Fred Yates Memorial
FRED YATES
His Own Little World
John Martin represented Fred Yates for 16 years until his death in 2008 just before his 86th birthday. This Memorial exhibition was a personal survey of Fred’s career with key works on loan from private collections.
Fred died peacefully in London on the 7th July 2008 after a short illness. He had been in London for the opening of his exhibition Muck & Brass at the John Martin Gallery. Fred attended the Private View (typically arriving unannounced at the last possible minute) and afterwards said that he was delighted to have met so many admirers of his work, ‘real people’ as he described them.
A Memorial Service was held for Fred Yates at St James’s Church Piccadilly on 11th September 2008. The service was full of family, old friends from across England and France alongside collectors of his work. Obituaries appeared in the Guardian, The Times and The Independent.
We would like anyone with memories or stories about Fred to add them to this site so that we can build up a true archive of his life & work. If you have photographs of Fred or his paintings you can send them to tara@jmlondon.com and I will add them to the site. To add stories of your own, click on ‘comments’ at the bottom of one of the existing post then scroll down to the ‘Leave a reply’ box and leave your message. Alternatively send them to me at the gallery and I will post them on your behalf.
If you would like to be added to the Mailing List of the Fred Yates Society please send your details along with any enquiries to tara@jmlondon.com
With best wishes,
Tara Whelan
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One Foot in the Past 29.6.16
West Lawn School, mid 1960s and a trail of pupils file into the quad, turn right (woe betide those who fail to observe the anti-clockwise rule) to enter the first classroom for a session of art. Familiar with the fact that their teacher Mr Yates looks uncannily like Van Gogh, they revel in his laid back approach. He orders the edgy ones to go to the Headmaster, Mr Martin, yet races ahead to stop them reaching the door and certain punishment. Ian Nathan remembers his art teacher with the broad north country dialect in great detail. “Fred Yates was an artist who just happened to be teaching – probably to keep body and soul together. When he left Teignmouth, he donated several of his works to the school.” His fame had yet to be won and some say the paintings were later sold. “Three of his large canvases were displayed above the podium in the hall and each morning in Assembly, when I was about 12, I used to study them.” They inspired Ian who says that Fred’s art classes were the only bearable part of attending school. “Mr Yates kept awarding me commendations for my painting and each time I had to go up before the whole school and I asked him to stop awarding them to me!” Jeanette Murphy flagged up the local connection with Fred Yates and another pupil Marcia Pyne was able to provide this school photograph. In the mid 1960s, Ian’s father Noel acquired some sepia coloured paints and discovered that he also had a gift and the pair explored their art in the attic studio of their home beside the New Quay. Fred had shown his pupils how to squeeze a worm of colour from the tube direct to canvas and finger it, rather than brush it, into leaves, water, rocks. Ian’s two earliest paintings as a teenager show his potential.
“The smell of the paint and the sensations are still vivid – it seems such a short time ago.” But the finger of fate poked Ian’s shoulder, blew him off course into the world of dance for a while.
“Years later I saw Fred on the beach at St Ives – he was painting furiously in just a pair of underpants! He had become quite famous in Cornwall and worked there for a long time.” Ian’s final encounter with Fred was in a Penzance tea room when the older man had chance to understand how much he had influenced his former school pupil. Fred Yates moved to France and died in 2008 at the age of 85. Ian continues to paint significant canvases at his Ringmore studio.
Photograph 1 Courtesy Marcia Smyth
Fred Yates with West Lawn School pupils 1960s.
