GEORGE GAULT

George Gault was fond of quoting Herbert Read “All art aspires to the condition of poetry”, and indeed George’s works have a richly poetic quality. There is a sense of timelessness about his landscapes, an almost surreal atmosphere which permeates the images. Many of the landscape studies were based on the scenes he knew so well at his birthplace in Northern Ireland. A barren and beautiful land whose remote stillness George especially captured in his dramatic and moody black and white watercolours.

As a student at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in the 1950’s, George was exposed to the influences of such well known artists as Sir William Coldstream, Victor Pasmore, Johnny Minton, and Keith Vaughan. Sir Terry Frost was a life-long friend. But George resisted these influences and developed his own mature style, with touches of the Neo-Romantic as well as the Surrealist.
His favourite artist was Odilon Redon. George’s works are both a record of the artist’s intense experience of nature and his analysis and personal interpretation of it. Lyrical Irish landscapes come to life in his hands.

George exhibited frequently at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and was a Silver Medal winner in 1954 at the Paris Salon. He was also associated with the Royal Society of British Artists, the New English Art Club and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. He is remembered for the many years he spent in Greenwich teaching art. He had a major retrospective at the Woodlands Art Gallery, Blackheath in 1995. His work has been steadily gaining recognition over the past years since his death in 1999.