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Lot Essay
Paul Feiler first visited Cornwall in 1949 and in 1953 he decided to settle there permanently. Just as the mountains of Germany had fascinated him as a child, the drama of the Cornish landscape, its light and landscape, made a connection with Feiler and continued to inform and resolve the development of his work during the 1950s.
Inspired by natural forms and drawing on external sources, Feiler was concerned with creating a response to the experience of the landscape. During this time his painting became increasingly abstract, situating him firmly among the post-war generation of artists with the likes of William Scott and Peter Lanyon. Feiler adopted a typically Cornish palette of whites and blues, slate greys, blacks and bracken browns.
He talks of his work in a statement in 1956; 'I have always enjoyed writing down with paint what I felt the world around me looked like. This has been a limited world; a world of wide open spaces, with snow and ice-covered mountains; later, the sea and rocks seen from a height. This has led me to try to communicate a universal aspect of forms in space; where the scale of shapes to each other and their tonal relationship convey their physical nearness to the spectator and where the overall colour and its texture supplies the emotional overtones of the personality of the 'place'' (see T. Cross, Catching the Wave: Contemporary Art and Artists in Cornwall from 1975 to the present day, Tiverton, 2002, p. 52).
The previous owner of the present work, Howard Bliss, was a collector of contemporary art and a member of the selection committee of the Contemporary Art Society. Bliss's vast collection included important works by established artists such as Ivon Hitchens (see lot 154), William Scott, Patrick Heron, Samuel John Peploe (see lot 13 in the 20th Century British & Irish Art Evening Sale, 23 May 2012), and others.
Inspired by natural forms and drawing on external sources, Feiler was concerned with creating a response to the experience of the landscape. During this time his painting became increasingly abstract, situating him firmly among the post-war generation of artists with the likes of William Scott and Peter Lanyon. Feiler adopted a typically Cornish palette of whites and blues, slate greys, blacks and bracken browns.
He talks of his work in a statement in 1956; 'I have always enjoyed writing down with paint what I felt the world around me looked like. This has been a limited world; a world of wide open spaces, with snow and ice-covered mountains; later, the sea and rocks seen from a height. This has led me to try to communicate a universal aspect of forms in space; where the scale of shapes to each other and their tonal relationship convey their physical nearness to the spectator and where the overall colour and its texture supplies the emotional overtones of the personality of the 'place'' (see T. Cross, Catching the Wave: Contemporary Art and Artists in Cornwall from 1975 to the present day, Tiverton, 2002, p. 52).
The previous owner of the present work, Howard Bliss, was a collector of contemporary art and a member of the selection committee of the Contemporary Art Society. Bliss's vast collection included important works by established artists such as Ivon Hitchens (see lot 154), William Scott, Patrick Heron, Samuel John Peploe (see lot 13 in the 20th Century British & Irish Art Evening Sale, 23 May 2012), and others.