Peter Lanyon

Thomas Baker Slick, Jr, San Antonio, Texas
The Hart Gallery, London, where acquired by Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
Acquired from the above by David Bowie, 28th July 1994 

London, Gimpel Fils, Peter Lanyon: Exhibition of Paintings, March 1952, cat. no.2;
Oxford, Black Hall, Seven British Contemporary Artists, May 1952, cat. no.12;
Paris, Galerie de France, Tendances de la Peinture et de la Sculpture: Britanniques Contemporaines, October 1952, un-numbered catalogue;
London, Redfern Gallery, Abstract, Cubist, Formalist, Surrealist, 13th April - 8th May 1954, cat. no.483;
Plymouth, City Art Gallery, Peter Lanyon, May - June 1955, cat. no.9, with tour to Midland Group Gallery, Nottingham;
Ottowa, National Gallery of Canada, Six Painters from Cornwall, 11th November 1955 - November 1956, cat. no.1, illustrated n.p., with tour to Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, University of Alberta, Alberta, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Willistead Art Gallery, Ontario, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, and The Elsie Perrin Williams Memorial Art Museum, Ontario;
St Ives, Tate, Peter Lanyon: Coastal Journey, 11th November 2000 - 11th March 2001, un-numbered catalogue;
St Ives, Tate, Peter Lanyon, 9th October 2010 - 9th January 2011, un-numbered catalogue, illustrated p.45.

Michael Middleton, 'Painters and Pictures', Vogue, February 1952, pp.72-7, illustrated;
John Berger, 'Peter Lanyon, at Gimpel Fils', The New Statesman and Nation, 15th March 1952, p.303;
John Berger, 'The Arts and Entertainment: Looking Back', The New Statesman and Nation, 10th January 1953, p.36;
Roger van Gindertael, 'Peintres Britanniques d'Aujourd'hui', Art d'Aujourd'hui, March 1953, pp.3-6, illustrated;
Andrew Causey, Peter Lanyon, Aidan Ellis Publishing, Henley-on-Thames, 1971, no.40;
Nicholas Alfrey et. al., Towards a New Landscape, Bernard Jacobson Ltd, London, 1993, cat. no.17, illustrated p.121;
Margaret Garlake, Peter Lanyon, Tate Gallery Publishing, London, 1998, pp.10-11, illustrated;
Chris Stephens, Peter Lanyon: At the Edge of Landscape, 21 Publishing, London, 2000, illustrated p.65;
Andrew Lanyon, Saint Ives: The Paintings of Peter Lanyon, privately printed, St Ives, 2001, illustrated p.315;
Soaring Flight: Peter Lanyon's Gliding Paintings, (exh. cat.), The Courtauld Gallery, London, 2015, illustrated p.109.

The board appears sound. There are some fine lines of very minor reticulation in one or two places, only visible upon close inspection. There are some old scuffs to the left along the upper horizontal edge. There is some very light surface dirt in one or two places. Subject to the above, the work appears to be in excellent overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals a few spots of old retouching scattered to the extreme edges, which correspond to old frame abrasions. The work is presented in a painted wooden frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

We are grateful to Martin Lanyon and Toby Treves for their kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work, which will feature in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the oil paintings and three-dimensional works, to be published by Modern Art Press in association with Yale University Press.

Beginning in the late 1940s onwards, Peter Lanyon created a totally personal manner of painting which not only changed the way we look at representations of landscape, but also extended our interpretation of it by directly addressing the personal experience of both artist and viewer. While remaining rooted to his native Cornwall, throughout his career Lanyon was aware of, and engaged with, international art movements, particularly the American abstract expressionists. Lanyon rejected pure abstraction in his own work and, while working in an ostensibly abstract manner, preferred to think of himself as a landscape painter in the romantic tradition. His work combines notional references, history and myth in a way which was entirely his own. 

