Study in Provence 1926

Augustus John painted this panel, Study in Provence, with oil on canvas. I love how John seems to be feeling out the composition as he goes, letting the forms emerge through these deliberate but somewhat tentative marks. Look at the blue of her top, applied in such thin layers you can see the weave of the canvas coming through. Then there’s the red skirt, heavier, more confident, with these juicy strokes running vertically from the waist. The surface of the work has a kind of tension to it. There's this dance between the flat and the dimensional. The way the paint is built up in layers it’s like John is having a conversation with someone like Cezanne. Of course it is just one artist speaking to another, across time, trying to figure out how to turn the world into a painting.