Morris Kestelman RA (1905-1998), Children at Cinema, circa 1940. A compelling wartime figurative oil showing a tightly grouped audience of children transfixed by the unseen cinema screen. The compressed arrangement of faces, restrained palette and concentrated illumination create a powerful sense of anticipation and tension.
Details
Artist: Morris Kestelman RA (1905-1998)
Title: Children at Cinema
Date: Circa 1940
Medium: Oil on canvas board
Signature: Signed M. Kestelman lower right
Artwork size: 40 x 49.5 cm (15.7 x 19.5 in)
Framed size: 46.5 x 56 cm (18.3 x 22 in)
Condition: There are a few tiny scattered losses to the right side. Appears to be in otherwise good order. Not examined under UV light.
Children at Cinema
The children's upward gazes and open expressions provide the narrative focus of the composition. Painted around 1940, the work belongs to Kestelman's wartime figurative period, before his later development towards geometric abstraction. A James Bourlet & Sons label on the reverse is faintly stamped 1940, supporting the circa 1940 dating.
The reverse also retains the artist's handwritten details recording Morris Kestelman, 27 Belsize Park Gardens, London NW3, and the title Children at Cinema. Further labels relate to the Artists' International Association Gallery at 15 Lisle Street, London WC2, including its Travelling and Hire Exhibition scheme.
About the Artist
Morris Kestelman RA was born in Whitechapel, East London, in 1905 to Jewish immigrant parents from Russia. He won a scholarship to the Central School of Art and Design in 1922, where his teachers included Bernard Meninsky, before studying at the Royal College of Art from 1925 to 1929.
Kestelman also worked as a stage designer for Sadler's Wells and the Old Vic. During the Second World War he served as an air-raid warden, and a drawing he made at an aircraft factory was purchased by the War Artists Advisory Committee and is now held by the Imperial War Museum.
He later became Head of the Painting and Sculpture School at the Central School of Art and Design, a post he held from 1951 to 1971. He exhibited with the Royal Academy, the Artists' International Association and the London Group, and his work is represented in public collections including Tate, the Imperial War Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Arts Council Collection, Ben Uri and the Royal Academy of Arts.
