SELECTED ARTIST

SOLD

Provenance:

Gift from the artist to the late Jean Spencer and Malcolm Hughes

Exhibited:

Prunella Clough: Retrospective, Whitechapel Gallery (1960), cat. 135, cover plate

Urban Landscape V is the last in a series of five works painted by the artist in 1959 and exhibited at her Retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1960. Clough presented the work to her close friends, fellow artists, Jean Spencer and Malcolm Hughes.

This important painting is an excellent example of the bridging point between Prunella Clough's figurative and abstract work. It was painted while Clough was living in London, during a period in which her work focused particularly on urban subjects.

By the time she painted Urban Landscape V she was becoming deeply involved with abstracting, having experimented with it since the early 1950s. The transition in her work was perhaps partly due to the zeitgeist of American Abstract Expressionism, though Clough was never fully influenced by any one artist in particular and retained her individuality throughout her career.

The tonal qualities of Urban Landscape V are typical of Clough's work of the 1950s and 1960s: the earthy colours and strong shapes recall her training in charcoal drawing and the images seem almost scored into the canvas. The equivocal title 'Urban Lanscape' is characteristic of Clough's belief that the viewer be allowed only enough information for his thought process to begin at the same point as the artist's ends.