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Catalogue >Fine Art >  General >  A Day in the Sun: Outdoor Pursuits in the Art of the 1930s A Day in the Sun: Outdoor Pursuits in the Art of the 1930s This ground-breaking book focuses on an overlooked strand in British painting of the 1930s. It reveals a small, group of figure painters, situated stylistically between the avant-garde abstractionists and the entrenched Edwardian traditions of belle peinture, who were looking for ways of being both modern and in touch with a wide public. The artists include Stanley Spencer and William Roberts, painters whose contribution to British painting between the wars is only now being fully recognised. Alongside them are shown a host of lesser names, including Maxwell Armfield, Laura Knight and Harold Williamson. Their paintings of swimmers, cyclists and sunbathers promote the pursuit of leisure, one of the most remarkable social phenomena of the 1930s. 112 pages 260 x 220 mm 100 colour illustrations hardback ISBN 0 85667 619 5 I Retail price £19.95  Online price: £14.00 / €21.00 The pursuit of leisure was one of the most remarkable social phenomena of the 1930s. A drab and uncertain time politically was enlivened by a new discovery of the English countryside through walking, camping and a host of sporting activities. While this movement was celebrated through guidebooks, through Shell posters or through the building of over one hundred lidos, it seems to have had relatively little impact on the fine art world of painting - or did it ? This ground-breaking book focuses on an overlooked strand in British painting of the 1930s. It reveals a small, group of figure painters, situated stylistically between the avant-garde abstractionists and the entrenched Edwardian traditions of belle peinture, who were looking for ways of being both modern and in touch with a wide public. Their crisp, realist style was one which enjoyed a vogue across Europe, and has been explored in a number of recent exhibitions on the Continent, but the full extent of the movement has never been investigated in its British context. The artists include Stanley Spencer and William Roberts, painters whose contribution to British painting between the wars is only now being fully recognised. Alongside them are shown a host of lesser names, including Maxwell Armfield, Laura Knight and Harold Williamson. Their paintings of swimmers, cyclists and sunbathers promote an aspect of our own culture in the 1930s which has long been concealed beneath the shadow of similar activities in Germany, where Freikörperkultur was put to the service of a more sinister ideology. Yet these British paintings may not be as innocent as they seem, either. The exhibition also includes travel posters, press photographs and printed ephemera, all of which demonstrate the penetration and cross-fertilisation of this imagery across a wide range of visual culture. Timothy Wilcox has worked as a curator at the Walker Art Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Hove Museum and Art Gallery and the British Museum. Now an independent curator, he teaches at the University of Surrey and is a regular lecturer at Cambridge International Summer School. He is the author of Frances Towne (1997) and of The Triumph of Watercolour, published by Philip Wilson Publishers in conjunction with the Dulwich Picture Gallery. ainting, and is known for the domestic source of his subject matter. However the radical nature of his work addresses themes that have become central within contemporary artistic practice. A narrative text by Paul Coldwell and contributions by some of the featured artists document these interpretations. The book is prefaced with introductions by Roberta Cremoncini, director of the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London, and Edward King, director of Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal. Artists' biographies conclude the work. Published to accompany an exhibition at Abbot Hall, Kendal, and subsequently at the Estorick Collection, London, in 2006. About the author Professor Paul Coldwell is a sculptor and printmaker whose works have been shown in many solo exhibitions. He has also curated several exhibitions, including Digital Responses for the V&A and Computers and Printmaking for Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. His studies on the work of Morandi include 'Morandi as Printmaker' for symposiums at Tate and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, and 'Morandi and the Digital Print', a lecture given at the Impact International Printmaking Conference in Bristol. Professor Coldwell is currently Postgraduate and Research Programme Director at Camberwell College of Arts, London.