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Peter Lanyon  1918-1964

Peter Lanyon Porthleven 1951
© Tate
Porthleven  1951

Oil on board
support: 2445 x 1219 mm frame: 2535 x 1325 x 62 mm
painting

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society 1953

N06151

This work exemplifies Lanyon’s idea of the ‘experiential landscape’, which involved approaching a place from different positions and combining these views with allusions to geology, history, culture and myth. Here he depicts the fishing port of Porthleven from several perspectives, revealing its two harbours and clock tower. Lanyon later identified a human presence in the work, reading the shape on the left as a fisherman with lamp and his wife wrapped in a shawl on the right. Influenced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his theories of the unconscious, the artist saw these as figures embodying the cultural identity of his home.

 (From the display caption May 2007)