Lucie and John Aldridge in Place House, Great Bardfield, 1955

MODERN MADE

A Great Bardfield Couple: John and Lucie Aldridge

19 April 2024

Alice Strang

John Aldridge met Lucie Brown (née Saunders) in London in the early 1930s. Having studied at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, the self-taught Aldridge was emerging as an artist of promise in the capital’s art scene, showing with the Seven and Five Society from 1931, at the invitation of Ben Nicholson and receiving a solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries two years later.

Brown trained at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and had established a dress-making studio. In 1933 they moved to Place House in the Essex village of Great Bardfield, where they became central figures in the informal gathering of artists based there, headed by Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious, along with their wives Charlotte Epton and Tirzah Garwood.

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The group of works presented here cover forty years of Aldridge’s career, from 1930 and one of the first of many visits to his friend Robert Graves in Deià on Majorca, to a pastoral scene near Great Bardfield of approximately 1970. It ranges across genres from landscape to still life and the interior in paintings and works on paper. A rare surviving example of Lucie’s rag rugs, Garden of c.1935, completes the collection.

Stream below Deià pays testament to Aldridge’s friendship with the poet and author Robert Graves, whom he met when Graves came to speak at Oxford University in the late 1920s. Aldridge graduated in 1928 and the following year Graves moved to Majorca with his partner, the American poet Laura Riding. The painting illustrates the idyllic setting described by Robjn Cantus thus:

‘The upside of living in Deià was that it was then remarkably beautiful and in the 1930s it would have been unspoilt and surrounded by olive groves and goat herds in a landscape part-worked with dry-stone walls; where the hills ended at a cliff precipice with their native dwarf palms, chamaerops humilis and ancient trees countered the flat blue sea and small bays of rocky coast. Water was from a well. Food without refrigeration was from the local land or sea. The ancient olive groves and orchards surrounding the town provided fruit and oil…The town had electricity from a generator that was turned off at ten o-clock in the evening and if you wished to work or socialise after then, it had to be done by oil maps or candles.‘ (Robjn Cantus, Before & After Great Bardfield: The Artistic Memoirs of Lucie Aldridge with a Postscript by Robjn Cantus, Inexpensive Progress, Cambridge, 2021, p.124).

Sea Kale of 1931 dates from the year during which Aldridge first showed with the Seven and Five Society. There is a touch of proto-Surrealism in the inclusion of the fragmented Classical head amidst with the titular vegetables and onions. A label on its reverse reveals that it was once owned by the noted collector Sir Michael Sadler (1861-1943); he was one of the first in Britain to acquire work by artists including Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Gauguin and did much to champion modern art in Britain, most notably via acquisitions made by Leeds City Art Gallery.

Aldridge and Brown married in 1940, so that she would inherit his pension should he die whilst on active service during World War Two. He joined the Intelligence Corps and was stationed in the UK, Africa and Mediterranean. He painted and sketched when circumstances permitted, as can be seen in San Severo of 1945 and Grotto in the Boboli Gardens, Florence of 1944-45.

The former features a deftly drawn merry-go-round, whose prancing horses are overseen by a pretty operative glimpsed in the centre of the composition; the latter is a fully considered view in the Florentine park showing the 16th-century Buontalenti Grotto.

Lucie’s sister Agnes and their nanny Ninnie, moved in with her at Place House for three years whilst John was away on war duties. Ninnie taught Lucie the art of hooked rug weaving and, as can be seen in Garden, she ’transformed a humble popular craft into a rich and original art form’ (Olive Cook quoted in Robjn Cantus, op.cit, p.1980). Following his demobilisation, John joined in the pursuit and a jointly made carpet of 1953 is in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum (CRIC.529-1953).

LUCIE ALDRIDGE (BRITISH 1889-1974) §

'GARDEN' RAG RUG

In the catalogue for The Art of Acquisition: The Great Bardfield Artists’ Houses exhibition at the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden of 2015, it was explained: ‘Ninnie made rugs “with floppy bits”, Lucie said, “like spaniel’s ears” and she taught Lucie. But there was nothing floppy about Lucie’s rugs - they were dense and tightly packed, tough work for someone as apparently frail as she seemed. Her designs were highly original. Her artistic eye was important throughout the decoration of…[Place]…house, which was never quite the same after…[John and Lucie]…divorced in 1960 and Lucie moved to Cambridge.’

The decorating and furnishing of the artists’ houses is a key aspect of the Great Bardfield art historical legacy, as captured in The Place House: The Artist’s Drawing Room, Great Bardfield. The historic property was in a state of neglect when purchased by Aldridge and he and Lucie worked hard to renovate the house and its overgrown garden.

‘Colour started to come in as the walls were painted; John decorated one room red with a fantasy mural of exotic plants. They changed the wine-red sitting room carpet for a yellow one...The sitting room had the Moss wallpaper [designed by Aldridge], a blue and white striped sofa much like a butcher’s apron and Victorian furniture. There was a curious selection of china throughout the house…Lucie made the house a home, arranging furniture and the crafted items John loved. She was an excellent arranger of floral displays, using flowers from the garden of Place House. Visitors commented on how it made the house feel more alive.’

Robjn Cantus, ibid, p. 176

Paintings by artist friends including Ben Nicholson, Stanley Spencer and Frances Hodgkins hung on the walls, but Olive Cook was especially drawn to Lucie’s creations, writing:

‘The interior of The Place was…striking, with its bold wallpapers, draped mantelshelves, Victoriana, opulent flower arrangements and cottage furniture. The rugs above all caught the eye. They were rag rugs designed and made by Lucie.’ (Olive Cook, ‘The Fry Art Gallery’, Olive Cook and Andrew Lambirth, Artists at the Fry: Art & Design in the North West Essex Collection, Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden, 2012, pp.9-10)

Following Lucie’s departure in 1960, she and Aldridge divorced and he married Margaret ‘Gretl’ Cameron. With the death of Ravilious in 1942, Bawden’s move to Saffron Walden in 1970 and the dispersal of the generation of artists who had arrived in the village after World War Two, Aldridge became the sole survivor of the glory days of Great Bardfield’s artistic chapter, remaining in Place House until his death in 1983; Lucie had pre-deceased him in 1974.

Works by John Aldridge

£2,500 - £3,500 + fees

JOHN ALDRIDGE R.A. (BRITISH 1905-1983) §

STREAM BELOW DEYA (DEIÀ), 1930

£3,000 - £5,000 + fees

JOHN ALDRIDGE R.A. (BRITISH 1905-1983) §

SEA KALE, 1931

£1,500 - £2,000 + fees

JOHN ALDRIDGE R.A. (BRITISH 1905-1983) §

MEDITERRANEAN VILLAGE

£300 - £500 + fees

JOHN ALDRIDGE R.A. (BRITISH 1905-1983) §

SAN SEVERO, 1945

£500 - £700 + fees

JOHN ALDRIDGE R.A. (BRITISH 1905-1983) §

GROTTO IN THE BOBOLI GARDENS, FLORENCE, CONTAINING GIAMBOLOGNA'S 'VENUS OF THE LITTLE GROTTO', 1944/45

£3,000 - £5,000 + fees

JOHN ALDRIDGE R.A. (BRITISH 1905-1983) §

THE PLACE HOUSE: THE ARTIST'S DRAWING ROOM, GREAT BARDFIELD

£1,500 - £2,000 + fees

JOHN ALDRIDGE R.A. (BRITISH 1905-1983) §

COWS GRAZING NEAR GREAT BARDFIELD, c. 1970

Image: The Sphere, courtesy Robjn Cantus [Lucie and John Aldridge in Place House, Great Bardfield, 1955]

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