Trawlnet

Prunella Clough (1919 - 1999)

Oil on canvas

1946

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Government Art Collection
    Throughout her career, Prunella Clough was fascinated by urban and industrial landscapes. In her work, she transformed apparently commonplace items and the detritus of street into images of compelling ambiguity and beauty. This painting is representative of her work from the 1940s. During this period, Clough turned her attention to the dockside activity that she witnessed in Lowestoft on the Norfolk coast, and on the Thames in London.Trawlnet depicts two fishermen attending to the nets laid out on the beach. The soft range of brown, grey and ochre colours bring a lyrical note to the scene, yet the subject of the work suggests Clough’s staunch belief in the dignity and value of labour.
  • About the artist
    Prunella Clough studied art at Chelsea School of Art where Henry Moore was one of her tutors. After the war she studied at Camberwell College of Art until 1949, and held her first solo exhibition at the Leger Gallery, London in 1947. In the 1950s, aware of the drabness of post-war Britain, her paintings reflected a preoccupation with modern landscape and machinery. In the 1960s, Clough regularly exhibited her increasingly abstract paintings and prints in solo and group shows, notably at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (1960), the Serpentine Gallery (1976) and the Camden Arts Centre (1996). In 1999, the year of her death, Clough was awarded the Jerwood Prize for Painting, an official recognition of a lifetime’s work that was long overdue. A touring retrospective of her work was held at Tate Britain in 2007; and in 2016, a solo exhibition was held at The Jerwood Gallery in Hastings.
  • Explore
    Places
    Subjects
    fishing boat, trawler, fisherman, genre, seascape/coastal scene, beach, man, fishing net
    Materials & Techniques
    canvas, oil, oil painting
  • Details
    Artist
    Prunella Clough (1919 - 1999)
    Title
    Trawlnet
    Date
    1946
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    height: 60.00 cm, width: 37.50 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from Roland, Browse & Delbanco, September 1957
    Inscription
    BR: Clough
    GAC number
    3896