Ruined Cottage

Discussing the absence of people in Piper's work, Malcolm Yorke (The Spirit of Place: Nine Neo Romantic Artists and their times, London, 1988, p. 102) has commented, 'for one who claims to love his fellows, his landscapes and his buildings do appear unnaturally deserted ... The answer must lie in the demands of the pictures themselves. He avoids making works cluttered up with people in T-shirts, or driving last year's motor car, or carrying Marks and Spencer's shopping bags because he is trying to let something timeless emerge, something emanating from the stones of the place that pre-dates, and will post-date, the specific afternoon he sketched there, a something he has called 'spirit'. Turner and Palmer would have understood'.