PETER LANYON | STONE OF PENWITH

Acquired by the mother of the present owner by the late 1950s, and thence by decent 

Toby Treves, Peter Lanyon, Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings and Three-Dimensional Works, Modern Art Press, London, 2018, cat. no.257, p.209 (dated to 1949).

'I believe that landscape, the outside world of things and events larger then ourselves is the proper place to find our deepest meaning … I want to make the point that landscape painting is not a provincial activity … but a true ambition like the mountaineer who cannot see the clouds without feeling the lift inside them...' (Peter Lanyon, Some Aspects in Modern British Painting; an Artist's Point of View, lecture for the British council in Czechoslovakia, 27th January 1964)

We are grateful to Martin Lanyon and Toby Treves for their kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

Stone of Penwith is an important discovery. It is almost certainly the first picture in the Penwith Series, a group of paintings that Lanyon referred to in a letter in 1949 but of which he only identified two works: West Penwith 1949 (Tate) and Portreath 1949 (Private Collection). Other works that may have been part of the series include Penwith 1948 (Yale Center for British Art), Godolphin 1948 (Private Collection), Headland 1948 (Private Collection), North 1949 (Private Collection), Godrevy Lighthouse 1949 (Private Collection), Cape Family 1949 (Art Gallery of Western Australia). Arguably Lanyon continued to add to the series after 1949 with such paintings as Carthew 1950 (Private Collection) and his masterpiece of the early 1950s Portheleven 1950-1 (Tate).

Painted in 1947, it is also clearly related to The Yellow Runner 1946 (Abbot Hall Art Gallery) and Prelude 1947 (Private Collection), both from the Generation Series which Lanyon made between 1946 and 1947.

In Lanyon’s record books he dated the work 1949. His error is accounted for by the fact that he compiled the record book in the late 1950s or early 1960s by which time the painting had been in a private collection in Canada for several years. Consequently, it seems that he made a guess at the date.

Toby Treves 2019.