Peter Lanyon

The Artist's Estate

New York, Catherine Viviano, Peter Lanyon, 5th - 23rd May 1964, cat. no.9.

Andrew Causey, Peter Lanyon, Aidan Ellis, London, 1971, cat. no.211.

Original canvas. There is minor canvas undulation in the lower left corner of the composition. There are several very minor flecks of paint loss, including but not limited to a area in the light blue pigment at the centre left of the composition, two more in the dark blue pigment in the lower left quadrant and some further small flecks in the green and orange pigments. There is evidence of some frame abrasion with associated losses at the extreme edges of the canvas. There are some traces of light surface dirt across the composition and a light scuff in the lower left corner. Subject to the above the work appears to be in very good condition. Ultraviolet light reveals some small scattered areas of very light florescence. The painting is presented in a white square profile frame. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

We are grateful to Martin Lanyon for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

Flying Grass was completed in February 1964 and is one of nine canvases with thirteen gouaches & collages exhibited at the Catherine Viviano Gallery in New York in May 1964. This was the fifth of Lanyon’s solo exhibitions in New York and the last before his gliding accident (three months later) in August 1964. 

At the beginning of February 1964, Lanyon was lecturing in Prague and Bratislava on British painting and travelling across Czechoslovakia from Prague to Lomnica in the snow-bound Tatra mountains. The previous Spring he visited Mexico while teaching in San Antonio, Texas.

Catherine Viviano was keen to draw attention to Lanyon’s growing international status and the work she exhibited in May 1964 demonstrated his ability to respond in new ways to landscapes beyond Cornwall. Flying Grass was one of a pair of small canvases (the other was Blue Day ’63) exhibited alongside larger canvases inspired by both Texas and Czechoslovakia (e.g. Texan ’63, Tatra ’64 and Lomnica ’64). While Blue Day was the more gliding-inspired canvas, Flying Grass owed more to Lanyon’s snow-bound experience in the Tatra mountains.

Lanyon always worked in a number of directions at once and his best work always related to a sequence of others that preceded it and to others he had yet to begin. Both Flying Grass and Blue Day show Lanyon’s interest in capturing the briefest of moments (as if frozen-in-time) as well as in moving towards the simpler, more direct and spontaneous visual statements he had already been producing, for many years, with gouache. This reduction in time-span and complexity can be traced back to deceptively simple, yet effective, canvases such as Silent Coast 1957 and through the gliding-paintings (e.g. Two Birds ‘61, Still Air ’61 and Black Day ’63) to a high-point in the final series of ‘Clevedon’ paintings that were completed in the summer of 1964.

Lanyon also said to Viviano in a letter dated the 18th March 1964: ‘I think the work this time is clearer and is getting nearer to people in places instead of weather’. This theme of ‘people in places’ can also be traced right back to Lanyon’s earliest work both before and after the Second World War and it also echoes down through his paintings to another crescendo in the Clevedon paintings.

Martin Lanyon