Stanley Roy Badmin, RWS (1906-1989) [Aw21]
BUTLEY PRIORY, SUFFOLK, 1947
Watercolour on paper, signed and dated lower right: S.R. Badmin 1947 Butley Priory Woodbridge Done for Dr Rendall. 1947; with further notes in the artist’s hand below (H. 37 cm, W. 29 cm)
Butley Priory in Suffolk was the home of Montague Rendall, Headmaster of Winchester from 1911 to 1924. He was a great supporter of the arts and was responsible for many additions to the school’s collections, as well as the creation of its War Cloister. This watercolour is one of several works that Rendall commissioned from contemporary artists. Stanley Roy Badmin was well known as an illustrator of books and periodicals. In 1946 he had published drawings as part of a project run by the Pilgrim Trust to record threatened buildings and landscapes in England. It is perhaps for this reason that Rendall asked him to paint the priory, which he had restored over several decades.
The watercolour shows the south side of the priory’s gatehouse, the only medieval part of the building to survive. Rendall purchased the gatehouse in 1926, soon after his retirement, and renovated it with the help of the architect W. D. Caröe (1857–1938), a leading figure of the Arts and Crafts movement who had previously worked at Winchester College. The project was such a passion of Rendall’s that he spent his entire savings on the restoration. He was eventually forced to sell the property to a neighbour, Sir Bernard Greenwell, who generously allowed Rendall to live out the rest of his life at Butley. It was during Rendall’s later years there that Badmin painted this picture, in which Rendall can be seen leaning out of a Gothic window on the first floor.
Below the picture, in an area presumably intended to be hidden behind a mount, are Badmin’s sketches, colour swatches, and notes. They reveal how he sought to capture the interaction of the light with certain details, including the flint wall and saplings in the reeds, as it appeared before him that day.
Exhibited: Royal Watercolour Society, autumn 1947, no. 21.
Literature: Chris Beetles, S.R. Badmin and the English Landscape (London, 1985), p. 152.
Provenance: Bequest of Montague Rendall, 1950.