Paul Feiler

(British, 1918-2013)

Cornish Landscape 39.4 x 99.7 cm. (15 1/2 x 39 1/4 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired by the present owner in 2012

Exhibited
Washington DC, Obelisk Gallery, 12 January-7 February 1954 (catalogue untraced)

Born in Frankfurt in 1918, Paul Feiler's formative decades set him apart somewhat from those who would later become his contemporaries in the post-war British art world. In 1933, he fled Germany to escape the rule of the newly empowered Nazi party – first to the Netherlands, and then when it became clear this was not far enough, on to Dorset on the south coast of England. It has been remarked that his continental origins are visible in his work, carrying a structure and deliberation that can seem to come more from German influence, than English.

This continentality is something that was noted at various points in Feiler's life. When he moved to London to study at the Slade School of Art, where he met and befriended Adrian Heath and Patrick Heron, he was far more familiar with the avant-garde of the time than many of his contemporaries, and a conservative group of teachers were in no rush to change this. Feiler's superiors in his teaching days at Eastbourne College and Bristol's West of England College of Art were equally suspicious of his modern style.

But in and around St Ives he found a group of contemporaries who were not only accommodating of a forward-thinking, explorative artist such as Feiler, but were actively innovating themselves. Reconnecting with Heron, he also found allies in Peter Lanyon, and Terry Frost – all pioneers at the cutting edge of British Modernism.

Painted in 1952, three years after his first visit, it is very much the structure of Cornish Landscape that strikes one first. The piece is simplified into mostly triangular, geometrical shapes, the points leading into each other to lead the eye toward the centre, where the colours are most diverse and intense: a deep, natural green and a petrol blue, underpinned by hints of orange and yellow that enliven the structure. A swirl of yellow gives off rays of Cornish light, emanating down from the upper left and onto the bright, cliff-like surface.

It was largely the surrounding area between St Ives and St Just, rather than the town itself, that proved such a fertile field of artistic inspiration. D.H. Lawrence described the views from the cliffs along this coastline as more beautiful than the Mediterranean, something reflected in Feiler's friend Heron comparing the light and landscapes to Provence. Feiler found this area no less impactful, referring to "the Cornish quality, the Cornish atmosphere" of his work, that this quality "is there such from sea to sky" (Paul Feiler, interview with the Tate, 1995). It remained important even as he transitioned into more purely abstract painting in the following decades, grounding his work with the same distinctive, atmospheric anchor that had captured the imagination of creative minds from Lawrence onwards so fervently.