Footnotes

Provenance
With Redfern Gallery, London, 22 February 1989, where acquired by the family of the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

The 1950s would prove a pivotal decade on which the development of several twentieth century British artists would hinge, a decade in which very particular, idiosyncratic styles would emerge as one of myriad paths along the way to true abstraction. Amongst others this was the case for Patrick Heron, for Prunella Clough, and it was certainly the case for Alan Reynolds. All three would move into wholly abstract painting in the following decade, eliminating the picture plane and any discernible reference to external reality, but in these years produced work that teetered arrestingly either side of an observed world reduced to an objective interpretation, and an imagined world built up form by form.

A crucial influence on Reynolds during this time was Paul Klee, who's work Night Feast (1921, Guggenheim Collection) had a profound effect. The central dividing line, formed of village roofs abstracted into geometric shapes invading the night sky as they jut out into the foreground, recalls Klee and is archetypal of this vein of Reynold's work – seen as early as The Village Fair (1952, Private Collection). The subtle, softer continuation of the geometric division into the green pigment of the lower band seems to exert a gravity, dragging the physical form, the weight, of the village downwards. Reynolds tackles the problem of conversation between the nearer and further elements with confidence, leaning into a flattened division into bands as if liberated from the more classical desire to harmonise through more gentle transitions.

In light of this last aspect, in particular, Village Dimensions feels like an assertive return to the overarching direction of the artist's work. A brief phase in the mid-1950s saw Reynolds adopt a more classical approach, with more traditional compositions and a more conservative use of perspectival information. Whilst commercially successful, he felt retrospectively that this was a departure from his more deep-seated, instinctive artistic responses. The present work comes at a decisive juncture at which Reynolds turned back towards a more organic artistic development, and represents the last wave of his figurative, landscape work before this transitioned into abstraction.