Not on display
- Artist
- Merlyn Oliver Evans 1910–1973
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 1016 x 816 mm
frame: 1182 x 990 x 61 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1966
- Reference
- T00830
Catalogue entry
Merlyn Evans 1900-1973
T00830 The Conquest of Time 1934
Inscr.‘Evans 34’ b.r.
Tempera on panel, 40 x 32¼ (102 x 81.5).
Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1966.
Exh. International Surrealist Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, June–July 1936 (98); Nine Abstract Artists, Lefevre Gallery, March 1939 (39); Whitechapel Art Gallery, October–November 1 956 (8, repr.); McRoberts and Tunnard, October 1963 (1); Art in Britain 1930–40, Marlborough Fine Art, March–April 1965 (19);R.A., 1966 (524).
Repr. International Surrealist Bulletin, No. 4, September 1936, p. 12; Herbert Read, Surrealism, 1937, pl. 34.
According to the artist (notes, 9 August 1967), The subject is the Conquest of Time. The central image is ornithomorphic and presents Timelessness’. He explained in conversation that the reference is to the kingfisher, still beside the moving river, who occasionally plucks a fish from it, and that the theme relates to the possibility of an art which is timeless, as classical Greek art was. The reduction of colour and the isolation of the image within the field of the picture are part of the expression of timelessness.
Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1966–1967, London 1967.
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