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Modernist Dover Seascape Oil on Board
Ref: 3274
An attractively coloured oil on board in Modernist style, it has a characteristic period feel from the shot silk surface to the angular graphic execution with brush and palette knife. It is by the artist A. Mroczowska (of whom we know little) and was entered for the 1963 Dover Harbour Board Prize as the label to the reverse records and it is entitled " A Last Look Over Dover Harbour". This is an emotive sounding title but the work is more akin to the cool mood music of Picasso's blue guitar than it is to standard treatments of the subject matter (Arnoldian wistfulness or nationalist narrative). A Victorian artist might pick out the clashing waves or the moment of sunset and muse on that whilst here "last look" seems to refer to the moment just after sun down when the colours of the harbour and sea have an inner quality and are most intensely themselves and not defined by directional light, 'things lit from within'. This gives the artist occasion to dwell on "tranquil bay" and "sweet night air" but not to intellectualise them, rather to riff on the painterly almost abstract possibilities of colour harmonies in the scene, a "symphony" of sea blues, harbour lights, golds and whites.
Poland/English c.1950-60
H: 35cm (13.8in)
W: 69cm (27.2in)
D: 4cm (1.6in)
SOLD
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