item details
NameSaga
ProductionAlan Reynolds; artist; 1956
Classificationoil paintings, landscapes
Materialsoil paint, canvas, hardboard
Materials Summaryoil on canvas on hardboard
DimensionsImage: 1222mm (width), 1774mm (height)
Registration Number1957-0027-1
Credit linePurchased 1957
Overview
In this winter landscape, the skeletal remains of dead plants burst out of the frozen earth, their spiky shapes echoing the sun’s rays.
During the mid-1950s, the English artist Alan Reynolds was working in a neo-Romantic style. Like Ceri Richards, Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash, and Frances Hodgkins, he was interested in an intuitive, poetic interpretation of the landscape. Here, he has given the winter scene a surreal edge.
A critic once described Reynolds’ late landscapes, like this one, as ‘the bleak configuration of a lunar landscape … communicating a mood as disquieting as it is indefinable’.