Peter Lanyon (British 1918-1964)
Judy
incised signature and date 'Lanyon / 54' (lower right), signed, dated and titled 'JUDY/Peter Lanyon/CORSHAM 1954' (verso), further signed and inscribed with artist's address (on label verso)
oil on board
image 68 x 42 cm, framed and glazed, 92 x 68 cm

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Provenance:
Anon. sale, Christie's, London, 19 November 2004, lot 168.
With Richard Green Gallery, stock number SP 3858 MS.
With Offer Waterman & Co.
Private collection, UK.

Exhibited:
London, Gimpel Fils, Peter Lanyon, March 1954, no. 60.
Plymouth, City Art Gallery, Peter Lanyon, May 1955, no. 20: this exhibition toured to Nottingham, Midland Group Gallery.

Literature:
A. Causey, Peter Lanyon, Henley-on-Thames, 1971, p. 50, no. 60.
C. Stephens, Peter Lanyon At the edge of landscape, London, 2000, p. 125.

Footnote:
Stephens discusses Lanyon’s Judy as an expression of how his sexual encounters and experience of the landscape were one and the same. The nude and the landscape are barely distinguishable from each other, understandable when we consider many of his experiences of place were shared with his mistress¹. In this context, Judy Jackson, an early partner and former student becomes a ‘nude-landscape’, where “limbs and body seem articulated in terms of the Cornish field-patterns”².
Although it appears that “the landscape seems to have got the better of the girl”³, Lanyon’s practice of building picture atop picture, demonstrates how his sexual encounters and experience of the landscape coexist, both directly informing the experience of the other.

¹Stephens p.125.
²Exhibition catalogue, Peter Lanyon air, land & sea, London, Camden Arts Centre, 1992, pp. 12-5.
³Exhibition catalogue, Peter Lanyon air, land & sea, London, Camden Arts Centre, 1992, pp. 12-5.

Condition Report

Overall clean and ready to hang. There are some scattred areas of minor craquelure but the paint surface appears stable. There is some wear to the lower left corner. UV light reveals minor retouching to lower edge. Under glass and unexamined out of frame.