Copyright © 2008-2011 Hargrave Fine Art, Geddington, Northants
The Painting
An oil on canvas measuring 28" x 36". Signed Alfred East. Old label verso: ‘"Clifford’s
Inn", by Sir Alfred East. Painted from the garden of the Inn, showing the Inn Hall,
and the Church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West.’ Provenance: sold at Sotheby’s in 1988.
About the Artist
Sir Alfred East (1844-1913) is one of the most significant figures in English landscape
painting in the decades before the First World War. His landscapes caught the mood
of times in which there was a growing concern at the rapidity of social change and
its impact upon the countryside. He was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, and
worked in his brother’s boot and shoe factory as a ‘clicker’ before becoming a sales
representative for the company in Glasgow. There he attended evening classes at the
Glasgow School of Art. In his late thirties he decided to become a professional artist
and in 1882 went to study at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he was much influenced
by the Barbizon School of landscape artists. Around 1884 he and his family moved
from Glasgow to North London where they lived until his death. In 1888 he was commissioned
to spend six months in Japan by the Fine Art Society. He arrived in Nagasaki in March
1889 and became the first English artist to make Japan the field of an extensive
and detailed study in paint.
The Subject
Clifford’s Inn, London. Clifford’s Inn was an Inn of Chancery which once stood on
Clifford’s Inn Passage, off Fleet Street. It was notable for being the first-attested
of the Inns of Chancery (1344) and also the last of the Inns to be dissolved (1903).
The buildings of the Inn seen in the painting were demolished in 1934; only the gatehouse
survives to this day. The light in the painting falls on the octagonal tower of the
Church of St Dunstan in the West (by John Shaw, 1829-33), which is constructed of
yellow Ketton stone. St Dunstan is the church of the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers
(the medieval guild of shoemakers). Alfred East was born the son of a Kettering bootmaker
and began his working life in the shoe factory of his elder brother Charles; this
church probably had particular associations for him.
Sir Alfred East
Clifford’s Inn, London
In March 1890, 104 of his paintings of Japanese landscapes and people were exhibited
at the Fine Art Society in London. East continued to travel widely and painted regularly
in France, Italy, Spain and North Africa. He was elected an Associate of the Royal
Academy in 1899, having been a regular exhibitor since 1883. In 1906 he was elected
President of the Royal Society of British Artists, a position he held until his death.
In 1910 he received a knighthood, and a banquet was held in his honour in his native
town of Kettering. The Alfred East Gallery, designed by J. A. Gotch, was opened in
Kettering on 31 July 1913 by Lord Spencer. East died two months later, but not before
he had been elected to full membership of the Royal Academy. A national newspaper
commented that it was a ‘fitting end to a brilliant career’.
