[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

BATTERSHILL, Norman James [1922–2010]

“Bridge and Stream, Arundel”

oil on board / 8.9 inches by 10.7 inches

n.d. / ca1940–1950

Norman James Battershill (1922) was a painter, teacher and author, born in Hackney, London, and the son of an artist Leslie Battershill. He attended Twickenham College of Art and has shown at the Royal Society of British Artists, Royal Institute of Oil Painters and Pastel Society of all of which have elected him a member. He has also exhibited at Royal Academy of Arts and New English Art Club and was made a Fellow of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers and the Chartered Society of Designers in 1968.

Battershill’s later landscapes are conservative, what might be called traditional. This exhibits a color scheme reminiscent of the ’30s, however, and a composition similar to the Photo-Secessionist movement and Pictorialism more typical of photography in the early 20th century. It is similar in spirit to another painting in the collection by Eliot Candee Clark.

Arundel is in West Sussex, a few miles from the Channel.