A likely tale...
ART SALE: Actor Rodney Bewes parts with his collection of Pennine views. John Vincent reports on the works by Peter Brook.
NYONE who was around in the 1960s must remember Rodney Bewes. He was sensible, hard-working Bob Ferris in the TV sitcom The Likely Lads, always liable to be led astray by his wilder boyhood chum Terry Collier, played by James Bolam.
Many readers will also recall the pair’s successful early 70s follow-up Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? What happened to Bingley-born Bewes, apart from continuing his acting career, was that he became hooked on the paintings of Peter Brook, having been introduced to the work of the Holmfirth artist by his friend, fellow Yorkshireman and actor Tom Courtenay. They both appeared in the 1963 film Billy Liar, with Sir Tom, as he now is, playing the lead role of Billy Fisher and Bewes a lesser role as Arthur Crabtree.
Courtenay had already bought some of Brook’s pictures and later showed them to an appreciative Bewes, who met the painter, repeating his visits whenever work took him North and building up a decent collection.
At the age of 75, Bewes decided to part with 18 pictures by Brook through Bonhams, Chester. Fifteen sold for a premium-inclusive total of £63,500, with three failing to meet their reserve. The cataloguers proved spot on, with most selling within their estimates. The Woods in Winter, however, bucked the trend, realising £8,500 (est. £3,000-£5,000). Mill with Red Blinds made £7,750, Pennine Morning – Autumn Mist £6,250, Man and lamppost £5,625, the bleak Sunday – Nearly Pub Opening Time, West Riding £5,500, Canal (after Constable) £3,750, Beast £3,500 and, in a different vein, SelfPortrait as Charlie Chaplin £2,125.
From a different vendor, another Brook, the quaintly titled A Well-Trained Dog Waiting Outside A Big House Situated Between Slack-Top and Slack Bottom. The Dog’s Name is Shep – near Heponstall went for an above estimate £8,500, while Town Street, Bramley made £5,625.
All reasonably good prices, although nothing to touch the record auction price for a Brook of £12,480, at the same Bonhams, Chester, sale two years ago for his oil Pennine Christmas Day.
The modest and shy Brook (1927-2009), a farmer’s son, was essentially a Pennine landscape artist and spent most of his life in West Yorkshire, teaching art at Sowerby Grammar School before becoming a fulltime artist in his early 40s.
His starkly realistic images, combining great technical skill with acute observation of sky, landscape, figures and buildings, depict a vanishing world of crumbling farmhouses, sheep-dotted moors, mills, trams and washing hung out to dry in cobbled streets.
It is often imbued with humour, through an enigmatic title, a dog’s face peering through a gap in a door or a quirkily placed sheep.