The Work of RJ Lloyd

We are delighted to present within this Cornish art sale, an exceptional body of works by RJ Lloyd, from the collection of the artist and collector Jennifer Dagworthy.

Reg Lloyd (1926-2020) was born in Hereford, but is very much a West Country artist, since moving to and residing mostly in Devon from the age of two.

Lloyd is considered largely self-taught. After he had finished his army service in 1948, he enrolled at Exeter Art School but only attended one term. He felt he had soaked up the essential demands of drawing and said of this time that he was an artist in a hurry “That is all I needed, I wanted to get out and paint.”

He was also keen to exhibit, and in 1949 held his first public exhibition, a solo show in the Parish rooms in his hometown of Dawlish in Devon. This was quickly followed by another exhibition in Exeter, and it was here that he met his future wife Diana van Klaveren.

_{Three works by Lloyd from his Cornish period in the early 1950s}

So began a long and distinguished artistic career of hard work, experimentation, exploration and discovery. He worked in many mediums but primarily considered himself a painter. Taking primary inspiration from the landscape, he built up a commanding body of work. In his early landscapes he discovered his individual voice, later works show the mature handling of his common and even obsessive themes and pictorial language. His art is founded in his observations of the countryside and the coastline. The essence of a Reg Lloyd is often based upon a remote view, that is principally, but not exclusively of the West Country that he loved so much.

He spent some of the early years of his marriage (he and Diana were married in 1950) in a cottage on Rosewarne Downs in the mining area of Camborne, here in Cornwall. Although they moved to Hertfordshire in 1950 for economic reasons, Lloyd’s Cornish paintings show how inspirational he found the landscape around him as he developed his artistic language. They soon returned to Cornwall and to Porthleven, where Reg’s art began moving towards abstraction, this was an exciting and progressive period for his painting.

In Simon Holdings 2011 book ‘The Art of R J Lloyd’ he writes about Lloyd’s choice of Porthleven:

Lloyds desire to move here rather than the artistic colony of St Ives was largely conditioned by property prices. Also, although he had met many of the St Ives artists, he did not want to give time to organisational structures. He wanted to be ruthlessly true to his own vocation and to explore his own developing language as an independent painter. Porthleven gave him abundant source material for his work, the converging of the abstract with the literal adding dramatic tension to the composition of the harbour or landscape view.”

 _{Lot 325. Outer Rampart 1976}

Over the following years Lloyd’s reputation (and his family) grew. He exhibited regularly and received exciting commissions. In 1956, now with two daughters, the family moved to the riverside town of Bideford in Devon, where he remained.

During the course of his career, Reg was commissioned to produce architectural installations, murals and stained glass windows, he also collaborated with the poet Laureate Ted Hughes who he had been friends with since the 1960s. Reg illustrated three books with Hughes and a series of silkscreen prints of Hughes’ Crow poems. Hughes was a regular visitor to Reg’s home in Devon and their rich and creative collaborations were mutually rewarding experiences. You can read more about the work Hughes and Lloyd made together here.

 _{Lots 369, Winter Harbour, Mullion}

Reg’s first wife Diana died in 1986. He remarried, his second wife Louise becoming an assistant and integral supporter of his work.

As well as screen printing and stained glass, pottery was an important discipline to Reg Lloyd and he threw, decorated and fired his own work. In addition to making his own, he collected English slipware. He put together an exceptional collection that was purchased in 2009 by the Burton Art Gallery in Bideford.

The RJ Lloyd Ceramics Collection is on permanent display in bideford, it is a huge collection with some very important and rare examples of North Devon slipware.

Amongst almost 80 lots of Reg Lloyd’s paintings from the Dagworthy collection, we also have nine lots of Lloyd’s pottery within the sale.

A few last words from Jennifer:

“To live surrounded by beauty feeds the soul, and to share that passion with like-minded people is both exciting and deeply enriching. Reg and Louise Lloyd became dear friends; we visited each other often, and those shared moments remain among my happiest memories.”

Some of Jennifer’s exquisite textiles are included in the sale, do look at her beautiful cushions which are lots 396-400: