerman, the Curatorial Director at Tiwani Contemporary, takes an in-depth look at the artist’s methodology, political themes and approach to nude self-portraiture.Edited by Bannerman, Martina Mei and Matt Price, designed by Hyperkit, produced by Hurtwood and published by Tiwani Contemporary and Anomie Publishing, London, the book has been generously supported by the A. G. Leventis Foundation.

Minami Kobayashi (b.1989) is a Japanese artist based in London. Covering a significant period of development in her practice as a painter, this publication coincides with her second major solo exhibition, The Song of Jujubes, at Frestonian Gallery, London. Kobayashi’s paintings depict familiar yet surreal scenes, created from an amalgamation of memories, places and ordinary people. In her dreamlike ambiguous narratives, nature, animals and humans are given equal status; her realms are symbiotic societies with multiple creatures. She captures transitory and fluctuating moments, depicting her protagonists in states of flux, vulnerability and openness. Rendered in a postImpressionist palette, her compositions are a potent mix of playfulness and deeper themes of human and natural life.Bringing together eleven new canvases, The Song of Jujubes takes its title from a song that the artist used to sing as a teenager in her hometown of Nagoya, Japan. It begins with a girl eating one jujube fruit every night, wondering what she will do when they are all gone. Imbued with a sense of nostalgia and loss, the works consider what ‘home’ means and the strong relationship between people and place.This publication documents Kobayashi’s paintings chronologically, from her early works of 2016 to 2024. In a foreword, the Directors of Frestonian Gallery, Matt Incledon and Rollo Campbell introduce the inner world of the artist and the themes of The Song of Jujubes. In an interview with Lisa Wainwright, Kobayashi discusses her time studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, her unique painting technique and the symbolism in her scenes. She also expands upon her artistic influences, including Ukiyoe woodblock prints, the tenets of Buddhism, Tarot and the Nabi painters, such as Félix Vallotton, Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard. In her essay ‘Temperature of a Memory’, Laura Allsop analyses Kobayashi’s recent paintings in relation to memory and place, particularly the artist’s hometown of Nagoya.Edited by Incledon and designed by Joe Gilmore, the book is copublished by Frestonian Gallery and Anomie Publishing, London.

Herry Perry (1897-1962) is an important, but neglected, artist of the 1920s-50s. The book brings together all aspects of her art for the first time. She studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now Central Saint Martins) from 1924-7 and was taught wood engraving there by Noel Rooke. Her first love was wood engraving but she quickly moved on to use the wide range of other skills she acquired at the Central. Her best known work is the posters she designed for Frank Pick at London Transport from 1927-38. She produced some sixty witty and inventive posters during this time. Some of these included birds-eye view maps of areas of London. She was also commissioned to paint murals, most famously two on R.M.S. Queen Mary in 1936, and also a map mural for Rothamsted Research Station in 1932 (which can still be seen there). She also illustrated various books, some of which were written by her. The text and illustrations often show her sense of humour. The Second World War and the death of Frank Pick in 1941 put an end to her poster work. After the War she painted a large number of pub signs for various London and Kent breweries.

The painter, Romi Behrens, lived in West Cornwall for nearly sixty years, voraciously painting the subjects around her every day. Her artistic career was as long as it was broad and spanned many genres, including still life, portraiture and landscape painting. This is the first monograph to pay homage to the extent of her career, providing a selected but characteristically-diverse range of visual and written material from the artist’s oeuvre and archives, starting with Romi's earliest paintings of her family, friends and the streets of Penzance and extending to religious themes done later in her life. Rachel Rose Smith gives chronological shape to the span of Romi’s work, analysing the varying relationships throughout between the person and her work, as it reflected the many identities she held, including painter, woman, wife and mother. The author also explores rich connections embedded within her ways of seeing to formative examples from the history of painting, including Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Matisse, Cezanne and Picasso, with whom she arguably worked in dialogue. Romi’s works, however, are very much her own throughout, with those forms of expression and attention learnt from precedents mingling with her own humour, flair and surrounding life. Romi’s Christian faith and the loving focus she gave to her many subjects, whether friends or inanimate objects, are similarly explored, revealing a body of work which is both tender and vibrant, as well as persistent and constantly on the move.

Ray Atkins (b.1937) is one of the least well known major painters of his generation. He studied at Bromley College of Art in Kent before gaining a post graduate place at the Slade despite having failed the National Diploma in Design in 1961. His first teaching post was at Reading University in 1965 where he lived and recorded in paint the huge upheavals that the town was undergoing, leading to a one person exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London in 1974.A teaching post at Falmouth Art School in 1974 led to a thirty four year stay in Cornwall where he painted the extraordinary landscape of the china clay country around St Austell with its collossal pits and mounds of micae.The desolation left over by the demise of the tin mining industry was also a major theme, The more intimate subjects of children, gardens, family life and inevitably the sea were also part of the oevre. The nineties also saw a long series of works on the theme of dance.To celebrate the uncelebrated was his dictum.Peter Davies follows Atkins’ journey from the dark but creative London period to the high spots in the eighties with a retrospective at the Royal West of England Academy and with work selected for the John Moores in Liverpool, a room at a Serpentine summer Show, and representation in shows at the Hayward gallery.The book also follows the tensions and problems arising from Atkins’ insistence on working direct from his subjects and places the artist’s career in the wider context of the twists and turns of events in the art world in the UK, Europe and beyond.In addition, David Stoker gives a personal account of his discovery of Atkins in France, leading to a growing friendship and a deep understanding and respect for the work.

