Lot 137: RAY JOHN MEAD 1921 - 1998

RAY JOHN MEAD 1921 - 1998 FRUCTIFICATION II signed lower right Ray Mead ; titled and dated Fructification II '89 by the artist on the canvas and on a label on the reverse acrylic on canvas 127.0 by 152.4 cm. 50 by 60 in.

Galerie Dresdnere, Toronto

Miriam Shiell Fine Art, Toronto

Private Collection, Toronto

A member of Painters Eleven, Mead brought from his native England a sharp sense of design and a facility that gave distinction to his work in the commercial art field. Like Bush, Cahen, Town and others, this early and necessary commitment to advertising, magazine illustration and related activities supported their real ambitions as painters. In this way they were not unlike their predecessors in the Group of Seven.

Mead had studied at the Slade School in London just before being caught up in the war. As a travelling pilot instructor in Canada and the United States he arrived in Toronto with an informed sense of both European and American developments. Indeed, he was as cognizant of international art as Cahen was, and it shows in the scale, colour and articulation of his canvases. He would have been at home in the New York art world during its post-war years had his life taken him there.

Mead's allegiance to the aims and purposes of Painters Eleven, however, gave a particular elegance to the overall impact of that remarkable group of painters. Mead was capable of both lush, saturated and complex compositions and of presenting works that were spare, eccentrically balanced, and seemingly achieved with the least means. His achievement, as is brilliantly evident in this canvas, has yet to be fully recognized.