Untitled (Surrealist Townscape)
About this artwork
This work is a remarkable example of Scottish surrealism. It was painted at Hospitalfield, a country house in Angus that operated as an art college, where Pulsford was a student in the late 1930s. It shows a fellow student sitting on a table reading a book, oblivious to the two partially naked women behind him. The building is the Employment Exchange at Tollcross, Edinburgh, which Pulsford would have passed when he was a student at Edinburgh College of Art. Typical of surrealist paintings, Pulsford has included several unusual objects, including a mirror reflecting a bright blue sky dotted with white cloud, a skull, ladder and jug. There are similarities with Paul Delvaux’s surrealist work ‘Call of the Night’, which Pulsford may have seen when it was exhibited in London in 1938.
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title:Untitled (Surrealist Townscape)
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accession number:GMA 5182
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materials:Oil on plywood
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date created:1939
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measurements:68.40 x 104.90 cm (framed: 71.70 x 107.70 x 5.50 cm)
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credit line:Presented by the artist's family 2012
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copyright:© Estate of Charles Pulsford
Charles Pulsford
Charles Pulsford
Pulsford was born in Staffordshire to Scottish parents who settled in Dunfermline when he was a child. He attended Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) from 1933-7. Following the end of the Second World War, a number of Scottish artists turned their backs on traditional paintings styles and instead embraced modernism…