Algernon Cecil Newton

A painter of urban scenes and landscapes, Algernon Newton was born in Hampstead,
London. He studied at the London School of Art, Kensington and his first one-man show was
held at the Leicester Galleries in 1931. He has worked in Cornwall and in Yorkshire as well
as London.

Newton began to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy summer shows in 1923 and he
continued to send paintings there for several decades. He liked the slightly forlorn Regency
and early Victorian terraces that faced the canals, and gave them a curiously uninhabited
look. He once wrote: 'There is beauty to be found in everything, you only have to search for
it; a gasometer can make as beautiful a picture as a palace on the Grand Canal, Venice. It
simply depends on the artist's vision.'

Newton was living in Notting Hill at the time so Chepstow Place was a local subject. It is one
of the first and finest paintings of an area of London for which he always felt a particular
affection and painted several times throughout his career.