The Overgrown Garden (1964)

Fred Yates was a self-taught British artist, known for his plein-air paintings of the English landscape. Influenced by so-called naïve art, Yate’s work incorporated bold colours, loose brushwork, and child-like abstractions. Often, he layered paint on top of the canvas to create a thick, textured surface, giving his paintings a sculptural quality. Born in Urmston in 1922, Yates fought in the Second World War alongside his twin brother, who was killed at the Battle of Arnhem. After the war, he began painting the Manchester cityscape in his free time and became well known in the local art scene, working alongside painter L.S. Lowry. Yates moved to Cornwall in 1968, where he began painting rocky beach landscapes and scenes of village life. He gained national attention after presenting his work at the 1985 exhibition “St Ives 1939– 64” at the Tate Gallery in London. Fred Yates’s work has been offered at auction multiple times, the record price being $24,546 USD for Trawler Race, Fowey, sold at Bonhams Knightsbridge in 2007.