Francis Butterfield

Francis Butterfield
Butterfield in 1934
Born	Francis Walter Butterfield 1905 (1905) Bradford, England
Died	1968 (aged 62–63) London, England
Education	Bradford College of Art
Occupations	Artist, journalist

Francis Walter Butterfield (1905–1968) was an English artist and journalist. He was one of the UK's earliest abstract painters and was a member of the Seven and Five Society, which also included Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and John Piper. In 1935 Butterfield's work was part of the first exhibition of entirely abstract art in Britain. One of his works is held at Shandy Hall.

Personal life

Butterfield was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1905. He had a brother and a sister. He initially trained as a wool-stapler. In 1937 he relocated to London. After WWII he moved to Twickenham, where he lived until his death at Greenwich Hospital in 1968.

Butterfield was friends with Irish cookery writer, model and actress, Theodora FitzGibbon.

Art career

In the late 1920s, while working as a wool-stapler, Butterfield attended evening classes at the Bradford College of Art, under Henry Butler and painted in his spare time. In 1929, he left full-time employment to focus solely on painting and was supported by several patrons. These included Sir Michael Sadler, who "kept him from starvation" during the first four years of his new career. He held his first London exhibition in 1934, and travelled to Spain "to find new shapes and colours".

Butterfield rented a studio on Manresa Road in London. Due to financial constraints he often used non-standard media for his paintings, including onion boxes, silver sand, red brick dust and hot glue-size.

He was a member of the Seven and Five Society (so called because the original intention of the society was to include seven painters and five sculptors). He was invited by member Ben Nicolson to exhibit alongside two other non-figurative artists - Arthur Jackson and J C Stephenson – in 1934. The following year the whole group exhibited at the Zwemmer Gallery, which became the first entirely abstract exhibition to be staged in Britain.

In 1935, a group of supporters purchased Butterfield's painting Figure Derivation for £21 (the equivalent of approximately £2,000 in 2026). The following year they offered the work to the Leeds Corporation Art Gallery, but the donation was declined by the gallery's director, Philip Hendy, who said of the work, "We thought it was – well, I'm afraid I cannot tell you what we thought, except that we did not think it was a suitable picture for inclusion in our art gallery collection."

In response, Butterfield said "Real criticism I am anxious to have. Unfortunately, real criticism can only come from competent critics… Mere indignation, vituperation or even sentimental praise I have no use for. I can say nothing to the Leeds Corporation Art Gallery sub-committee; that body of critics hasn't criticised."

Notably, by 1937, just two years later, appreciation of the avant garde had developed to such an extent that a smaller work of the same title was accepted by the same Leeds City Council, and was included in a Yorkshire Artists' Exhibition at the gallery.

Those who championed Butterfield's work included Sir Michael Sadler, Master of University College, Oxford, Francis Watson, Henry Moore and Geoffrey Grigson.

Publications

By 1950 Butterfield had become art editor for Courier, a magazine of "fact, fiction, art and satire". Butterfield provided line drawings for Uncle Fred by David Smith.

Tristram Shandy

Butterfield was friends with the painter Kenneth Monkman, the pair having met at university. He introduced Monkman and his wife Julia to Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. The couple developed a "lifelong obsession" with the novels, and subsequently became trustees of Shandy Hall, where one of Butterfield's paintings was displayed. The author Alan Bennett, a fan of Butterfield's work, paid a private visit to Shandy Hall to see the work, whereupon he became enamoured with the house itself and helped to raise funds for its upkeep.

References