Muncaster, Claude: Kings Cross Station, London – SOLD
£450.00
An evocative watercolour of Kings Cross Station full of steam loco activity, one of a series of paintings of everyday London produced by Muncaster in the late 1920s. Such contemporary paintings are rare and Muncaster has captured the activity typical of a mainline station in this period.
Artist: Claude Muncaster, (1903-1974)
Title and date: Kings Cross Station, London, 1927
Size: 20.5 x 29.0 cms, framed in excellent condition.
Out of stock
Description
Artist description:
Claude Muncaster was an etcher, illustrator, writer, lecturer and broadcaster and a watercolourist known for his landscapes and maritime scenes. He was born Grahame Hall, the son of the Royal Academician Oliver Hall who taught his son to paint from an early age; Grahame first exhibited his work aged 15 and a few years later was showing at the RA. However, he adopted the name Claude Muncaster in 1922 to dissociate his career from that of his father. He made a series of paintings of London in the late 1920s of which this is one.
Muncaster served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) from 1940-44, training as a navigator before going on to advise on the camouflage of ships and also worked as an official war artist.
In 1946-7 he was commissioned by the Queen to produce watercolours of the royal residences at Windsor, Sandringham and Balmoral; the Duke of Edinburgh, in a foreword to a biography of Muncaster, recalls the artist’s ‘unerring instinct for a subject’ and his sense of atmosphere. Other commissions included large panoramas of the Thames and Bradford. His paintings can be found in the Royal Academy, Tate Gallery, National Maritime Museum, National Railway Museum and the Royal Air Force Museum.