Francis Newton Souza

This painting is framed behind glass. The surface of the paper is undulating and there is some creasing. There are areas of losses in the corners of the painting, and losses scattered throughout the right half of the artwork. As viewed.
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In 1959, Souza produced a series of paintings inspired by the citadels and hill towns of Spain (see Spanish Landscape 1959, Mullins p.97 illus. and Spain 1959, Sotheby's New York, 19 September 2007, lot 28). The Christian and Moorish architecture he encountered would have reminded him of his native Goa, which he briefly returned to in 1960. Compositionally the painting is similar to a number of landscapes he painted in the early 1960s, notably The Red Road from 1962, (Sotheby's London, May 2, 2008, lot 30), that depicts the same verdant landscape interspersed with ecclesiastical buildings and a central road that dissects the picture plane. This painting is rare because of its abundance of foliage and for the lack of urban structure which is usually a prominent fixture in his landscapes from this period.