Available works:
Edwin Penny - "Collared Doves"
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Edwin Penny 1930 - 2016
Born in 1930 in Bristol, England, Edwin Penny attended Bath College of Art from the age of 13 and after further training at the Royal West of England Academy, he took up an apprenticeship in 1947 as a lithographic artist with a local printing company. The precision required for engraving directly onto metal plates proved a valuable discipline. He enjoyed this work and looks back on his years in advertising and printing as being good training for the day when his hobby became his living.
During National Service from 1951-1953, Penny served with the Royal Tank Regiment. As an army illustrator, he travelled with the Regiment to Hong Kong. He had long admired the art of Chinese watercolour painting and his posting proved to be one of the foundations of his career. In Hong Kong he was the only European to enter a government art competition, which he won with a landscape in watercolour. As a result he was awarded a six-month tuition course under a Chinese Master whose assessment of Edwin’s watercolour painting at that time was that as far as technique was concerned, he could teach him no more. The Master sought to give Penny that most perfect of all gifts to an artist - an understanding of the philosophy of Oriental composition. Although his work today in no way looks Oriental, the Chinese influence is often apparent. He has blended the lessons of the East with Western ideas with the result that his studies appear entirely natural.
Penny has always admired the illustrations of Audubon and Thorburn and also Edwin Alexander’s hedgerow birds. However, unlike Thorburn, who in the Victorian manner found it necessary to set his birds against detailed landscapes, Penny is notable for his sparing use of backgrounds, again echoing the economy of the Chinese masters. He goes further by using a simple wash to suggest the subtly of the bird’s natural habitat. A hawk resting on a rocky outcrop evokes wild moors and open spaces; a cock pheasant against a clump of bracken alludes to deep copses and bare branches under a winter sky.
But when detail does become necessary and a landscape is called for in the composition, Penny proves his ability as an artist. Pieces of wood, heather, fallen branches, bracken, dried grasses, pebbles – all litter his studio and he studies each one with extraordinary intensity. In the finished picture, the setting becomes an important part of the composition, though stopping short of dominating the bird itself.
Penny paints largely from memory, as did the old Chinese masters, and this helps to ensure the presence of that all-pervading sense of animation which is essential to any bird drawing of real worth. Watercolour is the only medium he uses: it suits him and the subjects he paints, as he feels he can achieve a greater delicacy and a more sympathetic effect. He never uses photography as he feels it would deny him that freedom of vision, which results from an artistic link between eye and hand. Instead he works from sketches of line and movement and relies on direct observations of birds over long periods of time. When once asked if he did ever take photographs, Edwin’s reply was “If I could photograph birds that well, I wouldn’t have to paint them”.
Edwin held numerous solo exhibitions in Bristol, London and New York, Frost & Reed Galleries represented Edwin Penny throughout his successful career. To this day, Edwin’s ornithological works are highly collectable and held in private collections around the world.
During National Service from 1951-1953, Penny served with the Royal Tank Regiment. As an army illustrator, he travelled with the Regiment to Hong Kong. He had long admired the art of Chinese watercolour painting and his posting proved to be one of the foundations of his career. In Hong Kong he was the only European to enter a government art competition, which he won with a landscape in watercolour. As a result he was awarded a six-month tuition course under a Chinese Master whose assessment of Edwin’s watercolour painting at that time was that as far as technique was concerned, he could teach him no more. The Master sought to give Penny that most perfect of all gifts to an artist - an understanding of the philosophy of Oriental composition. Although his work today in no way looks Oriental, the Chinese influence is often apparent. He has blended the lessons of the East with Western ideas with the result that his studies appear entirely natural.
Penny has always admired the illustrations of Audubon and Thorburn and also Edwin Alexander’s hedgerow birds. However, unlike Thorburn, who in the Victorian manner found it necessary to set his birds against detailed landscapes, Penny is notable for his sparing use of backgrounds, again echoing the economy of the Chinese masters. He goes further by using a simple wash to suggest the subtly of the bird’s natural habitat. A hawk resting on a rocky outcrop evokes wild moors and open spaces; a cock pheasant against a clump of bracken alludes to deep copses and bare branches under a winter sky.
But when detail does become necessary and a landscape is called for in the composition, Penny proves his ability as an artist. Pieces of wood, heather, fallen branches, bracken, dried grasses, pebbles – all litter his studio and he studies each one with extraordinary intensity. In the finished picture, the setting becomes an important part of the composition, though stopping short of dominating the bird itself.
Penny paints largely from memory, as did the old Chinese masters, and this helps to ensure the presence of that all-pervading sense of animation which is essential to any bird drawing of real worth. Watercolour is the only medium he uses: it suits him and the subjects he paints, as he feels he can achieve a greater delicacy and a more sympathetic effect. He never uses photography as he feels it would deny him that freedom of vision, which results from an artistic link between eye and hand. Instead he works from sketches of line and movement and relies on direct observations of birds over long periods of time. When once asked if he did ever take photographs, Edwin’s reply was “If I could photograph birds that well, I wouldn’t have to paint them”.
Edwin held numerous solo exhibitions in Bristol, London and New York, Frost & Reed Galleries represented Edwin Penny throughout his successful career. To this day, Edwin’s ornithological works are highly collectable and held in private collections around the world.