Eileen Agar: An Eye for Collage 

Agar, Eileen. Self-Portrait, 57 x 36.5cm. Oil and mixed media on card. (1938) Private Collection © Estate of Eileen Agar

Identified for many years with the Surrealist Group with whom she exhibited, Eileen Agar (1899-1991) was in fact a far more independent artist than the label suggests. Like so many artists who were invited to show with that group, her work had other motivating forces behind it - in her case the great tradition of lyrical Romanticism in English painting which reaches back beyond Blake and Samuel Palmer to the illuminators of Medieval manuscripts. In her work, Agar linked this tradition to modern European discoveries such as Cubism, and created her own brand of imaginative picture-making, which draws equally on figuration and abstraction.

This exhibition, which is curated by Andrew Lambirth, will show Agar as the independent and original artist she was, focusing on her exceptional gift with paint and collage.