MICHAEL AYRTON (1921-1975)

Michael Ayrton (1925-1971), Encounter No. 1, 1947 (c) Estate of Michael Ayrton

Encounter No 1, 1947

oil on board
20.5 x 14.5 cm

In 1947, as soon as wartime travel restrictions were lifted, Ayrton made his first visit to Italy where, in his own words ‘he fell deeply under the spell of the early Renaissance. Masaccio and Piero della Francesca became supremely important’. Encounter is closely related to a group of works that Ayrton painted in the late 1940s, in which he depicted the docks around the Thames.

Provenance
Anonymous sale; The Redfern Gallery, London 1949.
Anonymous sale; ‘The Curated Eye’ Selected Works from Hertfordshire County Council, Cheffins, Cambridge, 21 March 2019, lot 32, where purchased.

Exhitibed
Probably, London, Redfern Gallery, Michael Ayrton: H. de Toulouse-Lautrec, May - June 1949, no. 18 as ‘Encounter’.
Welbeck, Harley Gallery, Coast, Country, City, August - November 2021.


 

 

 

 

Lara Wardle