Feted as one of the most prolific and versatile artists Northumbria has ever produced we are thrilled to be offering the following lot:
An ABC folding sketching easel designed and used by John Falconar Slater
(1857-1937), bearing metal label "J.F. Slater, Whitley Bay, ABC Easel No.
2", "Patent applied for", with the Artist's first studio palette
and photograph showing the Artist using the palette. Provenance: Dorothy
Slater, the Artist's daughter. (3)
Estimate £300 - £500
Antique and Interiors Auction 16th January 2019
Born in Newcastle he inititally worked for his father as a book keeper in his corn mill before running a store in the diamond fields of South Africa and turning to a career as an artist in his twenties.
With little or no tuition he was soon exhibiting in the North East, 'Gateshead Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition' was the first, followed by many at the Bewick Club and Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle, further afield at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and the Royal Academy, London where he was one of the most regular exhibitors of any Northumbrian artist of his period until 1935. John Falconar Slater worked across many genres - landscape, coastal, marine, portrait, animals and street scenes in both oil and watercolour as well as experimenting with etching and lithography.
Painting firstly from the family home in Forest Hall he relocated to a studio in Newcastle, then North Shields before settling in 1912 in Whitley Bay which is where the easel we are auctioning was used. The remainder of John Falconar Slater's life was spent in the seaside village of Cullercoats.
