The Child Art of Peggy Somerville

"Nine-Year-Old Artist." "Girl Who Never Had a Lesson." "Work that Shows Genius." These were the headlines in the Morning Post after the opening of Peggy Somerville's first "one-man" exhibition in June 1928 at the Claridge Gallery, in London's West End. The exhibition caused a sensation, the one hundred pictures were sold out and more were sent for. Sir John Lavery, opening the exhibition, declared himself "completely mystified by the extraordinary genius of the little girl in the handling of oils, water colours and crayons." The mystery remains, for the pictures seem to be neither imitative of adult work nor mere joyous incompetence, but the true vision of a child expressed with clarity and conviction.
This book tells the story of Peggy Somerville, who was later to become a notable East Anglian artist, and reproduces in book form for the first time some of the best of her remarkable childhood paintings, together with a selection of contemporary press comments and a foreword by Sir Hugh Casson. Stephen Reiss, well known as an art historian, has selected the paintings and written the text.