Biography
Walter James Steggles (b. Clerkenwell, London 1908 - d. Calne, Wiltshire 1997) was a leading member of the East London Group. Along with his younger brother, Harold, Walter joined the evening art classes that were held at the Bethnal Green Men’s Institute in May 1925 under the tutelage of Mr O’Connell and, later, John Albert Cooper (1894-1943) and Charles Genge. Shortly afterwards, Cooper quarrelled with the head of the Institute and moved to teaching at the Bow and Bromley Evening Institute where several of his students from Bethnal Green would follow him. They continued to show in the annual exhibitions at the Bethnal Green Men’s Institute, which is where their work gained recognition. The students were mainly local working men and women a number of whom were from very humble backgrounds and could not always afford the materials, which Cooper himself often provided. Their first major public exhibition was as the East London Art Club at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in December 1928. The show was sponsored by Sir Joseph Duveen (1869-1939), Sir Charles Wakefield (1859-1941), who provided funding for the frames, and Charles Aitken (1869-1936), Director of the National Gallery, Millbank (now Tate Britain) and Contemporary Art Society committee member. In the Spring of 1929 the Group artists had a show at the National Gallery, Millbank and then Walter and Harold showed at a Summer Salon at The Redfern Gallery in August 1929. The East London Group, as they were now known, then held the first of eight annual shows at Alex. Reid & Lefevre galleries at 1a, King Street in Mayfair until 1936 – the year Walter was selected to show at the Venice Biennale, along with fellow ELG member, Elwin Hawthorne.
Steggles was one of the most highly regarded members of the ELG, along with his younger brother Harold Steggles (1911-1971), Elwin Hawthorn(e) (1905-1954), William Coldstream (1908-1987), Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942), Henry Silk (1883-1948), Brynhild Parker (1907-1987), Phyllis Bray (1911-1991) and Grace Oscroft (1903-1970) amongst others. Newspaper cuttings from the time proclaimed: "East End Workers as Artists" and "Fine Art in East London". In the Daily Mail on 17 December 1930 the well-known art critic P. G. Konody (1872-1933) wrote "If an Utrillo of London is to come into being- a painter who would interpret London not only as we see it but as we feel it- he will come from among the members of the East London Group and his name will be either Elwin Hawthorne or W. J. Steggles!"
Steggles was prolific and alongside the East London Group exhibitions, he also had work shown at the Burlington Galleries and Agnew’s as well as provincial shows both at home and abroad. In a mixed British and French Artists exhibition at Lefevre in August/September 1935, that consisted of only 64 paintings, along with six other members of the group (between them showing eight paintings) and R. O. Dunlop (1894-1973), William Staite-Murray (1881-1962), Alfred Sisley, Duncan Grant (1885-1978) and Samuel J. Peploe (1871-1935), Steggles exhibited alongside such luminaries as Paul Cezanne, Edouard Vuillard, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Maurice Utrillo, Pablo Picasso and Auguste Renoir.
Steggles also studied engraving and etching at the West Ham Technical College under David Strang (1887-1967) but this practice was cut short by the slump in the print market and subsequently by WW2. In 1931, along with his brother and fellow ELG members, Brynhild Parker and Elwin Hawthorne, Steggles was commissioned by Jack Beddington at Shell-Mex BP Ltd to contribute to what became the iconic advertising campaign poster series of the 20th century. In the first series Walter's was of The Thames at Cookham (and the only one in lower case): Everywhere you go - YOU CAN BE SURE OF SHELL and in the second series, in 1937, for To Visit Britain’s Landmarks - You Can be Sure of Shell, his design was of The Tattingstone Wonder, Tattigstone, Suffolk. Despite the Group’s name, which implied that they painted exclusively in the East End (barely 26% of their output was actually “urban”), from his early days showing with them, Steggles’s output was overwhelmingly comprised of either landscapes or seascapes with just eighteen of his eighty exhibited paintings being “urban”. In later life, Steggles continued to paint, mainly landscapes especially those of East Anglia, and, latterly in North Wiltshire around his then home in Bradford on Avon and later near Calne.
