Landscape through Glass VI

Details

PRUNELLA CLOUGH (1919-1999)
Landscape through Glass VI
signed 'Clough' (lower left)
oil on canvas
38 x 32 in. (96.5 x 81.3 cm.)
Painted in 1959.

Provenance

Ceri Richards, 1960.
Frances Richards, 1971.
with Monika Kinley, where purchased by John Ball, circa 1974.
Acquired from the 1997 exhibition.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, Prunella Clough, David Carr: Works 1945-64, London, Austin Desmond Fine Art, 1997, p. 16, no. 18, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Prunella Clough, Cambridge, Kettle's Yard, 1999, n.p., exhibition not numbered, illustrated.
B. Tufnell (ed.), exhibition catalogue, Prunella Clough, London, Tate Britain, 2007, p. 40, no. 16, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Without from Within, Nottingham, Djanogly Art Gallery, 2010, pp. 45, 62, exhibition not numbered, illustrated.

Exhibited

London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Prunella Clough: a retrospective exhibition, September - October 1960, no. 138.
Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, Prunella Clough, September - October 1972, no. 17.
London, Austin Desmond Fine Art, Prunella Clough, David Carr: Works 1945-64, July 1997, no. 18.
Cambridge, Kettle's Yard, Prunella Clough, August - September 1999, exhibition not numbered: this exhibition travelled to Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, December 1999 - January 2000.
London, Olympia Spring Fine Art and Antiques Fair, Prunella Clough: Seeing the World Sideways, March 2004, no. PC-192, as 'Landscape Through Gate VI'.
Nottingham, Djanogly Art Gallery, Without from Within, March - May 2010, exhibition not numbered.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Conditions of sale

Brought to you by

Amelia Walker Director, Specialist Head of Private & Iconic Collections

awalker@christies.com +44 20 7389 2085

Lot Essay

In 1958 Bryan Robertson offered Clough a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Billed for the autumn of 1960, it gave her eighteen months to come to terms with what she called ‘those great wide walls’. She began working on a larger scale and gradually moved towards a more insistent use of abstraction. In October 1958, while visiting an ‘Expo’ in Brussels, her attention was caught by the sight of objects seen through large sheets of glass, and therefore slightly distorted. This gave rise to six paintings, called Landscape through Glass, numbered I to VI, and all were shown in the Whitechapel exhibition. They perfectly caught what Robertson desired. ‘What I look for in any period of art,’ he admitted towards the end of his career, ‘is imaginative energy, radiance, equilibrium, composure, colour, light, vitality, poise, buoyancy, a transcendent ability to soar above life and not be subjugated to it.’

We are very grateful to Frances Spalding for preparing this catalogue entry.

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