Signed, titled and dated on the reverse
Shadow of a Bird on a Road (1971) was originally a diptych that consisted of one canvas showing the shadow of a bird and a second, almost empty, canvas that created an enlarged sense of space. However, Greaves rejected this emptier canvas. The resulting single canvas is one of Greaves's most beautiful paintings of the period, one whose origins as a diptych perhaps explains the daring composition in which the bird is displaced to one side, a device that gives the painting its great strength.
The limpid fluency of Shadow of a Bird on a Road was facilitated by the wateriness of thinned down acrylic, which allowed him to paint 'watercolours' of huge magnitude, perhaps inspired not just by English landscape watercolours but also by the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler, which he admired. Despite the echoes of Braque's birds, the subject was observed on a journey by car from Italy and Switzerland, journeying through the Valle d'Aosta. The sun was high and Greaves noted in a sketchbook: 'everything crystal, what strange luminosities the mountains'.
Multifarious sources include Greaves' own earlier works and several recent paintings, possessing an overtly self-referential element. Shooting the Crows (2003-04) adds a crueller element to the earlier Shadow of a Bird on a Road .
Provenance
Private Collection, London
History
Derrick Greaves. Recent Paintings, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1973
Derrick Greaves Paintings 1953-1980, Greaves Art Gallery, Sheffield
Derrick Greaves, Paintings and Drawings 1952 - 2002, James Hyman Gallery, 28 January - 4 March 2005.
Pop Classical: Derrick Greaves Paintings from the 70's, James Hyman Gallery, London, 30 March - 28 April 2006.
Literature
Sunderland Arts Centre, Some Enguiries and Observations.
Derrick Greaves Paintings 1953-1980, Greaves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 1980, (cat.14).
Derrick Greaves: Paintings and Drawings 1952 - 2002, James Hyman Gallery, London, 2003, (cat. 1), illustrated p.1.
James Hyman, Derrick Greaves:From Kitchen Sink to Shangri-La, Lund Humphries, London 2007, illustrated p.106.