Cornish Landscape with Roller

1st June Started painting of Landscape with Roller, Cornwall (16x20) (sold at French Gallery ... Mrs Marchant ... 1937)

Richard records in his sales diary that this work was sold by the Goupil Gallery in 1937, but the note above from his 1936 daily diary seems to point towards it being bought by Mrs Marchant who was director of the Goupil Gallery which was then based at The French Gallery. It was later recorded as being in her collection so this might have been the case. All we can say without more information is that the details of this first …

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1st June Started painting of Landscape with Roller, Cornwall (16x20) (sold at French Gallery ... Mrs Marchant ... 1937)

Richard records in his sales diary that this work was sold by the Goupil Gallery in 1937, but the note above from his 1936 daily diary seems to point towards it being bought by Mrs Marchant who was director of the Goupil Gallery which was then based at The French Gallery. It was later recorded as being in her collection so this might have been the case. All we can say without more information is that the details of this first sale are uncertain.

I remember that one evening Andrew Patrick, then Managing Director of the Fine Art Society, was at a dinner party in my flat, and happened to be sitting opposite this painting. But no sooner has he sat down than he got up excitedly for a closer look at it. It turned out that he was helping to organise a touring retrospective [organised by Bradford's Cartwright Hall 1979-80] of your father's work . . . He told me that this was the first work from the Thirties they had been able to trace . . . Andrew asked me to lend …

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I remember that one evening Andrew Patrick, then Managing Director of the Fine Art Society, was at a dinner party in my flat, and happened to be sitting opposite this painting. But no sooner has he sat down than he got up excitedly for a closer look at it. It turned out that he was helping to organise a touring retrospective [organised by Bradford's Cartwright Hall 1979-80] of your father's work . . . He told me that this was the first work from the Thirties they had been able to trace . . . Andrew asked me to lend the picture to the show, which of course I happily did. I thought then, as I think now, that your father has been one of the most shamefully under-estimated of 20th-century British artists, so I am very happy that he seems now to be reclaiming his place in the sun.

Although on the surface this painting is a straight landscape, there seems to be a surreal undercurrent running through it.  A roller appears again later in a 1948 painting The Battle of the Boggarts , but this time the surreal element is much more full blown.