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Tags: Fred Yates
38 New Street
The Barbican
Plymouth
Devon PL1 2NA
Tues- Fri 10 – 4
Sat 10 – 12
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From Brian Bolli, Toronto
| I am so sad to hear of Fred’s passing. I truly loved this old guy, if even from afar. I have followed him and his work for several years. My friends and I had the honest to goodness pleasure of meeting Fred a few times and getting to know him ‘in person’. It started with our first meeting in Vaison La Romaine back in 2002 when we bumped into him in a restaurant overlooking the river. Four years later when a group of us went back to France, I called Fred and he invited us to visit him in La Motte. It was a most memorable day – the drive itself through that spectacular countryside – and then the 4 hours lunching with Fred, visiting his two homes (he had just purchased a second home he was going to fix up) and seeing his latest creations! Man, we had a GOOD time – he treated us so royally – and to this day my friends still talk about that trip and the meeting with Fred Yates. It was not only Fred, but it was his paintings. They were so authentic and natural, one had to admire and love them. When we talked with Fred about his art, he told us how concerned he was about “fame” stealing away his creative talent. He was afraid of losing that creative edge and so, I think, lived his life – simply, to say the least – in order to retain and grow that creativity he so wanted to express. When I came back from that trip I created a web site for my friends to look at. Amongst other things, that web site contains a “Homage to Fred Yates” and a short video of Fred playing the piano in his home in La Motte. I hope that this portion might be interesting for fans of Fred to view. http://web.mac.com/bbolli/iWeb/France%202006/Homage%20to%20Fred%20Yates.html regards, Brian Bolli |
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Brighton & Hove Museum
We are pleased to announce that ‘Saturday Afternoon’ painted by Fred in 1953 will be on show the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery as part of their Paintings Unwrapped Exhibition. The exhibition features work from their permanent collection and will include work by Alma Tadema, William Blake, Fernand Léger, William Scott and Glyn Philpot and of course Fred Yates. For futher details please refer to their web-site:
http://www.brighton.virtualmuseum.info/exhibitions/paintingsunwrapped.asp
Paintings Unwrapped
13 December 2008 to 13 April 2009
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From Fiona Thompson
Fiona Thompson
Lostwithiel
Cornwall
I first heard of Fred Yates when I lived in Mevagissey as a child, during the 1970’s. He was a great friend of Don Austen, the artist, and, as Don was friends with my parents, they met Fred. They purchased several of Fred’s paintings, as we all loved his work. Many years later, in around 2000/1, I was living in Lostwithiel. I had heard that Fred had moved to the town, and had a cottage there. One day in late spring I was feeding my chickens, some fine Golden Spangled Hamburgs, in our large garden by the river, when a man walking down the lane, with a bag slung over his shoulder, carrying a canvas, stopped and said to me, “I’d like to paint you; your hair is exactly the same colour as your chickens”. Although I had never met him, I knew straight away that it was Fred Yates. After this meeting he often stopped by and we would sit in the garden with a drink, talking of all sorts of things. He was very taken with my Doberman bitch, India, and she adored him. She couldn’t care less about most people, but would sit with her head on Fred’s lap, gazing at him, while he made up stories of what they would do together. My favourite was the one where India and Fred would fly away together in a beautiful big hot air balloon and see all the countryside below. I lost touch with Fred after he moved to France; a warning that one should never put off contacting friends who have moved away. He was a very gentle man, and a gentleman. I am so honoured to have met him, and to have spent some cherished times with him. Fred was the sort of person who left a special impression, and the warmth of the man stayed with you. One day, in memory of Fred and India, both now gone from this world, I shall paint a picture of them together in a brightly coloured hot air balloon, flying high above all the fields and houses and people, looking down from the basket, waving and laughing, because they are so happy to be free.
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From Geoff Bunn
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“Relatively Unconventional”
(First impressions, by Alan Veale)
I first met my (second) cousin Fred at Easter 1971. I was just 18, about to sit my “A” Levels, when my Mum and I went on a “Golden Rail” holiday to Newquay in Cornwall. The whole point of the holiday was to meet our relative for the first time.
We’d heard about this unconventional “black sheep” of the family through Fred’s Auntie May – a cousin of my mother’s who lived in Bournemouth. It was May who wrote regularly to both my mum and her sister Joan in Lytham St Annes, and as Fred and Joan had been “quite close” at one time, it was to Joan that she sent a cutting from a local newspaper about Fred in 1967. Two years after the short article was published (about Fred’s finger-painting on Brixham quay), Fred quit his teaching career at the age of 47 and moved to Cornwall to become a full-time artist.
Auntie May
Now – this was a bold (and very risky) thing for anyone to do – and May’s opinion of Fred was somewhat akin to Captain Mainwaring’s view of Private Pike – “Stupid Boy!” Cornwall was full of artists – what on earth did he think he was playing at?
Mum had heard about Fred, of course – and about his twin brother Arthur, who had been killed in the War – but could not remember ever having met him. But he was still “family”, so she got his address from May and wrote to him at his cottage in Fowey. I don’t remember the exact circumstances about how we came to arrange it, but less than two years after Fred made his dramatic migration, we booked the holiday to Newquay (the nearest holiday place to Fowey that we could get to by train).
It was a ten day trip (two of which would be occupied in the long rail journey from Lancashire), and I was very excited at the prospect of meeting this “black sheep” who had taken such a dramatic choice in his life. Here I was, about to leave education and set out into the real world – and now I was visiting a beautiful part of the country, and about to find out what it was that had influenced this strange relation of mine.
The coastline at Newquay seemed absolutely wonderful to a teenager who had only ever experienced the relatively boring stretches of promenade and shingle of the Irish Sea and the North West. I was a keen photographer, and took plenty of shots of the towering cliffs and rocky shoreline. Fred was to come to our boarding house at 11am on the second day we were there, and I sat in the dining room window – eagerly looking forward to my first glimpse. Then up the path came this over-aged hippy, long hair (past his ears) and bushy beard, wearing a baggy fisherman’s jumper, blue jeans and heavy boots. Fred Yates had arrived – and so had “Oxfam-chic”. Don’t get me wrong! This guy lived as he had to live – economically, and with incredible discipline on what was both practical and important. There were no frills with Fred.
