On 15 September 2007, Penlee House is launching a major national touring exhibition of the work of Dod Procter, who was one of Britain’s most acclaimed and best-loved painters in her lifetime.
As a teenage girl in 1907, Dod (then Doris Shaw – Dod was a self-selected nickname) studied at the Forbes School of Painting in Newlyn, where she was recognised as the most talented pupil in her year. Another shining light at the School was Ernest Procter, with whom she formed an attachment that was to result in their marriage in 1912.
In 1910, Dod went to study in Paris, where she was inspired by the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters, especially Cezanne and Renoir. Through the 1920s she specialised in painting the figure, including a series of pictures of naked adolescent girls, which caused little outrage in their day, but are sometimes shocking to contemporary audiences.
In 1927, Dod became the most famous artist in Britain when her painting ‘Morning’, a sleeping girl softly draped in nightclothes, caught the public imagination and was voted ‘Painting of the Year’ at the Royal Academy. The Daily Mail purchased it ‘for the nation’, gifting it to the Tate Gallery collections, making Dod Procter a household name. The model was Cissie Barnes, the 16-year-old daughter of a Newlyn Fisherman: fittingly, this painting forms the centrepiece for the exhibition.
Dod and Ernest were both lauded for their work, both being elected as Associates of the Royal Academy and undertaking various commissions together, including one to paint a palace in Rangoon, Burma. In 1935, however, Ernest died suddenly, which was to affect Dod immensely, both personally and artistically. She remained living in west Cornwall, but travelled extensively, including visits to Tenerife, the West Indies and Africa. Whether at home or abroad, she painted landscapes, portraits of children and still-lifes, encompassing local views and exotic locations, and indigenous children from Cornwall to the furthest corners of the globe. She also became known for her delightful flower studies, often using blooms picked from her own beloved Newlyn garden.
In 1942, Dod was elected as a Royal Academician – only the second woman ever to have been so honoured (the first being her friend and fellow Newlyn artist, Laura Knight). In her later years, her great ambition was to have a Royal Academy retrospective, but this was not to be, as by the time of her death in 1972, at the age of 82, artistic fashion had changed and her work was out of favour. We are sure that the critical attention this exhibition and its accompanying book will now bring to her work will ensure that she is again rightly acclaimed as a truly outstanding British painter.
This retrospective exhibition runs at Penlee House from 15 September to 24 November 2007 and includes ‘Morning’ among around 60 examples covering the artist’s entire œuvre. The show is sponsored by W. H. Lane & Sons Fine Art Auctioneers, Penzance, and is accompanied by a major new monograph on the artist, written by Alison James and published by Sansom & Co.
