‡John Piper (British, 1903-1992) Knowlton, Dorset, 1938 signed in pencil (lower right) ink and

‡John Piper (British, 1903-1992) Knowlton, Dorset, 1938 signed in pencil (lower right) ink and collage 37.5cm x 46.5cm. Provenance: Geoffrey Eastop Collection. Exhibited: Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, John Piper in the 1930s, April to June 2003; Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire, John Piper and the Church, April to June 2012. Literature: David Fraser Jenkins and Frances Spalding (ed.), John Piper in the 1930s: Abstraction on the Beach, Merrell Publishers, London, 2003, p.161; Patricia Evans and Joanna Cartwright (eds.), John Piper and the Church, 2012, p.14. Having established himself as a central figure of avant-garde British artists in the 1930s, Knowlton, Dorset came about at an important point in Piper's early career. In 1938 he had his first solo show at The London Gallery and was looking for a new form of artistic interpretation between abstraction and representation. By this point in his artistic life he saw pure abstraction as a luxury. The present work takes the church at Knowlton in Dorset as its subject and forms part of a series of works centring on churches and historic buildings (Piper's black and white photographs of this subject can be found in the Tate collection). This collage sees the wavering of ink and torn paper spliced together, forming the metaphor for the church and outlying landscape, through abstract shapes brought together in representational forms. He found through these collages 'a life line to natural appearances - and so to early Palmer, to Turner, early and late…and to our whole Romantic tradition in which it has always been possible for meaningful details to shine like beacons in the damp, misty evanescence of our beautiful island light and weather'. (Piper's Places, note 45, p.22 quoted in John Piper in the 1930s, p.48)