Peter Lanyon (British 1918-1964) Judy † incised signature an...

Estimate

£40,000 - £60,000

Peter Lanyon (British 1918-1964) Judy † incised signature and date 'Lanyon / 54' (lower right), signed, dated and titled 'JUDY/Peter Lanyon/CORSHAM 1954' (verso), further signed and inscribed with artist's address (on label verso), oil on board, image 68 x 42 cm, framed and glazed, 92 x 68 cm Provenance Anon. sale, Christie's, London, 19 November 2004, lot 168. With Richard Green Gallery, stock number SP 3858 MS. With Offer Waterman & Co. Private collection, UK. Exhibited London, Gimpel Fils, Peter Lanyon, March 1954, no. 60. Plymouth, City Art Gallery, Peter Lanyon, May 1955, no. 20: this exhibition toured to Nottingham, Midland Group Gallery. Literature A. Causey, Peter Lanyon, Henley-on-Thames, 1971, p. 50, no. 60. C. Stephens, Peter Lanyon At the edge of landscape, London, 2000, p. 125. Footnote Stephens discusses Lanyon’s Judy as an expression of how his sexual encounters and experience of the landscape were one and the same. The nude and the landscape are barely distinguishable from each other, understandable when we consider many of his experiences of place were shared with his mistress¹. In this context, Judy Jackson, an early partner and former student becomes a ‘nude-landscape’, where “limbs and body seem articulated in terms of the Cornish field-patterns”². Although it appears that “the landscape seems to have got the better of the girl”³, Lanyon’s practice of building picture atop picture, demonstrates how his sexual encounters and experience of the landscape coexist, both directly informing the experience of the other. ¹Stephens p.125. ²Exhibition catalogue, Peter Lanyon air, land & sea, London, Camden Arts Centre, 1992, pp. 12-5. ³Exhibition catalogue, Peter Lanyon air, land & sea, London, Camden Arts Centre, 1992, pp. 12-5.