Lot Essay
This picture, dating from the 1940s when Mary Potter made several visits to Brighton, reflects Sir Kenneth Clark's commentary in the 1964 Whitechapel retrospective catalogue: 'What a mistake to bring the heavy engines of analysis and interpretation to bear on Mary Potter's pictures. They exist in the domain of seeing and feeling; we know that they are exactly right in the same way that we know a singer to be perfectly in tune. Yet just as the purest voice still has a human inflection, so these pure visual responses would move us less were they not also a revelation of character ... She has succeeded in creating a style which is entirely personal, and which corresponds with her moments of vision so closely that at first we are hardly aware of it. Nothing is forced or done for effect. There is never a cliché and never a false note' (see Sir Kenneth Clark (foreword), Mary Potter, Whitechapel Exhibition Catalogue, London, 1964).