Francis Butterfield (1905 - 1968)

Oil on board
56 x 42 cm

Provenance
Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London
Private Collection, UK

Composition (1935) comes from a defining period of Francis Butterfield’s career. Originally a wool merchant studying part time at Bradford art school, Butterfield began painting full time in the late 1920s after receiving encouragement from Michael Sadler, a notable art collector and former president of the Leeds Arts Club.

Butterfields’s style was influenced by Ben Nicholson’s radical reliefs from the 30s. He joined the Seven and Five Society in 1934 at a time when its members were moving exclusively towards abstraction. Blending geometric and organic forms, Butterfield incorporated found and household materials into his work, these often related to his time when working as a merchant in Yorkshire. He described his work as “an independent creation, a thing of beauty subject to its own laws. True, it may be derived from natural forms … but natural forms are only the starting point. From them the artist must fashion new units of beauty.”

Butterfield exhibited at the Zwemmer Galley in London and at the Leicester Galleries in 1937 after the Seven and Five Society disbanded in 1935. In the same year, his painting Figure Derivation became the first abstract work acquired by Leeds City Art Gallery. His work can be found in the collections of the Leeds City Art Gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield, and Sheffield City Art Gallery.