Leon Kossoff

Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
Saatchi Collection, London
Acquired by the present owner in 1993

Painted in 1987, Here Comes the Diesel, early Summer belongs to a series of works that Anne Seymour described as “some of the most exciting pictures of Kossoff’s life.” (Exhibition Catalogue, London, Anthony d’Offay Gallery, Leon Kossoff, 1988, p. 6) Exploring the seasonal changes on his immediate surroundings and inducing them with a noble monumentality, Kossoff’s vivid brushstrokes and assured application of colour captures the movement of the train, recording and celebrating a single moment in time. “Catching the light and perhaps a breath of wind, this landscape shines with the freshness of the real country. As we watch, a train with a yellow front comes casually across the picture with that slightly juddering motion, that loudness we know from childhood, reaching as we register its arrival the exact centre of the canvas.” (Lawrence Gowing in Exhibition Catalogue, London, Anthony d'Offay Gallery, Leon Kossoff, 1988, p. 6)

Within Kossoff’s oeuvre, the series of diesel pictures exude a freshness and light absent from his brooding pictures of the underground in which the artist delves beneath the surface of this subterranean world. The grandeur of the present work is partly derived from its honesty and directness of creation, from the vigorous technique of destruction and recreation that Kossoff repeated until the moment of inspired expression manifests itself. His restless, confident brushwork directs our eye across the picture surface in a way that enhances the train’s steady progress, taking us deeper into the heart of this intimate suburban landscape whilst simultaneously providing a confessional network of the picture’s organic creation.

The vibrant surface and rich painterly texture expose the artist’s enthusiastic creative process, with layers of energetically applied colour betraying his painterly gestures. The affirmation of the temporal present lies at the core of Kossoff’s work from this period, and his ability to capture a glimpse of humanity is beautifully exposed in this fleeting, nostalgic scene. “It is one of the prime purposes of art to record the invisible as much as the visible aspects of life. The need to break through the materially based, banal, worn out patterns of seeing towards a manifestation of non-visible energies, has been the preoccupation of many of the great artists of the past hundred years, from Van Gogh and Cezanne to Picasso and de Kooning, and the seriousness of Kossoff’s contribution to this movement cannot be questioned.” (Anne Seymour in Exhibition Catalogue, London, Anthony d’Offay, Leon Kossoff, p. 2)