MARY FEDDEN. HYACINTH. 1975.
MARY FEDDEN. HYACINTH
Size (excluding frame): 16″ x 20″. 40.7cm x 50.8cm
Medium: Oil on canvas
Signed and dated: Fedden 1975
Framing: Original gilded and taupe painted moulding frame
Provenance: Private collection.
MARY FEDDEN. HYACINTH
MARY FEDDEN. HYACINTH.
Mary Fedden was a British artist whose finely executed paintings often took the form of a hybrid between a still life of everyday objects (usually in the foreground) and a landscape/skyscape (used as the backdrop). As in this painting, she would typically position a group of objects such as flowers, a vase or bowl and fruit depicted close up, in front of a background scene in soft tones of a grey cloudy sky. Over the years she became best known for such bold, vivid still lifes. This large oil painting, Hyacinth, is a fine and early example of such works.
In his book Mary Fedden Enigmas and Variations, Christopher Andreae writes: “Mary Fedden’s compositional balancing of solid and space, air and object, allows for a rich play of colour, but her colour too is ordered and balanced. She often says how much she dislikes too many colours in a painting. She prefers one dominant colour – red, blue, black or grey – like a key in a piece of music. Everything else must harmonise with this dominant colour, which is a kind of surround. But then some small part of the painting might punctuate this main colour with a vivid contrasting hue.” We can see exactly what Christopher Andreae is describing in Hyacinth with the use of an overall palette of whites and greys, punctucated by the vivid green of the burgeoning hycinth itself.
