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Lot Essay
A British painter, Algernon Newton depicted the urban views of London. Favouring the then quiet and undeveloped areas of Bayswater, Paddington and the industrial landscapes along the Regent's Canal, he typically painted from a distance, avoided human presence, and complimented dramatic architectural detail with natural elements. Newton wrote that 'There is beauty in everything, you just have to look for it; a gasometer can make as beautiful a picture as a palace on the Grand Canal in Venice. It simply depends on the artist's vision'.
St Paul's Rising out of the Fog was once thought to have been destroyed in a fire, only known from a black and white photograph and a preparatory sketch in the Tate Gallery archives. The iconic subject and post-war production of the painting set it apart from the artist’s typical cityscapes.
As with most of Newton’s urban landscapes dating to the 1940s and '50s, St Paul's Rising out of the Fog holds a more sombre tone than the artist’s earlier paintings. Newton was a committed pacifist and, following 1945, the war played on his mind frequently, even prompting him to compose two unpublished short stories describing events of the Second World War in alternative realities. Andrew Graham-Dixon remarks that, in Newton’s later works, 'war was surely there too ... painted even as they were several years after the end of the conflict. It is there as absence, silence, shadow’ (A. Graham-Dixon, exhibition catalogue, The Peculiarity of Algernon Newton, Daniel Katz Gallery, London, 2012, p.10).
The present lot acts as a public declaration of his distress regarding the war. The centrality of war to the painting becomes particularly obvious when considering the events surrounding St Paul's between 1940 and 1941. As great portions of the capital were reduced to rubble, the cathedral became a symbol of British hope and resilience. Thanks to Sir Winston Churchill’s demand that 'at all costs, St Paul's must be saved', a determined effort was made to preserve the landmark. Though almost all buildings surrounding it fell, a team of firewatchers successfully protected St Paul’s from the twenty-nine incendiary bombs which landed on and around it.
St Paul's Rising out of the Fog was once thought to have been destroyed in a fire, only known from a black and white photograph and a preparatory sketch in the Tate Gallery archives. The iconic subject and post-war production of the painting set it apart from the artist’s typical cityscapes.
As with most of Newton’s urban landscapes dating to the 1940s and '50s, St Paul's Rising out of the Fog holds a more sombre tone than the artist’s earlier paintings. Newton was a committed pacifist and, following 1945, the war played on his mind frequently, even prompting him to compose two unpublished short stories describing events of the Second World War in alternative realities. Andrew Graham-Dixon remarks that, in Newton’s later works, 'war was surely there too ... painted even as they were several years after the end of the conflict. It is there as absence, silence, shadow’ (A. Graham-Dixon, exhibition catalogue, The Peculiarity of Algernon Newton, Daniel Katz Gallery, London, 2012, p.10).
The present lot acts as a public declaration of his distress regarding the war. The centrality of war to the painting becomes particularly obvious when considering the events surrounding St Paul's between 1940 and 1941. As great portions of the capital were reduced to rubble, the cathedral became a symbol of British hope and resilience. Thanks to Sir Winston Churchill’s demand that 'at all costs, St Paul's must be saved', a determined effort was made to preserve the landmark. Though almost all buildings surrounding it fell, a team of firewatchers successfully protected St Paul’s from the twenty-nine incendiary bombs which landed on and around it.