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拍品專文
Throughout a long and distinguished career, John Piper proved himself capable of excelling in a number of styles and across many mediums, but he remains best known for the highly distinctive depictions of historic ruins and bombed buildings which he made in the 1940s. Binham Priory, Norfolk is an important work from this significant period.
An effect of moody and theatrical lighting; a restricted palette (in this decade Piper scarcely ever used shades of green); and the absence of human figures result in a visually striking work displaying ‘a majesty which is at once both brilliant and sombre’ (this expression was used in 1955 by the writer S. John Woods in his summing-up of the visual quality of Piper’s typical works from the 1940s). For a work of this time and type in John Piper’s career, Binham Priory, Norfolk is a strikingly large-scale painting (a scale possibly unrivalled and certainly not exceeded), suggesting that it was particularly important to the artist: the high cost of materials in the wartime/post-war period meant that Piper’s oil paintings from the 1940s tend to be much smaller, with mixed media works on paper (of various sizes) being more usual.
During the 1940s, Piper was obsessed by the work of three nineteenth century painters who were part of the British Romantic tradition, writing about the importance of their contributions in articles for various periodicals and in his own book for the wartime Britain in Pictures series, British Romantic Artists (London: William Collins, 1942): J.M.W. Turner and Samuel Palmer (to whom the current work can be said to be stylistically indebted); and John Sell Cotman (known for his series of etchings of Norfolk churches, including a view of Binham Priory, also taken from the North West, with which Piper was undoubtedly familiar - the artist owned the book of etchings by Cotman, Architectural Antiquities of Norfolk, 1818).
Examples of Piper’s views of Binham are well-known, including the mixed media Binham Abbey, the west front, 1948, which is illustrated in D. F. Jenkins and H. Fowler-Wright, The Art of John Piper, London, 2015, p. 236, pl. 6.27, and elsewhere; and a screenprint published in the early 1980s. When the present work was shown and sold in these Rooms in 2006, it was commented that ‘it would appear that Binham Priory has never been exhibited or appeared in any literature, and has been in a private collection for many years’. The work was subsequently chosen for illustration and description in The Art of John Piper, published in 2015.
We are very grateful to Rev. Dr Stephen Laird FSA for preparing this catalogue entry.
An effect of moody and theatrical lighting; a restricted palette (in this decade Piper scarcely ever used shades of green); and the absence of human figures result in a visually striking work displaying ‘a majesty which is at once both brilliant and sombre’ (this expression was used in 1955 by the writer S. John Woods in his summing-up of the visual quality of Piper’s typical works from the 1940s). For a work of this time and type in John Piper’s career, Binham Priory, Norfolk is a strikingly large-scale painting (a scale possibly unrivalled and certainly not exceeded), suggesting that it was particularly important to the artist: the high cost of materials in the wartime/post-war period meant that Piper’s oil paintings from the 1940s tend to be much smaller, with mixed media works on paper (of various sizes) being more usual.
During the 1940s, Piper was obsessed by the work of three nineteenth century painters who were part of the British Romantic tradition, writing about the importance of their contributions in articles for various periodicals and in his own book for the wartime Britain in Pictures series, British Romantic Artists (London: William Collins, 1942): J.M.W. Turner and Samuel Palmer (to whom the current work can be said to be stylistically indebted); and John Sell Cotman (known for his series of etchings of Norfolk churches, including a view of Binham Priory, also taken from the North West, with which Piper was undoubtedly familiar - the artist owned the book of etchings by Cotman, Architectural Antiquities of Norfolk, 1818).
Examples of Piper’s views of Binham are well-known, including the mixed media Binham Abbey, the west front, 1948, which is illustrated in D. F. Jenkins and H. Fowler-Wright, The Art of John Piper, London, 2015, p. 236, pl. 6.27, and elsewhere; and a screenprint published in the early 1980s. When the present work was shown and sold in these Rooms in 2006, it was commented that ‘it would appear that Binham Priory has never been exhibited or appeared in any literature, and has been in a private collection for many years’. The work was subsequently chosen for illustration and description in The Art of John Piper, published in 2015.
We are very grateful to Rev. Dr Stephen Laird FSA for preparing this catalogue entry.