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拍品專文
Dating from 1958, the present work comprises a frieze-like format and is the result of a commission that Craxton undertook to paint two murals to coincide with the rebuilding of Morley College in South London, which had been bombed in the war. Although the final commission was never realised, Craxton produced two large-scale tempera works in preparation, Summer Panorama and Winter Panorama [the present work].
Winter Panorama contains many typical Cretan motifs from Craxton's work including the musician on the far left of the composition, dancer and figures huddled around a table in a bar. In Summer Panorama these figures spill out to the open air and are depicted underneath the awning, which stands unused in the present work. Within the right-hand area Craxton has included a self-portrait figure in the seated artist sketching the scene in front of him.
Malcolm Yorke comments, 'The compositions Craxton has produced since the 1950s still trail hints of Sutherland's liking for the spiky forms in landscapes, and Picasso and Miró-like distortions of figures and still-lifes. On top of these, however, he has absorbed more exotic sources than English painters can usually draw upon. Crete is, after all, the birthplace of El Greco who combined the hieratic styles of Byzantium with the freer, more humanistic ones of Renaissance Italy, Craxton writes with awed admiration for those Byzantine mosaic works he has seen in Istanbul, Italy and Greece and admits he has learned a lot from the mosaicists' respect for the flatness of their working surface, the sensuality and emotion they manage to convey with the clumsiest of materials, and the intense radiance of their colour' (see The Spirit of Place Nine Neo-Romantic Artists and their times, London, 1988, p. 318).
Winter Panorama contains many typical Cretan motifs from Craxton's work including the musician on the far left of the composition, dancer and figures huddled around a table in a bar. In Summer Panorama these figures spill out to the open air and are depicted underneath the awning, which stands unused in the present work. Within the right-hand area Craxton has included a self-portrait figure in the seated artist sketching the scene in front of him.
Malcolm Yorke comments, 'The compositions Craxton has produced since the 1950s still trail hints of Sutherland's liking for the spiky forms in landscapes, and Picasso and Miró-like distortions of figures and still-lifes. On top of these, however, he has absorbed more exotic sources than English painters can usually draw upon. Crete is, after all, the birthplace of El Greco who combined the hieratic styles of Byzantium with the freer, more humanistic ones of Renaissance Italy, Craxton writes with awed admiration for those Byzantine mosaic works he has seen in Istanbul, Italy and Greece and admits he has learned a lot from the mosaicists' respect for the flatness of their working surface, the sensuality and emotion they manage to convey with the clumsiest of materials, and the intense radiance of their colour' (see The Spirit of Place Nine Neo-Romantic Artists and their times, London, 1988, p. 318).