For over thirty years, celebrated painter Callum Innes (b. 1962, Scotland) has created his lushly painted and subtly nuanced abstractions in a rectilinear format. In 2022, he added a striking new element to his repertoire: the tondo. To do so required mastering an entirely new set of technical and aesthetic challenges, confronting a form with abundant, historical resonances. This striking volume, richly illustrated with carefully selected images of Innes’s Tondos, and installation views of key exhibitions, explores how Innes has challenged traditional perceptions of shape and form to create dynamic and immersive visual experiences. A pivotal essay by art historian Éric de Chassey traces the artist’s encounters with this form and its progenitors in the history of art, firmly cementing Innes’s breakthrough in the pantheon of significant works rendered in this distinctive formation.Callum Innes was born in Edinburgh in 1962. He lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Oslo, Norway. He studied drawing and painting at Gray’s School of Art from 1980–84 and completed a post-graduate degree at Edinburgh College of Art in 1985. In 1992, Innes had major exhibitions at the ICA London, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. In 1995, he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and was awarded the NatWest Prize in 1998 and the Jerwood Prize for Painting in 2002. His critically acclaimed museum exhibition, From Memory, travelled throughout Europe and Australia from 2006–08. In 2012, Innes was commissioned by the Edinburgh Arts Festival to transform the Scottish capital’s Regent Bridge with a changing sequence of coloured light, and in 2016, he was the subject of a major retrospective survey exhibition and accompanying monograph, I’ll Close My Eyes, at the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, the Netherlands. In 2018, his first major solo exhibition in France, In Position, took place at Chateau la Coste in Provence, with an accompanying publication. Innes debuted his new series of Tondo paintings at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, in 2022; this was followed by exhibitions of the Tondo series at Frith Street Gallery, London; Parra & Romero, Ibiza; Galerie Tschudi, Zurich; and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin in 2023. He will have exhibitions at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, and Kode – Lysverket Museum, Bergen, Norway, in 2024.

Adam Bruce Thomson (1885-1976) was one of the most quietly impactful artists of his generation. Born in Edinburgh, he was among the earliest intake of students to train at the newly established Edinburgh College of Art. He went on to have a long-running teaching career at the College, supporting and encouraging successive cohorts. In his own practice, Thomson worked across a range of media, producing etchings, drawings, watercolours and oil paintings. A committed member of several artist-led societies, he exhibited widely and was well-respected by his peers. To date, however, his contribution to twentieth-century Scottish art remains largely unexplored.Adam Bruce Thomson: The Quiet Path celebrates the achievements of this talented yet modest figure. It provides an in-depth account of his life and career, charting his creative development and examining his role as a teacher, mentor and friend to other artists. The book is fully illustrated, and draws from previously unseen archival material. It accompanies a major exhibition at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre in 2024.

Harold Harvey, a true ‘son of Cornwall’, has been one of the most under-rated and least written about members of the Newlyn ‘School’ of artists which flourished from 1880 to 1930. The son of a bank manager, he grew up in Penance, and after studying under Norman Garstin and a spell in Paris, he settled to a quiet life in Newlyn with fellow-artist Gertrude, painting The Cornwall he knowS from the inside.In his introductory essay, Professor Kenneth McConkey sets Harvey in the context of the art moments of the time, and shows how his early ‘genre’ paintings of rustic and marine life, so characteristic of the early Newlyn artists, gradually gave way to more sophisticated subject matter – Harvey was noted for his sumptuous interiors – and a flatter and more decorative style of painting. His early work might be compared with that of Stanhope Forbes, while his later paintings show clear affinities with those of fellow painters such as Laura Knight and Dod Procter.Professor McConkey’s essay complements the first significant ‘life’ of Harold Harvey, researched and written by Peter Risdon and Pauline Sheppard, which is in turn illuminated by Peter Risdon’s painstakingly compiled catalogue raisonne of over 600 paintings.Harvey’s painting output was prodigious, and this book includes approximately 100 illustrations of his favoured subjects: the Cornish at work, children at play, and intimate interior scenes and conversation pieces. Many of his contemporaries in Newlyn were visiting ‘observers’, but for Harold Harvey, who rarely went outside the county even though a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, painting the Cornish world ‘because it was there’ was his whole life.