“Would you like to come over to Fowey?” he said. And of course the answer was yes. Fred was the perfect gentleman, and determined to be the perfect host. We went out to his car – a battered old Morris 1000 Traveller with flaking green paint and something like fungi growing out of the woodwork. Mum sat happily in the passenger seat while I climbed into the back – sharing my precarious perch with what looked like half the contents of a builder’s yard: bits of wood, pieces of canvas and cardboard, buckets, boxes, weatherproofs and other articles of clothing – and all of it rich in the smell of oil paint. I was in heaven!
This was the beginning of a journey of discovery for me. Fowey was about 30 miles away, on the opposite coast. As we drove through the ever-changing countryside, sometimes rich and verdant green, sometimes austere with high stone walls, the conversation was infrequent. Fred was not a “chatty” type – and neither was mum. There were the usual pleasantries exchanged – “How was your train journey?” “Isn’t this a lovely part of the world?” “Is your hotel comfortable?” I was waiting for mum to ask the searching question “What made you decide to become an artist?” But it never came. Only years later I learned that this was a generation thing. Mum was too polite to come out with something so direct – those sort of questions were fine for journalists (and perhaps for close family), but not for the generation who had lived through the last war. As for me – I was still in awe, drinking in my surroundings, both inside the car and out. And then we reached Fowey.
I’d been itching to say “Are we nearly there yet?” for the last 10 miles, but teenagers just don’t say that sort of thing. For those who have never been there, Fowey is quite a small place, almost hidden from view by the road until it suddenly dips into the valley, and you come across a cluster of buildings that appear to cling to the edge of the hillside before it plunges into the waters of the River Fowey itself. There was just one long, very narrow street, and Fred’s cottage was halfway along, but we had to drive past it before reaching a place to park.
From the outside, I was disappointed. Along the journey I had seen all manner of quaint little cottages, built out of local stone, some with porches and little gardens full of colourful foliage – and I could imagine Fred to be living in one of those, possibly setting up his artist’s easel outside to paint a view of the river from his garden. It was nothing like that: we walked back up the narrow street, Fred towering above us with his broad, six foot three frame, and reached a row of terraced houses, all opening straight onto the street, faced with plaster and finished off in fading mustard yellow. But inside! Oh, what an Aladdin’s cave awaited me! The house was on three floors, linked by a spiral wooden staircase in the middle, and everywhere I looked I could see paintings.
Fred's Secret Love - The Piano
View of the Ferry from Fred's Garden
One corner seemed to have had a rack built to accommodate about 50 paintings on stretched canvas or hardboard, some even on cardboard. Every wall had been stripped of wallpaper and plaster back to the natural stone, and all the woodwork was original pine. The ground floor was stone, with just one small rug placed before an open fireplace. The furniture was simple, but pride of place was a small (ship’s) piano. Everywhere I looked, Fred had placed little items of bric-a-brac on shelves and ledges, and the whole image was homely and very, very cosy. There was a garden at the rear – but not like any other garden. This one started 18 inches outside the back door, straight off the kitchen, and then climbed up to over twice the height of the cottage itself! I climbed the narrow, twisting path past little terraces of all manner of rich foliage, vegetable patches, and simple excavations – and found the sort of spot I had only dreamed of. At the very top I could look right across the River Fowey, and even beyond. To the left was the Bodinnick car ferry, crossing the river past a building that (Fred told me) once belonged to Daphne Du Maurier. Looking to the right, the whole river opened out, and I could just see the smaller village of Polruan on the opposite side. Berthed right in front of me was a large ship, and dotted all over the estuary were hundreds of smaller craft. Now this was inspiration for an artist!
And perhaps now, at last, I was beginning to understand what had made Fred take that fateful step into the unknown, just two years before.
Alan Veale October 2008
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From Melville Grigg
griggdaisy@aol.com | 92.21.48.186
I first met Fred in the spring of 2006. I was introduced to him in the little “salon du the” on the rue Lamartine in Bellac. I was born near to Fowey in Cornwall so we had alot to talk about. Later I gave him a lift to his little house in Rancon, such an interesting, peaceful place. We spent a few hours in each other’s company, a couple of weeks later he annouced that he was returning to La Drome and I saw him off on the bus to Limoges, the first stage. I did not see him again until the spring of 2008, the 27th april to be exact. He invited me to have a meal with him at the cafe by the pont de la pierre. That particular evening, 28th, I met up with him about 6pm, he was sat in a canvass chair beside the Vincou, painting. Fred loved les vides greniers and would insist on buying me some small item. At that time he was full of ideas for the future, including moving to Bellac. I found Fred’s book,”c’est votre passion monsieur”, a joy to read. This year I vsited his grave in Marazion, so close to St. Michael’s mount. This Sept. I visited Rancon and took some photos of the Chapelle de St. Sulpice, I noticed that, pinned to the door, is a photo of Fred painting the chapel I gave a photo of Fred to the owner of the Cafe du Commerce in Rancon, to put behind the bar. I did not know him for long but I won’t forget him.
