Sheila Fell R.A.

(British, 1931-1979)

Woman and Cows on a Country Road 70.8 x 91.5 cm. (27 7/8 x 36 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Francis Coulson and Brian Sack, 1967
Von Essen Hotels, 2003
Sharrow Bay Hotel Ltd, 2012
With Castlegate House Gallery, Cockermouth, 2014, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
Newcastle upon Tyne, Stone Gallery, Sheila Fell: New Paintings, May-June 1967, cat.no.9
London, Royal Academy of Arts, British Painting: 1952-1977, 24 September-20 November 1977, cat.no.117
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, A Tribute to Sheila Fell: An Exhibition of her Work and that of L.S. Lowry, 15 August-20 September 1981, cat.no.46
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Through Women's Eyes: Three Women Artists in the 20th Century, 4 March-7 May 1989 (unnumbered)
Salford, Museum and Art Gallery, Sheila Fell, 21 October-2 December 1990, cat.no.49 (col.ill, p.31); this exhibition travelled to London, Royal Academy of Arts, 15 December 1990-15 January 1991; Ayr, Rozelle House, 26 January-9 March 1991; Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, 16 March-28 April 1991; Eastbourne, Towner Art Gallery, 11 May-23 June 1991; Jarrow, Bede Gallery, 4 July-11 August 1991
Cockermouth, Castlegate Gallery, Sheila Fell R.A., 12 April-3 May 2014

Literature
Cate Haste, Sheila Fell: A Passion for Paint, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2010, p.92, cat.no.74 (col.ill.)
J. Andrew Bradley and Eleanor Bradley, Sheila Fell: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2025, p.282, cat.no.250 (col.ill.)

Woman and Cows on a Country Road exemplifies Sheila Fell's deep-rooted connection to the landscape of her native Cumberland, a bond that remained at the heart of her art throughout her life. Born in Aspatria in 1931, Fell spent her childhood amidst the rolling fields, farms, and villages of West Cumbria, a rural upbringing that imprinted itself indelibly on her imagination. Although she moved first to Carlisle to study at art school, and then to London to pursue her training at Saint Martin's, Fell never truly left Cumberland behind. Its undulating hills, farm labourers, and brooding skies became her lifelong subject, revisited through memory and recurrent journeys north from her London base.

The present painting demonstrates many of the hallmarks of her mature style. Executed with heavy impasto and vigorous brushwork, the surface itself is alive with energy. A small group of cows and a solitary female figure traverse the foreground, their forms simplified into rhythmic masses of colour and tone. Above them, the tempestuous sky dominates, its weight pressing down on the land. Fell was preoccupied with integrating figures, animals, and landscape into unified compositions: "All the landscape is lived in, modulated, worked on and used by man," she once remarked, insisting that the people and farm-craft of Cumberland were inseparable from the land itself. (Sheila Fell, 'Notes', The Painter and Sculptor, vol.4, no.2, Summer 1961).

Her decision to focus on this lived-in landscape, one shaped by weather, labour, and memory, set her apart from many contemporaries. Rather than idealised views of tidy villages or picturesque cottages, Fell sought something more visceral and grounded. She saw Cumberland as a place marked by survival and resilience, where human presence was not decorative but essential. Critics recognised the independence of her vision. Writing in The Guardian in 1962, W.E. Johnson observed: "Sheila Fell carries Cumberland with her wherever she goes, not so much in her pocket but in her blood." This sense of belonging infuses the painting. The figures and cattle are not ornamental additions but intrinsic elements of a world shaped by endurance and tradition.

The year 1967 was a busy one for Fell, dominated by preparations for her solo exhibition at the Stone Gallery in Newcastle, for which she produced twenty-four paintings. She herself noted that she had been "struggling to get the Newcastle exhibition ready and I've done nothing but paint, everything has been neglected ... I think these are some of the best paintings I've done." (Sheila Fell, letter to Kathleen and Tony Dalzell, 12 April 1967, Dalzell Archive.) Woman and Cows on a Country Road belongs to this fertile period, when she was refining her integration of figure, land and sky into bold, near-monumental statements. In the years that followed, Fell continued to return to the Cumberland landscape with increasing confidence, finding in its weathered fields and heavy skies an enduring source of strength and renewal for her art.

We are grateful to Professor J. Andrew Bradley for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.