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Lot Essay
View of a Garden, Chiswick belongs to a series of important paintings that traverse Pasmore’s evolution from the plumb lines of the Euston Road School towards the pure abstraction of Constructivism. In 1941 the Pasmores moved to 2 Riverside Mall on Chiswick Reach and eventually settled at 16 Hammersmith Terrace in late 1943. Alan Bowness writes, 'The Chiswick years were to be extraordinarily rich, both in the work produced and in the rapidity of Pasmore's own artistic development. It was a period of learning from other artists - from the old masters as well as the moderns, and learning from theories as well as from practice. More than anything, perhaps, Pasmore was fascinated by what seemed to him to be a gap between the paintings and the ideas of the Post-impressionists, as expressed in the letters of Cezanne, Seurat, Gaugin and Van Gogh' (A. Bowness & L. Lambertini, Victor Pasmore, London, 1980, pp. 10-11).
In View of a Garden, Chiswick, Pasmore beautifully captures the moment dawn breaks. The viewer’s eye is drawn to the lush foliage of the hedgerows and green and yellow leaves of the trees. The morning light shimmers over the foreground of the composition as one becomes lost in the pinky blue haze of muted pigment, which is punctuated by dabs of impasto. In preceding works such as The Thames at Chiswick, 1943 (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa), Pasmore’s composition is tighter and more representational but in the present work, particularly in the foreground, he begins to lean towards abstraction. As this series develops alongside his Hammersmith garden pictures, painted between 1944 and 1949, the works become increasingly abstracted, culminating in The Gardens of Hammersmith No. 2, 1949 (Tate, London). View of a Garden, Chiswick can therefore be seen as a pivotal painting in Pasmore's progression towards abstraction.
After distinguishing himself in the Second World War with his exceptional initiative and vigour, where he was awarded his M.C., Beckett went on to study architecture. In 1952 he set up an independent practice, and soon thereafter became a highly sought-after country house architect. During his career, he designed more than twenty new houses and in the region of seventy restorations or conversions. As an architect, Beckett was generally a ‘pragmatic traditionalist’ with few of his buildings being alike. He was responsible for one of the most original country houses built in Britain in the 1960s, Callernish, on North Uist, build for Lord and Lady Granville: completed in 1965 and with a circular plan, an internal courtyard and concrete walls 2 feet thick, it was constructed to withstand Atlantic gales and looked like a baronial bull ring. It is listed as a folly in Headley and Meulenkamp's Follies, the standard guide to follies in Britain. In later life, as well as being a keen painter, Beckett was a Trustee of the British Museum (1978-85) and Chairman of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection (1976-92) (see The Telegraph, Obituaries, 6 August 2001).
In View of a Garden, Chiswick, Pasmore beautifully captures the moment dawn breaks. The viewer’s eye is drawn to the lush foliage of the hedgerows and green and yellow leaves of the trees. The morning light shimmers over the foreground of the composition as one becomes lost in the pinky blue haze of muted pigment, which is punctuated by dabs of impasto. In preceding works such as The Thames at Chiswick, 1943 (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa), Pasmore’s composition is tighter and more representational but in the present work, particularly in the foreground, he begins to lean towards abstraction. As this series develops alongside his Hammersmith garden pictures, painted between 1944 and 1949, the works become increasingly abstracted, culminating in The Gardens of Hammersmith No. 2, 1949 (Tate, London). View of a Garden, Chiswick can therefore be seen as a pivotal painting in Pasmore's progression towards abstraction.
After distinguishing himself in the Second World War with his exceptional initiative and vigour, where he was awarded his M.C., Beckett went on to study architecture. In 1952 he set up an independent practice, and soon thereafter became a highly sought-after country house architect. During his career, he designed more than twenty new houses and in the region of seventy restorations or conversions. As an architect, Beckett was generally a ‘pragmatic traditionalist’ with few of his buildings being alike. He was responsible for one of the most original country houses built in Britain in the 1960s, Callernish, on North Uist, build for Lord and Lady Granville: completed in 1965 and with a circular plan, an internal courtyard and concrete walls 2 feet thick, it was constructed to withstand Atlantic gales and looked like a baronial bull ring. It is listed as a folly in Headley and Meulenkamp's Follies, the standard guide to follies in Britain. In later life, as well as being a keen painter, Beckett was a Trustee of the British Museum (1978-85) and Chairman of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection (1976-92) (see The Telegraph, Obituaries, 6 August 2001).