[Grace Golden, Artist] A Superb Watercolour Portrait of The Founder of The Centaur Press, Jon Wynne-Tyson By Grace Golden, Dated July 1947

Watercolours over pencil on thick art paper, a lovely head and shoulders portrait of Jon Wynne-Tyson, signed in pencil at lower right “Grace Golden July 1947”. The reverse shows an ink note in Golden’s hand “of Jon Wynne-Tyson”.

Grace Golden (1902 - 1993) trained at the Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art, exhibiting at the Royal Academy, Fine Art Society and Leicester Galleries. Following a small legacy in 1934 she was able to start a career in book illustration. During the Second World War she obtained a sketching permit from the War Artists’ Advisory Committee and after the war produced posters for the Ministry of Information.  Her painting “Free Speech” was bought by the Chantry bequest in 1940 and now hangs in the Tate Gallery. Her work was popular with many writers including Enid Blyton and her work is held in the collections of the Tate Gallery, Museum of London and National Archives. She had a lifelong interest in London, and in particular the working life of the River Thames, her parents having moved to a five-storey house by Southwark Bridge when she was five years old. Golden published a book called “Old Bankside”in 1951,  illustrated by fifty-one drawings of wharfs and alleyways between Blackfriars and London Bridges’. The majority of her drawings for “Old Bankside” were gifted to the Museum of London after her death in 1993. In her later years she became something of a recluse, cutting herself off from the world, living a life of frugality and simplicity which included making her own clothes with taste and style. She probably identified more with the historical periods she studied than with her own age. 

Jon Wynne-Tyson (1924 - 2020) was a man of many parts - author, pacifist, activist for vegetarianism and founder of the Centaur Press. He founded Centaur in 1954 and it soon became a highly respected independent publishing house, run from his home near Arundel in Sussex. Grace was a lifelong friend of Jon’s and would regularly escape down to Sussex to stay when she was bored or tired of London. Aside from her well-known drawings of London and the River Thames, she also drew many scenes around Arundel, as well as Jon’s house and office, which was generally under about two feet of unread books. At the time of writing, I also have her lengthy correspondence of letters to Jon listed here on eBay, and these give a flavour of their relationship/friendship, which (to use a meteorological analogy) was generally warm but with the occasional cold front. 

Approx. 285x340mm., pin holes in each corner, the drawing would appear to have been stored rolled, rather than framed since it was painted, and because of this the colours are still vibrant and fresh. Provenance - From Jon Wynne-Tyson’s estate sale of letters and artwork held at Stride’s Auctioneers in Chichester in Summer 2020.