Stanley Joyce (1929-2012)

We have been very fortunate to acquire a large body of work originating from the house in Handsworth Wood of the painter, printmaker and educator Stanley Joyce.

Joyce was born in West Bromwich in the West Midlands Black Country, moving to Birmingham in the 1930s, where he studied art education at Birmingham University. He taught art in a number of Midlands schools, developing a special interest in the visual literacy of young children, and the introduction of art history into the school curriculum.

His art practice developed alongside his teaching, and from the 1950s, he trained at the Slade, the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford and at Birmingham College of Art. Study at Atelier17 and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris developed Joyce’s practice as a printmaker, and introduced him to some of his long-term influences, notably Degas, Cezanne and the Swedish artist Anders Zorn. He was a member of the Birmingham Print Workshop, and elected an Associate of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. He exhibited widely, and is represented in collections in the UK, France and Italy.

Stanley’s broad practice includes work in oil, watercolour and printmaking, particularly etching and drypoint. His open air sketches in both oil and watercolour are freely executed with bold and rapid mark-making recording favourite and frequently re-visited landscapes, while sketch books and drawings explore both formal, studio and abstracted figure studies and interiors. In contrast, his studio paintings, are more measured, often worked in a rich impasto, layered with knife and brush.

As a printmaker. Joyce described himself as plein-airist, preferring to take all his plates into the landscape and work directly from nature. He wrote, ‘my aim is to capture the sense of place, the mood of a particular landscape at a particular moment in time. I draw on aluminium using a Haden, Whistler or Diamond point. This method has special problems in that one is at the mercy of the very elements which create mood: wind, rain, mist and an ever -changing light. Results are sometimes disappointing but even failures can have a special quality often lacking in studio work.’.

Stanley drew and painted the country around his home in north Birmingham, but also found favourite landscapes in the Malvern Hills, the mountains of Snowdonia, North Wales and the area around Lamorna on the South West tip of Cornwall, especially the Lamorna woods and stream which run down through the Lamorna valley to the sea. He also painted extensively in France and Italy, particularly around Brittany, Normandy and in Venice. These visits became more frequent and extended following the death of his wife, Anne, in 1996.

In addition to a large collection of works, Stanley’s legacy includes copious sketch and note books, documenting his working practice and his friendships with fellow students and artists, including his contemporary, the painter and teacher Albert Herbert (1925-2008).

© Lloyd Ellis 1. 2. 2023