Artists Fred Dubery (1926-2011) and Joanne Brogden (1929-2013) left a cash bequest and the contents of their studios for the benefit of the East Anglian Art Fund.
The studio sale of more than 500 original works forms part of an auction of Modern British and 20th Century Art at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet on October 22. (For a preview of other pictures in this sale including a rediscovered Cedric Morris painting visit ATG’s article here).
Dubery trained at Croydon School of Art from 1949-50 and then at the Royal College of Art. As well as painting he was a professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy Schools and part-time lecturer at the Royal College of Art.
Dubery met Brogden, a fashion designer who had trained under Christian Dior, while tutoring at Walthamstow School of Art in 1963. They married five years later.
Brogden became a professor of Fashion at the Royal College of Art and helped the development of formal education in the study of fashion design.
The couple later settled in Great Finborough, near Stowmarket in Suffolk and expressed that after they died that works from their studio should be exhibited and sold for the benefit of the East Anglian Art Fund.
The fund has already created the Dubery-Brogden Scholarships and distributed support for students studying Fine Art, Illustration, Fashion Design & Textiles at Norwich University of the Arts.
Many of the works in the Sworders sale are unsigned and unframed but each bears a studio sale stamp providing a full provenance.
The sale comprises some pictures in group lots of three or four with estimates of between £100-500.
Others such as a view of Southwold Huts (estimate £300-500) and Pegging the Washing (estimate £300-500) will be sold as single works.
These works were among the pictures chosen to illustrate Two Lives in Colour, a book published early this year alongside an exhibition at Norwich University of the Arts’ East Gallery and follow-up shows in London and Holt Festival.
