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86 Wells lived in Ditchling in Sussex until the early 1920s but was born in London in 1907. He attended University College Hospital from 1925 and qualified as a GP in 1930. He took up an appointment as the GP for the Scilly Isles from 1936-45 having worked in a number of hospitals prior to this appointment. He was largely self-taught apart from attending evening classes at St Martins School of Art in the late 1920s and his medical training during the day. Apart from that the only other training was studying under Stanhope Forbes in Newlyn during a visit to Cornwall in 1928. Whilst in Cornwall that year he was introduced to Christopher Wood and Ben and Winifred Nicholson. Ben became a life-long friend and when time allowed Wells would make the occasional trip to visit him in his Hampstead studio. In 1938 Nicholson had married Barbara Hepworth and moved to St Ives in 1939 with their triplets, staying temporarily with Adrian Stokes and his painter wife Margaret Mellis, to escape the ravages of the bombing in London. During the war years Naum Gabo, an influential sculptor, theorist, and key figure in Russia's post-Revolution avant-garde and in the development of twentieth-century sculpture moved to Cornwall. During his visits to Nicholson and Hepworth, Wells met Gabo who became a major and lasting influence upon him. After the war Wells decided to become a full-time professional artist and bought one of Forbes's former studios in the artistic community of Newlyn. With his new-found confidence he became a founder member of the Crypt Group in 1946 and the Penwith Society in 1949. From here on his career climbed and he began exhibiting extensively; in 1946 an exhibition with Winifred Nicholson at the Lefevre Gallery, London, in 1947 with Ben Nicholson, Hepworth and Peter Lanyon at Downing's Bookshop in St Ives, at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris, in 1949 (Salon des Réalités Nouvelles were an exhibiting society devoted to pure abstract art founded in Paris in 1939), at the 1951 São Paolo Biennale and at the Durlacher Gallery, New York, in 1952, 1958 and 1960. The present work, Untitled, 1948 was bought directly from Wells in the 1940's by George Dix, a partner at the Durlacher Gallery and remained in his collection. Dix was stationed in London during the Second World War and remained there for a time afterwards. During this period in England, he befriended many of the luminaries of mid-century British culture, among them Wells, Vaughan and Piper, along with famed sculptor Henry Moore. He maintained these relationships even after his return to America, where he worked as a partner in the New York office of the bi-continental gallery Durlacher Brothers. In Manhattan, Dix remained part of the intelligentsia, enjoying the company and friendship of Gore Vidal and Leonard Bernstein, among others. Wells was an independent figure, managing without a dealer until Waddington Galleries gave him a solo exhibition in 1960 followed by a second in 1964 which did not do well commercially due to the more challenging hard edge work he was producing. In the mid-1960s he acquired a second studio in Newlyn that for almost 30 years he shared with his great friend, the sculptor Denis Mitchell. From this time onwards Wells suffered a fallow period commercially until the re-emergence of interest in the post-1939 Modern movement of artists based in and around St Ives. This benefitted from a pivotal Tate Gallery exhibition in 1985, St. Ives, 1939-64: Twenty-Five Years of Painting, Sculpture and Pottery, which included seven works by Wells. Untitled, 1948 Oil and pencil on canvas board. Signed twice, dated 1948 and inscribed 'Meadow Studio / Trewarveneth / Newlyn, Cornwall' verso 25.1 x 35.2 cm (9 ¾ x 13 ¾ in) Provenance The Artist. George Dix, New York, New York (acquired directly from the above in the late 1940s). Provenance cont. George Dix was an art dealer and collector who had a partnership with R. Kirk Askew at Durlacher Brothers and later, after Durlacher closed in 1967, he opened his own gallery in New York City. By family descent. Private Collection, Charlottesville, Virginia. Osborne Samuel, London J O H N W E L L S ( 1 9 0 7 - 2 0 0 0 )

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