William Turnbull

Acquired directly from the Artist by a Private Collection, London

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Paintings 1959–1963, Bronze Sculpture 1954–1958, 24th November - 22nd December 2004, cat. no.12, illustrated.

Original canvas. There is a very light surface bloom to areas of the work and some minor flecks of abrasion to the extreme edges of the canvas. With the exception of the above the work appears to be in excellent condition. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work or if you would like to receive a ultra violet light report.
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Internationally recognised as one of the most important sculptors working in Britain in the post-war period, William Turnbull remained throughout the course of his life as much a painter as he was a sculptor. Having left the Slade School of Art to live in Paris, where he rubbed shoulders with artists including Giacometti, he returned home in time to be selected by Herbert Read to represent Britain at the 1952 Venice Biennale, alongside contemporaries including Robert Adams, Lynn Chadwick, Reg Butler and Kenneth Armitage. Three years later he met the American collector Donald Blinken (later chairman of the Rotho Foundation) and when Turnbull visited New York in 1957 it was Blinken who introduced him to the leading American heavyweights of the day, such as Rothko and Barnett Newman. This visit, and the radical works that he encountered upon it, marked a turning point in Turnbull’s artistic approach, and exposed him to new ideas in colour-field painting and hard-edge abstraction, with paintings focusing on the power of colour, whether in the deep red of the present work, or his stark all-black or all-white compositions.

Maintaining painting and sculpture simultaneously, Turnbull drew from ideas that transcended the traditional limitations of both media. Serving in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War he became fascinated by the idea of viewing landscapes from above, and the abstracted perspective that it presented of otherwise familiar landscapes. As he later recalled ‘the world didn’t any longer look like a Dutch landscape: it looked like an abstract painting. You looked down and you realised that so much of what one felt was true depended upon where you were standing to look at it’ (the Artist, quoted in William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, exhibition catalogue, Waddington Galleries, London, 1998). This influence of aerial perspective was something also used by the St Ives painter Peter Lanyon, but whilst Lanyon used an earthy palette of browns, greens and pale blues, Turnbull’s use of colour is more abstract and independent of nature, or at least, as in works such as 20-1963, inspired in by the rich, burnt reds of the Indian landscape, where he was stationed during the war.

Turnbull belongs to a group of British post-war artists who challenge the idea of New York dominance in this period. Alongside artists such as Lanyon, Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton and Alan Davie, Turnbull showed the very progressive working practises of the London art scene, which combined influences drawn from European and North American traditions, as well as those further afield, including from his direct experiences with the landscape around him. These combined to create paintings rich in artistic subject, with bold and exciting palettes that showcase the adept painterly techniques of an artist of truly international standing.