About this artwork
This nocturnal scene is dominated by a dark, dense background. The hovering pale shapes and rough brushwork makes it hard to determine what we are looking at. ‘It helps, perhaps, that so much of industrial material is already abstract’, Prunella Clough once noted. The painting’s ghostly quality evokes the yellow floodlights of night-time security or the hazy pollution of urban sprawl. Clough’s interest in the overlooked infrastructure that dominates (and perhaps blights) our cities and suburbs was never intended to be illustrative. She rarely depicted a specific location in her paintings.
Published September 2022
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artist:Prunella CloughEnglish (1919 - 1999)
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title:Yard at Night
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date created:1959
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materials:Oil on canvas
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measurements:61.00 x 91.50 cm; Framed: 79.00 x 110.00 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Purchased 1975
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accession number:GMA 1502
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gallery:
Prunella Clough
Prunella Clough
A painter, printmaker and draughtsman, Prunella Clough’s main subject was the urban and industrial landscape of Britain. Clough studied at Chelsea School of Art in London before working as a draughtsman during the Second World War, drawing charts and maps for the War Office. From the late 1940s to...