Sidelands Oil on canvas 1960 Location unknown
There's a certain pathos about this incomplete image. 'Sidelands' is the name of a farm at the foot of the North Downs a mile or two to the east of the village of Wye, in Kent. It would have been well known to Evelyn, whose husband Roger Folley lectured on horticultural economics at Wye College.
To sketch it prior to painting Evelyn would have had to drive the few miles down the road to Wye from Hastingleigh, where she and Roger lived at Staple Farm. She may have cycled, but while the downhill run is easy, it's a stiffish climb back up to Staple Farm, and in 1959 Evelyn's heart wasn't in a very good condition.
Sidelands stood on an easel in Evelyn's studio when she died, in May 1960. Its studio neighbours were Jacob's Dream, which also incorporates local landscape, and Autumn and the Poet. To me the season - always a vital element in Evelyn's paintings - suggests late summer or early autumn, so it's possible that she was painting Sidelands in September or October 1959.
After Evelyn's death Roger Folley collected her residual studio together, packed it in boxes and portfolios and consigned most of it to Alec Dunbar, the younger of her two brothers and the only Dunbar sibling with room to house it. But Roger Folley kept back a handful, maybe more, of Evelyn's paintings, some for sale (like Jacob's Dream), some family portraits and some local landscapes (like Wye from Olantigh) including the unfinished Sidelands.
In the early 2000s Roger made a gift of several of Evelyn's paintings still in his care, particularly any with an agricultural or horticultural context, to Wye College Senior Common Room. I don't know the terms of the gift, if any, but they hung in corridors and lecturing staff offices for several years, until Wye College closed down in 2009. Imperial College, London, of which Wye College had been the agricultural campus, assumed ownership of Evelyn's paintings, among them the magnificent An English Calendar, and transferred them to its London premises. Not all of them made it: Evelyn's little Land Girl Milking was reported by the Kensington and Chelsea Gazette as having been stolen from a private address in May 2010.
Land Girl Milking Oil on canvas 1940 Location unknown
Before making the donations to Wye College Senior Common Room, Roger Folley had photographs taken of the pictures he intended to give. These included Land Girl Milking, above, and (very suitably) Market Garden at Naaldwijk, the only painting Evelyn completed outside of the United Kingdom. I believe, although I'm happily open to correction, that Market Garden at Naaldwijk was shown at the 2006 Evelyn Dunbar exhibition at the St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery, Lymington, curated by Dr Gill Clarke and timed to coincide with publication of her biography Evelyn Dunbar: War and Country.
Market Garden at Naaldwijk 1957 Oil on canvas Location unknown
But what of Sidelands? Roger Folley himself took the photo at the top of this essay. He was approaching 90 and almost blind. The picture was taken outside, propped on a dustbin or similar and photographed. He could not see that he had inadvertently missed maybe three-quarters of the painting. Satisfied that he had kept a record of something that was about to pass out of his stewardship, he put his photo in a folder, along with the other images mentioned here, which subsequently came to me.
Until it comes to light, this is all we have of Sidelands. Maybe accidentally we have the essence of Evelyn's message: the gate is open, wide open, for us to pass through into the organised and productive land beyond; the land, the creator's gift (capital C optional) to mankind, is being looked after on the terms in which the gift was made. There is no exclusion: the gift is for all mankind, on condition that it is looked after with industry, intelligence and love. Suppose she had painted Sidelands with the gate shut? What a different, negative message that would have carried.
Text ©Christopher Campbell-Howes 2022
Further reading...
EVELYN DUNBAR : A
LIFE IN PAINTING
by Christopher Campbell-Howes
is available to order online from:
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