- Artist
- Sir Matthew Smith 1879–1959
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 533 × 648 mm
frame: 735 × 845 × 100 - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1949
- Reference
- N05903
Catalogue entry
N05903 CORNISH CHURCH 1920
Inscr. ‘MS 20’ t.r. and ‘1920’ on back of canvas.
Canvas, 21×25 1/2 (53·5×64·5).
Purchased from the Mayor Gallery (Knapping Fund) 1949.
Coll: Purchased from the artist by T. W. Earp, who afterwards sold it to F. Mayor c.
1947.
Exh: Tate Gallery, September–October 1953 (11, repr. pl.7), and Arts Council tour, November 1953–February 1954 (9); R.A., October–December 1960 (31).
Repr: Hendy, Halliday and Russell, 1962, pl.15 (in colour); John Rothenstein, The Tate Gallery, 1962, p.257.
Painted while the artist was living at St Columb Major, Cornwall, between June and December 1920, the composition shows a view of the parish church seen from an upstairs window of the house in which the artist was staying. It is one of several Cornish landscapes painted in a predominantly purple, green and dark red palette which seems to reflect the artist's anxious pessimism at this time.
Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II
Explore
- architecture(30,960)
- townscapes / man-made features(21,603)
-
- graveyard(205)
- formal qualities(12,454)
-
- colour(836)
- UK cities, towns and villages(12,725)
- Cornwall(1,034)
- England(19,202)
- England, South West(3,507)
- England, Southern(8,982)