Peake’s glassblowers

The Evolution of the Cathode Ray (Radiolocation) Tube (1943).

The BBC recently completed its Your Paintings project which displays online all the oil paintings in Britain’s galleries, over 210,000 works in all. I’ve glanced through the catalogue a couple of times but so far I’ve been too preoccupied to seach for many of the pictures that may not have been visible until now. The most immediate benefit of the site is the ability to go through the painting collections of small museums whose websites often show little or no artwork at all. Typing Mervyn Peake’s name into the search box revealed many paintings I’d not seen before. The Glassblower has pride of place in Manchester’s city centre gallery but its companion piece is one I’d not seen before. The two paintings and a poem, The Glassblowers, were the result of a commission by the War Artists Advisory Committee. Some of Peake’s preparatory sketches and an accompanying essay can be found in Mervyn Peake: the Man and his Art (2006).

The Glassblower (1944). Not the greatest reproduction, there’s a larger copy with colours closer to the original painting at the official Peake website.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Mervyn Peake in Coronation Street
• The Worlds of Mervyn Peake
• A profusion of Peake
• Mervyn Peake at Maison d’Ailleurs
• Peake’s Pan
• Buccaneers #1
• Mervyn Peake in Lilliput
• The Illustrators of Alice