Unlike contemporaries who sought to eradicate any figurative reference in their painting, the landscapes and weather of Cornwall were critically important to Lanyon’s vision. The titles of his paintings often refer to meteorological phenomena such as Bay Wind (1958, sold in these rooms 11th November 2009), or to specific places, such as Trevalgan. Trevalgan, overlooking St Ives, is part of a backbone of hills along the West Penwith peninsula, the most westerly point of Cornwall. Lanyon explored these hills extensively, both on foot and on his motorbike, frequently choosing them as subjects for his work, such as Trencrom, 1951 (sold in these rooms, 7th November 1990, lot 174) and Rosewall, 1940 (lot 121).

For Lanyon, landscape involved much more than the geography or the visual response to a place: it was to be experienced and interpreted with all the senses from multiple viewpoints. Trevalgan shows a terrain thrust up towards the viewer, surrounded by sea and sky, and with the grid of fields and ancient rock formations providing a multifaceted and stratified view. Here we bear witness to Lanyon abandoning conventional perspective and, through an amalgamation of numerous viewpoints, give us an overall interpretation of the place. As Lanyon explains: ‘By removing the static viewpoint from landscape and introducing an image constructed or in my case evolved out of many experiences the problem of landscape becomes one of painting environment, place and a revelation of a time process’ (the Artist, quoted in Andrew Lanyon, Peter Lanyon 1918-64, Penzance, 1990, p.290).

Through the thin layers of pigment built up on the surface, a sense of history emerges from Trevalgan. Lanyon deeply felt Cornwall’s cultural past and this sense of history is reflected in Lanyon’s complex view of the landscape, which for him involved the inhabitants and their influence on the land, the industries they brought with them, the geological and social history of a place, the meteorological conditions, as well as a sense of the mythical past. 

Lanyon himself recognized that with Trevalgan he had broken the bounds of traditional landscape and produced a work of immense power, writing in a letter to Paul Feiler that: ‘It is one of my best and a significant one’ (the Artist in correspondence to Paul Feiler, 16th July 1952). The work was included in Lanyon’s second solo exhibition in London, held at Gimpel Fils in 1952, and critics of the exhibition acknowledged that Lanyon had here made a significant shift in paradigm and focused on Trevalgan as a major highlight of the show:

‘[Lanyon] tilts a landscape up and looks at it as if from the air, he extends it sideways as if seen from a car racing across it, he sounds its depths within its mineshafts. His paintings are like maps - but with horizons, and with images made volatile and sensuous by the beautifully sheer application of paint… In the magnificent painting called Trevalgan (No 2), the dip and flow of the fields from the gentle South coast on the left to the angular north coast on the right, the broken white cliff-face, the clean force of the wind across the whole peninsula, the washed light, are all wrought together in one new form which simultaneously rises up from the sea and lies, as in an aerial view, flat upon it. It is a painting, not of appearance, but of the properties of a landscape: properties only discovered when one knows a place so well that its ordinary scenic appearance has long been forgotten.’ (John Berger, ‘Peter Lanyon, at Gimpel Fils,’ The New Statesman and Nation, 15th March 1952, p.303)

Trevalgan was originally in the collection of Thomas Baker Slick, Jr, (1916-1962), a legendary philanthropist and cultural figure of San Antonio, Texas. The son of an oil tycoon, Tom Jr was an incredibly successful entrepreneur and businessman in his own right, and invested in multiple scientific endeavours. He was a passionate traveller and explorer, famously leading an expedition through the Himalayas in search of the ‘Abominable Snowman’ in 1957. Slick’s adventurous eye soon led him to international art collecting and from the early 1950s amassed an impressive group of works by artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Pablo Picasso alongside contemporary British artists such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth (including Head (Icon), sold in these rooms 26th May 2010), Alan Davie, William Gear and, of course, Peter Lanyon (including the present work and Down Wind, sold in these rooms, 15th November 2011). Following his tragic death in an airplane crash in 1962, a large part of the collection was gifted to the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio in 1973, and works were gathered there for exhibition in 2009.