Small Gate Painting VII

Details

PRUNELLA CLOUGH (1919-1999)
Small Gate Painting VII
signed 'Clough' (on the reverse)
oil, pastel and sand on canvas
25 x 25 3⁄4 in. (63.5 x 65.4 in.)
Painted in 1980.

Provenance

with Offer Waterman, London.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 14 November 2012, lot 128.
Acquired from Austin Desmond Fine Art, London.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, Prunella Clough: New Paintings 1979-82, London, Warwick Arts Trust, 1982, no. 27, illustrated.

Exhibited

London, Warwick Arts Trust, Prunella Clough: New Paintings 1979-82, April - May 1982, no. 27.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Conditions of sale

Brought to you by

Amelia Walker Director, Specialist Head of Private & Iconic Collections

awalker@christies.com +44 20 7389 2085

Lot Essay

A recurrent theme in Clough’s oeuvre, between 1979 and 1982, were her ‘gate’ paintings. The first of these appears to have been Black Gate, 1979 which simply presents a black rectangular frame opening on to an atmospheric white ground. But the concept of the gate triggered many experiments. A source for Small Gate Painting VII appears to have been a black-and-white photograph, taken by her of factory gates, and which is reproduced on p. 125 in Frances Spalding’s Prunella Clough: Regions Unmapped. Clough’s photographs of industrial settings only ever acted, she said, as ‘approximate aids to memory’. But the thick diagonal bars holding in place the gate’s internal wire mesh are echoed in this painting, where they strengthen the design and are countered by the delicacy of touch elsewhere in this canvas.

We are very grateful to Frances Spalding for preparing this catalogue entry.

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