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Lot Essay
Painted in the year after he moved to West Penwith, Southern Window in Spring represents Paul Feiler’s increasingly abstract work influenced by the dramatic Cornish coast and captivating diaphanous light during the early 1950s. Feiler studied at the Slade School of Fine Art alongside Patrick Heron, Adrian Heath, Bryan Wynter and Kenneth Armitage. Indeed, he formed part of the influential second generation of St Ives artists who enjoyed success during the 1950s and 1960s.
It was in these first years of the 1950s that Feiler found a far greater freedom in the application of paint and fascination with the window, variations of which he produced during this time. In the present work, the surface of the paint itself becomes part of the visual experience; applied in layers with a palette knife in broad, thick impastoed planes which emphasise the rich chromatic palette of whites, cool greens, slate greys and sky blues, all somehow particularly redolent of Cornwall. This growing abstraction nevertheless retained a singularly figurative tone; the view out of the window onto the Cornish harbour is simultaneously familiar yet unfamiliar.
‘Looking through a window, you make sense of that portion of landscape which fills the window-frame: you get a view… It is with this experience of space that Paul Feiler's painting has always been concerned rather than with views of landscape, and if it is true that most artists spend their whole life exploring the possibilities of just one idea, then the elusiveness of space may be said to be Feiler's special domain' (P. Khoroche, exhibition catalogue, Paul Feiler: The Near and The Far: Paintings 1953-2004, St Ives, Tate Gallery, 2005, p. 6).
Feiler’s work was concerned throughout his career with the challenge of describing his environment in pictorial terms. From Germany to Cornwall, his surroundings continuously inspired and motivated his work. Feiler explained in a statement in 1956, 'I have always enjoyed writing down with paint what I felt the world around me looked like … the sea and rocks seen from a height. This has led me to try to communicate a universal aspect of forms in space; where the scale of shapes to each other and their tonal relationship convey their physical nearness to the spectator and where the overall colour and its texture supplies the emotional overtones of the personality of 'the place'' (Paul Feiler quoted in T. Cross, Catching the Wave: Contemporary Art and Artists in Cornwall from 1975 to the present day, Tiverton, 2002, p. 52).
It was in these first years of the 1950s that Feiler found a far greater freedom in the application of paint and fascination with the window, variations of which he produced during this time. In the present work, the surface of the paint itself becomes part of the visual experience; applied in layers with a palette knife in broad, thick impastoed planes which emphasise the rich chromatic palette of whites, cool greens, slate greys and sky blues, all somehow particularly redolent of Cornwall. This growing abstraction nevertheless retained a singularly figurative tone; the view out of the window onto the Cornish harbour is simultaneously familiar yet unfamiliar.
‘Looking through a window, you make sense of that portion of landscape which fills the window-frame: you get a view… It is with this experience of space that Paul Feiler's painting has always been concerned rather than with views of landscape, and if it is true that most artists spend their whole life exploring the possibilities of just one idea, then the elusiveness of space may be said to be Feiler's special domain' (P. Khoroche, exhibition catalogue, Paul Feiler: The Near and The Far: Paintings 1953-2004, St Ives, Tate Gallery, 2005, p. 6).
Feiler’s work was concerned throughout his career with the challenge of describing his environment in pictorial terms. From Germany to Cornwall, his surroundings continuously inspired and motivated his work. Feiler explained in a statement in 1956, 'I have always enjoyed writing down with paint what I felt the world around me looked like … the sea and rocks seen from a height. This has led me to try to communicate a universal aspect of forms in space; where the scale of shapes to each other and their tonal relationship convey their physical nearness to the spectator and where the overall colour and its texture supplies the emotional overtones of the personality of 'the place'' (Paul Feiler quoted in T. Cross, Catching the Wave: Contemporary Art and Artists in Cornwall from 1975 to the present day, Tiverton, 2002, p. 52).