Charlotte Halliday Original Watercolour – Pen and Gouache Painting – Acacia Rd

Description

Original watercolour painting by Charlotte Halliday – Summer in Acacia Road – 1973
Signed and dated, inscribed with title and the artist’s address on label on the backboard

Pen and gouache on grey paper. Framed size: 49cm x 43cm. Unframed size: 30cm x 23cm

Framed in light solid wood frame and glazed.

The subject of this original Charlotte Halliday painting is Acacia Road in  West London W3 6HD which is a location in Acton between Springfield Gardens and Cumberland Park. Charlotte Halliday is famous for championing street scenes and cityscapes of West London. This gouache painting is a lovely snapshot of Acacia Road the way it looked back in 1970s as fifty years on it is quite different. Subject of this painting is close to the artist’s heart. She moved to 42 Acacia Road in 1946 having spent several years in Darbyshire. Later she and her family moved to 62 Hamilton Terrace in 1949 because her father needed a big studio space.

Who is Charlotte Halliday, artist (1935 – )

Charlotte Halliday, born 1935, studied at the Royal Academy Schools where she was influenced the Henry Rushbury and Albert Richardson who encouraged her to follow her own interest in architectural drawings. She was awarded the Silver Medal for drawing and commission started to come in whilst she was still a student.

She has exhibited widely in group and solo exhibitions in London. She is a member of the Royal Watercolour Society and New English Art Club where she has served as Keeper since 1989.

Charlotte Halliday has said about her work that townscapes give her a buzz: light falling on brickwork, stone or stucco and architectural detail, the more complicated the better. She relishes tackling really intricate mouldings, and cares passionately about getting them right.

She began working on the Shell Centre project in the late 1950s, when she was commissioned to take snapshots of the engineers at work, depicting it in 16 large drawings. Today in the 2020s, she continues to work actively, creating sensitive pencil and ink sketches of London’s buildings and changing architecture and documents her efforts in real time.

Charlotte Halliday uses pen and ink, pencil and gouache, and paints mainly architectural topics, particularly London street scenes. She tends to work on several paintings at any given time. Charlotte normally finishes a painting in about four to five sits usually layering gouache and finishing the painting with white highlights.

Charlotte Halliday comes from an artistic family. Her father Edward was a portrait painter.

After World War II, Edward Halliday had to restart his art career as a muralist in the 1920s, for which he received a Rome scholarship. Then he moved on to portraiture and public speaking about art throughout the 1930s.