The Maltese islands have captured the heart of many an artist and H.M. Bateman was no exception.
The former cartoonist, who died aged 73, was recently in the limelight after Maltapost honoured his work by issuing a series of stamps illustrating three of his paintings depicting the island.
London picture dealers Abbott and Holder Ltd are consequently holding the first ever exhibition to sell 50 oil paintings featuring Bateman’s scenes of Malta and Gozo.
By the age of 50, Bateman was a household name as a cartoonist, yet he was little known to the public as a painter.
Interestingly, complementary to Abbott and Holder’s exhibition, the neighbouring Cartoon Gallery is holding an exhibition of his cartoons until July 22.
As well as his cartoonist colleagues at the London Sketch Club, including Heath Robinson, Fougasse and others, Bateman was friends with such eminent painters as George Clausen, Lucian Pissaro and Philip Connard.
He had a lifelong ambition to become a “real artist” like them and, at the height of his fame, decided to step back from cartooning to pursue this aim.
He took his painting equipment out into the English countryside and began to travel abroad in search of inspiring subject matter.
In 1937 he wrote: “I would like to paint a quite serious picture; one that did not depend on any comic situation to make it appeal... the picture I have in mind is quite a simple one.
“A landscape perhaps, with just the way the light falls on a house or a tree, almost anything would do for a subject so long as it expresses the beauty of earth and sky and water, so that it would charm you”.
Having painted all over Europe, Bateman discovered the Maltese islands in the mid-1960s, where he found the climate and unspoilt local charm that he was looking for.
Eventually settling on Gozo, he spent his last five years painting tirelessly, struggling to master the art of colour and light, continually experimenting with different painting techniques.
He painted what he saw: the boats in the harbour, the donkey carts in the lane, the village bars and local inhabitants, churches and landscapes.
www.abbottandholder.co.uk
• H. M. Bateman (1887-1970 The Malta and Gozo Years 1964-1970 will be on show between May 10 and 31 at Abbott and Holder Ltd, 30, Museum Street, London (opposite the British Museum).