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Duncan Grant was a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, a collective of artistic individuals who embraced an unrestricted and bohemian lifestyle.

In 1934, Grant visited the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, where he produced a group of paintings. This landscape, which depicts Cadgwith Cove, was executed during this trip and was included in his solo exhibition at Reid & Lefevre in May of that year. Of his work, art critic and writer Eric Newton wrote ‘They are honest, human things, done by a man who understands the science of painting and is content to take the world pretty much as he sees it.’[1] He maintained that his compositions ‘give that quiet satisfaction which results when every object in them is firmly ‘placed’ in relation to every other; the spectator can, in imagination, wander in his landscapes and step into his interiors with confidence and conviction’.[2]

At this date, Grant was emerging as a British titan of landscape painting. In the 1934 article referenced above, Newton compared Grant’s talent to the likes of Gainsborough and Constable.[3] In April of the previous year, two of Grant’s paintings were included in the Arthur Tooth exhibition Important Landscapes and were heralded by art historian Kenneth Clarke, who remarked that he was ‘as English as Hogarth and Gainsborough’, whilst another critic praised;

Here is great landscape in the direct tradition of Constable, but absolutely individual, with a lusciousness in the colour, and an excitement in the handling that are peculiar to this great contemporary painter.[4]

Grant’s influence in the tradition of landscape painting - now comparable to that of Hogarth, Constable and Gainsborough – is still celebrated today. Although the influence of post-impressionism is undeniable in Grant’s painting, he simultaneously remained grounded in the tradition of British Landscape painting and this charming scene is a testament to his unification of European and British trends in modern art.

[1] Newton, E. (1934) ‘The Centre Party in Contemporary Painting’, The Listener. Vol. 11, No. 280.

[2] Newton, E. (1934) ‘The Centre Party in Contemporary Painting’, The Listener. Vol. 11, No. 280.

[3] Newton, E. (1934) ‘The Centre Party in Contemporary Painting’, The Listener. Vol. 11, No. 280.

[4] New Scotsman, 24 April 1933, quoted in Spaulding, F. (1997) Duncan Grant: A Biography. London: Chatto & Windus, p. 326.