Lot 53
  • 53

John Piper, C.H. 1903-1992

Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 GBP
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Description

  • John Piper, C.H.
  • Brighton Pavilion
  • signed

  • oil, sand and pencil on board with canvas collage

  • 53 by 96.5cm., 21 by 38in.

Provenance

Leicester Galleries, London, whence purchased by the present owner's family, 1940

Exhibited

Atlanta, High Museum, loan exhibit, 1951.

Literature

Atlanta Art Association Bulletin, March 1951, illustrated. 

Catalogue Note

Brighton’s architectural extremes appealed to Piper, and in late 1938 he visited with a view towards writing an article for Architectural Review. The trip also inspired a large number of works, including a suite of fourteen prints in the then hardly used medium of aquatint which seem originally to have been intended for a book in imitation of the travel literature of the Regency period.

No investigation of Brighton’s architecture could miss out the Royal Pavilion, and the present work seems to be the prime version of a number of renderings of the building described by Piper as ‘hilarious…human…acutely vulgar…extremely sensitive