Devon garden

Norman Stevens is an outstanding painter and print maker who managed to capture the simplicity of life in English countryside. He attended the local art college in Bradford alongside other noteworthy names, such as David Hockney, John Loker or David Oxtoby. He subsequently continued his studies in London, at the Royal College of Art (1957). Despite evident ability for and contributions to painting, Stevens is perhaps best celebrated for his printmaking, a practice he embraced around 1970 following an awaking trip to California. His simple poetry and fondness for deceptively mundane subjects shined through as early as he adopted the technique. By the mid-1970s, Stevens had turned to the English countryside and formal gardens for inspiration. By doing so, he prolonged the typically English appetite for bucolic romanticism, referring to an everyday sublime but also the cultural practice of the promenade. His capacity as a printmaker ultimately got him elected as an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1983. Devon Garden, although it is a painting and not a print, illustrates the core components and values of Stevens’ overall body of work: the lyrical romanticism of an unmistakeably English setting.