Artist: Margaret Benecke
Date: 1935
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 91x 76.5 cm
Credit: Towner Collection. Image Towner Eastbourne, © The Artist's Estate
Margaret Benecke was born in Camberwell and grew up in a highly cultured family. By 1906 she was living in Eastbourne and within the year was regularly exhibiting her paintings. She later lived with the artist Elizabeth Andrews in Ennis Road Eastbourne alongside painter and writer Innes Hart, all of whom were avid supporters of the Towner Art Gallery. The Sussex landmarks of the Seven Sisters cliffs and Beachy Head, in walking distance of Eastbourne, provide the inspiration for this Benecke work. Her style had developed from earlier picturesque coastal landscapes to abstraction captures the angular juts of chalk cliffs, grassy downs, manicured lawns and a rocky foreshore set against a flat grey sky.