Fresh and feisty

Harry Becker (1865–1928) is one of those artists too often dismissed as being of regional interest only, who feature but rarely in the art chronicles of the period.

Harry Becker (1865–1928) is one of those artists too often dismissed as being of regional interest only, who feature but rarely in the art chronicles of the period. He is most widely known for his illustrations to Adrian Bell’s celebrated Suffolk trilogy — Corduroy, Silver Ley and The Cherry Tree — and it is worth noting that Becker’s pictures were matched to Bell’s prose after the artist’s death, though they seem to be made for each other in their near-perfect fit. Becker only moved from London to Suffolk in 1913, but he found there his perfect setting. As Bell wrote of him: ‘He painted the whole struggle of man in the getting of bread — with earth and weather.’

Becker’s fresh and feisty realism, which borders on Impressionism (in its British manifestation, at any rate), is a superb tribute to the East Anglian landscape and the people who worked it.