Maurice Sheppard
PPRWS
MAURICE SHEPPARD EXHIBITION
NEW GRAFTON GALLERY, 42 OLD BOND STREET, LONDON, W1X 3AF
DIRECTOR: DAVID WOLFERS
20th SEPTEMBER - 10th OCTOBER 1979
INTRODUCTION BY DAVID THISTLETHWAITE
Maurice Sheppard was considered one of the most talented students of his era at the Royal College of Art, which he left seven years ago. He is well on the road to fulfilling his promise and has managed the unusual feat of living entirely from his work as a painter; so many artists are forced to teach to support themselves.
In this exhibition his painting can be seen whole, from the clear first impulses noted down in his watercolour sketches, to the meditated recreations of nature in oil, also painted out of doors; and in an interior scene, his outstanding portrait of Robert Wellington, which treats the home with the same honesty and affection that distinguishes his painting of landscape.
To make naturalism a tenable activity in the last quarter of the 20th century, as Maurice Sheppard's landscapes prove it to be, is a remarkable achievement. It has required not only the rediscovery and development of the very difficult technical skills needed to capture both the detail of nature and its momentary effects, but it has also meant sustaining a vision of the importance of nature and a courageous insistence on seeing it for himself, against all the pressures of 20th century art.
His paintings express the deep affinity with landscape that man still feels, but they also reveal how our relations with it are changed. Nature, once seen as master, then as servant, sometimes now seen as victim, a fact one painting records in the poignant contrast of felled trees with remnants of woodland. But Maurice Sheppard also conveys a new 20th century experience, of nature as survivor, living its own life despite, and in distinct independence of, what we do to it. Contact with this vigorous life is healing, but it is also humbling; for it leads even modern man to wonder whether nature does have something that he lacks.
David Thistlethwaite is a Christian Writer and Artist. At the time he wrote this "Introduction" he was a member of staff at Thos Agnew, Bond Street, London.