- Artist
- Bryan Wynter 1915–1975
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 1825 × 1215 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1982
- Reference
- T03363
Catalogue entry
T03363 Green Confluence 1974
Oil on canvas 71 3/4 × 47 3/4 (1825 × 1215)
Inscribed on back of canvas ‘Green
Confluence/(June)/72" × 48"’
Purchased from the New Art Centre (Grant-in-Aid) 1982
Prov: Monica Wynter (the artist's widow) 1975; New Art Centre 1982
Exh: Bryan Wynter 1915–1975, Falmouth School of Art, November–December 1975 (8); Exhibition of work by Roger Hilton and Bryan Wynter, Penwith Society of Arts, St Ives, February–March 1976 (6); Bryan Wynter 1915–1975, Paintings, Kinetics and Works on Paper, Hayward Gallery, August 1976 (75, repr. in col.); Bryan Wynter 1964–1974, New Art Centre, March–April 1982 (no catalogue number)
Lit: Patrick Heron, introduction to ‘Bryan Wynter’, New Art Centre exhibition catalogue, 1982
Mrs Monica Wynter has provided the following note on her husband's painting (letter of 2 October 1982):
I can't say when the painting was started, but it was brought home, hung and declared finished in August or September 1974. In the last few years he produced very few paintings, partly as a result of working for three years to produce a commissioned show of mobiles (IMOOS) for Leslie [Waddington], (exhibition held October 1974 - Waddington Gallery) and partly because he felt a conflict having to produce a series of mobiles which for him had come to the end of their creative possibilities and a desire to get on with his painting - painting was always more important to him than the mobiles - but at the same time feeling he wanted to make some change in his paintings too. During mobile/painting years, say 1969 to 1974, he had made some paintings of a more ‘hard edge’ nature, still using the meander or confluence motif, but somehow more closely related to the kind of forms that he used in the mobiles. ‘Green Confluence’ is a move back towards a softer, more fluid (perhaps not a good choice of word in this context!) kind of painting, where the colour is more diffuse and not contained in definite boundaries. This softer, more ‘landscapey’ approach to colour is also apparent in the few very late gouaches he did towards the end of 1974 and the first weeks of 1975.
Bryan Wynter died suddenly on 11 February 1975, and ‘Green Confluence’ was his last painting.
Patrick Heron wrote an introduction to a Wynter exhibition catalogue for the New Art Centre, March–April 1982 and devoted most of his text to a consideration of the sort of shapes and marks most identified with the artist. The last phrase of this introduction draws the reader's attention to ‘the wonderful blue-green light which emanates so steadily from the softer, almost furry touches of his last canvas, “Green Confluence” 1974’.
Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1982-84: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1986
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