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New posts welcome
If you would like to add your thoughts to this blog you can either send them to tara@jmlondon.com who will add them as a new post or click on ‘comment’ at the end of the existing entries and add your stories there. I am trying to make the site more interactive in the hope that it will eventually take on a character of it’s own but as I am learning as I go along, you will have to bear with me.
Best wishes,
Tara
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In 1977, with 2 travel companions, I walked into a small art gallery in Cornwall and saw my first Fred Yates painting.
‘Is the artist local, could we meet him?’
‘Please come, visit me tomorrow, Fowey is not far away.’
Fred happily showed us his paintings and his beloved Cornwall, hiking or bumping along in our Kombivan for the next few days. We realized we had met someone special. After an extra two days, we reluctantly departed. Fred insisted I accept an oil painting as a parting gift – of a house in Devon, now hanging near our front door.
It was a memorable start to a close and enduring friendship. Over the 30 years to follow, my partner Burt and I visited Fred in various parts of England and France.
Some Memories
Arriving in Rancon, France, after a horrendous travel day, Fred shows us our upstairs bed-room – the bed made up in the most exquisite antique bed-linen – a remarkable gesture from a man who shunned material possessions-
often his houses contained no more than 1 plate, 1 cup, 1 knife, etc…
After we’d gone to bed, we hear the shutters and windows being closed – and Fred, in the room below us, starts playing an old, slightly out of tune upright piano and singing sentimental Edwardian ballads and love songs. And did so several other nights – ‘it relaxes me’. ‘
Why close the house up before playing, Fred?’
‘Well, I don’t want to disturb the neighbours,’ – was the reply.
The following morning, Burt was still in bed at 7.30 a.m.
‘Where’s Burt?’. ‘Still in bed, Fred.’. ‘Well, that’s a little inconvenient’, came his reply. Fred had his paint bag packed. It was time to scour the country-side for wildflowers, ruins, vistas, etc. Burt was dressed in less than 2 minutes. Thus began another long walk, often all day. Even in his late 70’s, Fred had the constitution of the proverbial ox. That paint bag was heavy!
Nice, 1992.
A ‘little walk’ turned into an all-day marathon. Fred would disappear in the bushes and fossick for plastic water bottles he’d hidden around the whole Cap Ferrat coast –‘I might like to do a water – colour here.’
He did, many of them, and they will remain beautiful.
He subsequently sent me, for my 50th., a joyously serene oil painting of the Cap ‘ where we swam and you bought me an ice-cream’ inscribed on the back.
When visiting him in England – again, the one plate, one cup, etc.- after happy reunion hugs, we walked across to his neighbour’s, were introduced and the kettle went on for a cuppa. The neighbours seemed quite unfazed and were obviously fond of Fred. A stunning little Fred Yates hung above the fire-place. We surmised that Fred might have done this before!
He was a most generous man, in so many ways.
As we write this, we’re looking at a small mountain of letters from Fred, going back to even before Fred became ‘collectable’.
Fred was never comfortable talking about his work – best not to analyse too much, might destroy whatever it was that got him there – in front of his easel, doing what he did so well. He was aware he was doing well and he was modest in the knowing of it.
Surprisingly, his letters were more forthcoming, both about his work and his life. He had devoted his life to his art, yet was acutely aware of the consequences of this devotion. But it’s safe to say that he was at peace with the choices he felt he had to make.
One last memory of our time in Rancon
On a gloriously sunny Sunday, Fred decides to ‘paint’ his garden. Enormous tubes of primary colours are emptied next to each other, the empty tubes flicked over his shoulder into the garden shed. Seven hours of quiet focus later, a true beauty emerged. He took it inside, leant it facing the wall, some of the paint as thick as one’s finger.
‘Are you happy with your day’s work, Fred?’
‘ I never look at it when it’s finished. I don’t know what I’ve created until I look at it the next day.’
He allowed us to take a series of photos that day, from empty canvass to one of his best.
‘ Those photos are for your eyes only.’
‘ Of course, Fred.’
In our last ‘phone conversation in June, he was talking about staying with us in Melbourne later in the year. What he would have made of our great southern light…
To look at his paintings now is to see Fred the man, our friend, as beautiful as his paintings and the times we spent together. He’ll do alright, wherever he is now.
Fred’s wonderful work will speak for him. We miss him.
Lee Visser Burt Cooper
Melbourne, Australia.
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The Fred Yates Society 