LE PHARE, 1939
Oil on panel 27 x 35in. (63.5 x 88.9cm.)
Provenance
With the Hamet Gallery in 1961.
Exhibited
London, Mayor Gallery, 1939, No1.
Northampton, Northampton Gallery, 1939.
London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1940, No. 1105.
AIA travelling exhibition, 1941, no. 8.
AIA travelling exhibition, 1942, no. 21.
Newlyn, Newlyn Art Gallery, 1961, No. 9.
London, Hamet Gallery, 1971, No. 29. Illustrated in b/w in the catalogue.
Literature
Ratcliffe (2007) illus. b/w, pl. 18.
One of the Méditerranée series.
The harbour is deserted and the geometrical shapes of the coastal buildings rise facelessly along the line of the shore. Although the lighthouse stands tall at the end of the pier, the shaft of light that divides the painting comes, not from the tower, but from the large, solitary orchid that grows in the foreground. An arrow pierces the heart of the flower, standing proud like an enlarged pistil.
A passage in Goose of Hermogenes evokes this image:
“‘What does the pharos say, out there at the end of the jetty?’ I asked.
‘It flashes a message all night through, long after every other lamp is out, but not a message of comfort. Keep away, it says, I am alight, but so is the mountain! Keep away from these dangerous shores. And from above the inland ranges, I shall be turned into blood, cries the moon; and the stars wide-eyed with terror, sink back into their cavernous abyss.”’ (p. 65).
This is an impersonal, unnatural environment. Nature has been overcome but the buildings that have conquered the landscape are themselves devoid of life; the only remaining sign of life is the unnaturally large orchid, but it, too has been pierced to the heart.
The Golden Section has been incorporated into the composition in several places. It determines the placement of the landward side of the jetty, it marks the point at which the land meets the sea on the lower edge of the painting and the point where the curve of the sea meets the spit of land on the right hand side of the painting. It has also been used to reinforce the psychological power of the work. The focal point of the painting, which is about the emptiness of love, is the point where the arrow pierces the flower: this point has also been determined by the golden section.
The cartoon for this work is known.
References
Colquhoun, I. Goose of Hermogenes. Peter Owen, London, 1961.
Ratcliffe, E. Ithell Colquhoun. Mandrake, Oxford. 2007.