Landscape 715

Monochrome landscape view towards St Paul’s identified by number 715. The artist had not used colour since 1978 and his abstract landscapes are always identified by numbers. The vigorous application of black and white paint recalls both oriental brush paintings and the abstract expressionists, most notably Frans Kline, as well as the great Dutch and Flemish 17th century landscapists Jacob van Ruisdael and Peter Paul Rubens, or the English John Constable and JMW Turner – all artists whom he has revered since first seeing them at the National Gallery in 1964, aged 16. It was because of his strong connection to the great European landscape tradition that in 2003 the National Gallery chose John Virtue to become its sixth Associate Artist until 2005. He concentrated on the views from the roof of the National Gallery over Trafalgar Square and that of Somerset House looking towards St Paul’s and the City, as well as across the river at Greenwich. This picture was painted at Somerset House, where John Virtue also had a studio during the same period. John Virtue studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1965 to 1969 and became honorary Professor of Fine Art at the University of Plymouth. He’s been best known as a landscape painter, living and working in remote locations on Dartmoor and along the River Exe.