Bryan Wynter 1915-1975

A.V. Smith
Gladys M. Jewett, by whom given to the present owner, 1975

Painted in 1954-5.

In the early 1950s, Wynter’s art was changing direction, away from the rather neo-romantic influenced works of the late 1940s, somewhat akin to artists such as Vaughan and Sutherland, towards a form of imagery that took an abstracted view of the landscape, a move which placed Wynter fully in step with his St.Ives contemporaries.

These paintings lost their illustrative qualities, replacing them with imagery which suggested the landscape and the attendant elements without documenting specific locations. The reduction of the landscape to its most basic forms provided a perfect vehicle for a move towards a more painterly handling of his medium, a move that is paralleled in contemporary works by two of Wynter’s friends and fellow teachers at Corsham Court, Peter Lanyon and William Scott.