Prunella Clough
Prunella Clough (11 November 1919 – 26 December 1999) was a prominent British artist. "Her subjects are closely observed details and scenes from the landscape. The images are combined and filtered through memory, and evolve through a slow process of layering and re-working."[1]
Background
Born on 11 November 1919 in Chelsea, London to an affluent upper middle-class family, she was initially educated privately by her father, the poet Eric Taylor,[2] before enrolling at the Chelsea School of Art (since 1986 known as the Chelsea College of Art and Design) in 1937. She was the niece of eminent Irish designer Eileen Gray.
Career
Apart from wartime service,[3] she painted full-time until her death in 1999, supplementing her income with lecturing posts at the Chelsea and Wimbledon Schools of Art.[4] Clough painted the industrial landscapes of post-WWII Britain.
Her works were exhibited at, among other places, the Leger Gallery (1947), Roland, Browse and Delblanco (1949), Leicester Galleries (1953), Whitechapel Gallery (1960), Grosvenor Gallery (1964, 1968) Sheffield (1972), Serpentine (1976), Perth, Western Australia (1974), Edinburgh (1976), Aberdeen (1981), Hiroshima (1988), and, retrospectively, at the Olympia (2004)[5] and the Tate Gallery (2007)[6]
In 1977 she won the City of London Midsummer Prize, and in 1999, the year of her death, she was awarded the £30,000 Jerwood Prize for painting.[7] Significant collections of her work are housed at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Falmouth Art Gallery, Cornwall and Clare College, Cambridge.
Prunella Clough declined an OBE in 1968; and a CBE in 1979.
Favourite quote
"Painting is like throwing oneself into the sea to learn to swim" (Édouard Manet) - often quoted in interviews by Clough
Sources
- Prunella Clough, Banks, R. (Ed.) (2003, London, Annely Juda Fine Art), ISBN 1-870280-99-7
References
- ^ Sunday Telegraph, Issue #2396, 13 May 2007, Arts Section, Graham-Dixon, A., Heart of Industry
- ^ Who's Who, 1971, p. 611, ISBN 0-7136-1140-5
- ^ Debrett's People of Today, 1992, p. 390, ISBN 1-870520-09-2
- ^ Prunella Clough, Tufnell, B. (Ed) (2007, London, Tate Publishing), ISBN 978-1-85437-699-2
- ^ Artist WebSite
- ^ Tate Gallery exhibitions
- ^ Overview of Clough's achievements
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