PAUL FEILER (1918-2013)
Outside Siena, 1953
Oil on board
Signed 'Feiler' and dated '53', lower right;
further signed, titled and dated, verso
33.5 x 43.5 cm (13 ΒΌ x 17 in)
Provenance
The Artist
Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above c. 1953)
Thence by descent
Agnew's, London (purchased from the above, 2009)
Private Collection, UK
Exhibited
Redfern Gallery, Coronation Exhibition, 1953
Agnew's, 20th Century British Art, 2009, no.29
Whilst Paul Feiler had visited Italy during 1947 and
again in 1949, producing several drawings and a painting
of Nemi, near Rome during the latter trip, he did not
embrace Italian subjects until his productive Spring 1953
visit with his wife, June.
But the visit in spring 1953 was his first to Tuscany,
and it was quite specifically to work. With few
exceptions, the paintings, whether of Florence or Siena
or when they had moved on to Venice, focus on a
dome above the skyline, and the canvases are divided
by dark cypresses (or, in Venice, mooring posts) into
a rhythmic pattern of verticals...The volumetric semi-
circular form of the dome connects the horizontal
scanning movement of the human eye to the vertical
posture of the figure. Here, for the first time in Feiler's
work, is the appearance of the circular in combination
with the orthogonal, which was ultimately to become
his most important theme, although he himself was
surely unaware of its full significance at this stage.
(Michael Raeburn, Paul Feiler 1918-2013,
Lund Humphries, 2018, p. 45)
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