By Sargy Mann
Located in Harkstead, GB
Sargy Mann (1937-2015)
Studio with standard lamp
Signed, upper right
Inscribed with title to the reverse
Oil on board
48 x 60 inches
Provenance: Cadogan Contemporary
Private Collection
Exhibited: Sargy Mann and Graham Giles,
Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, 1991
A truly beautiful work but also highly significant within Sargy's oeuvre. The painting dates to the late 1980s when Sargy and his family were living at 58 Lyndhurst Grove, SE15. Sadly by this time, Sargy's eyesight had greatly deteriorated to ‘“a very little, blurry, peripheral vision” in his left eye, (he was registered blind)....(he) found it a struggle to paint from direct observation and began to rely on short term memory and tape recordings. Working on a large scale, he taped canvas to the living room wall of the family home on Lyndhurst Grove, “rather as Bonnard had pinned primed canvas to his studio wall”’.
The space depicted had initially been a dark, depressing attic space but this was transformed by the addition of some French windows. The painting has an almost abstracted quality with the two light sources creating pools of cool, luminescent energy radiating throughout the picture space.
Peter Mann describes the paintings from Lyndhurst Grove as, ‘in some sense a precursor to the very late work, The little sitting room paintings...
Category
Late 20th Century Contemporary Sargy Mann Paintings