
In Tate Britain
- Artist
- Prunella Clough 1919–1999
- Medium
- Oil paint on board
- Dimensions
- Support: 505 × 395 mm
frame: 632 × 522 × 50 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1982
- Reference
- T03810
Display caption
Clough’s first solo show in 1947 was at the Leger Gallery in London. It included still lifes and landscapes. Throughout the late 1940s, she visited the Suffolk Coast and her paintings from that time often show coastal subjects. The White Root features a bleached root structure, a wooden box or door and other debris. Although Clough painted it from observation, she focused on the abstract qualities of the root’s texture and shape.
Gallery label, April 2019
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Catalogue entry
T03810 THE WHITE ROOT 1946
Oil on board 19 3/4 × 16 (505 × 395)
Inscribed ‘Clough’ and illegible date b.r. and on reverse ‘↑’ and ‘Mr Bowas....’ (illegible)
Purchased from Fischer Fine Art Ltd. (Grant-in-Aid) 1982
Prov: Purchased from the artist by Fischer Fine Art Ltd.
Exh: Recent Paintings by Prunella Clough and Walter H. Nessler, The Leger Galleries, March–April 1947 (8); The British Neo-Romantics 1935–1950, Fischer Fine Art, July–August 1983, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, August–September 1983 (102)
Prunella Clough returned to painting in 1945, having left art school immediately before the war, and the earliest works in her retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1960 were of this date. She visited the Suffolk coast from her home in London, and many of her paintings of these years have coastal subjects. The artist has confirmed that these scenes were neither discovered nor arranged in this way, but were deliberate reconstructions.
Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1982-84: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1986
Explore
- architecture(41,314)
-
- townscapes / man-made features(21,691)
-
- building - non-specific(3,172)
- seascapes and coasts(8,002)
-
- beach(1,195)
- root(81)
- UK counties(19,569)
-
- Suffolk(387)
- East Anglia(916)
- England(19,249)
- England, East(1,358)
- transport: water(8,024)
-
- boat, sailing(3,531)
You might like
-
Graham Sutherland OM Horned Forms
1944 -
Prunella Clough Man Hosing Metal Fish Boxes
1951 -
John Craxton Hotel by the Sea
1946 -
John Minton Children by the Sea
1945 -
Graham Sutherland OM Crucifixion
1946 -
Ronald Ossory Dunlop Lifeboat, Walberswick
1936 -
Sir Walter Russell High Tide, Blakeney
exhibited 1938 -
John Craxton Dark Landscape
1944–5 -
Paul Nash Landscape from a Dream
1936–8 -
Cecil Collins The Golden Wheel
1958 -
Paul Nash Totes Meer (Dead Sea)
1940–1 -
Cecil Collins The Quest
1938 -
John Minton Landscape at Les Baux
1939 -
Robert Buhler Carlyle Square, Chelsea
1946–7 -
Beatrice Bland Yachts at Lymington
exhibited 1938