Peter Watson and Andre Bauchant

In the Tate Archive today looking at the files of ICA exhibitions held whilst Watson was actively involved I came across a loan by him of a picture by Andre Bauchant (1873-1958). I hadn’t heard of him before (nor of the fact that Watson owned a picture by him). His picture was “The Fifth Day of Creation” and there was a photograph of it in the file. He lent it to the exhibition called Sunday Painters in September 1954. Bauchant’s style is revealed on the internet as what one might term super-realist. Watson’s taste occasionally extended to the mildly quirky: 2 pictures by another extraordinary artist, Walter Spies, attest to that.