
Not on display
- 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
Display caption
After a period of prolonged illness Smith spent the autumn and winter of 1920 in the village of St Columb Major in Cornwall. Here he completed a number of landscapes, and this is the view from the window of his room. The intense colours and black sky are reminiscent of the Brücke group of German Expressionist painters, but Smith denied a connection, and felt himself to be closer to French art. In Paris in 1919 he knew well the Irish painter Roderic O'Conor, who like Smith had belonged to Gauguin's circle in Brittany. Smith saw his landscapes and nudes, in which he used radiant colour in a similar constructional way.
Gallery label, August 2004
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
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
You might like
-
Bertram Nicholls Steyning Church, Sussex
1921 -
Sir Matthew Smith Peonies
exhibited 1928 -
Lucien Pissarro All Saints’ Church, Hastings: Sun and Mist
1918 -
Sir Matthew Smith Cyclamen
c.1920 -
Sir Matthew Smith Model Turning
c.1924 -
Sir Matthew Smith Peaches
1937 -
Sir Matthew Smith Still Life
c.1936 -
Sir Matthew Smith The Young Actress
1943 -
Sir Matthew Smith Apples
1919–20 -
Sir Matthew Smith Nude, Fitzroy Street, No. 1
1916 -
Sir Matthew Smith Woman Reclining
c.1925–6 -
Sir Matthew Smith Fruit in a Dish
c.1915 -
Sir Matthew Smith Still Life with Clay Figure, I
1939 -
Sir Matthew Smith Winter in Provence
c.1937 -
Sir Matthew Smith Landscape near Antibes
c.1930–4