ARTISTS MAKING LANDSCAPE IN POST-WAR BRITAIN

The landscape of post-war Britain is expressed in the work of painters such as Nash, Sutherland and Piper, and also in the more abstract canvases of Prunella Clough, Ben Nicholson or Peter Lanyon. The author argues that these painters not only absorbed and reflected the landscape around them, both rural and urban, but that their work influenced public perception of what post-war Britain looked like and the way it should develop. The visible landscape of 1945 was very different from that of 1939, especially in heavily bombed areas, and over the next decades it was further transformed by road building, new towns, the restoration of industrial architecture and a shift to large-scale farming. Bryan Wynter's "Cornish Farm" of 1948 is a naturalistic study of an old, picturesque building, perhaps more of a smallholding than a farm, sheltered by some windswept trees. Richard Hamilton, on the other hand, was influenced by his train journey north from London when he was working in Newcastle and created a series of semi-abstract canvases entitled "Trainsition", capturing the featureless farmland in a style reflecting the changing landscape and changing artistic style. Edward Burra's "English Countryside" is a semi-abstract design of intense colour in which electricity pylons are dwarfed by the big fields and sky. In the city, one of the major buildings to be built in London was the Shell building on the South Bank, captured in its bleak immensity by Frank Auerbach's "Shell Building Site", 1959. At the same time, some artists were bringing a romantic sensibility to their work, inspired by such heritage projects as Nikolaus Pevsner's immense and highly acclaimed architectural series The Buildings of England. Piper's Welsh landscapes are wild yet picturesque, while Ivon Hitchens brought a sweeping abstract style to the wooded scenes of Sussex. The Scottish painter Joan Eardley was a notable colourist who used impasto to replicate the physicality of weatherbeaten landscapes. 302pp, colour reproductions.