Over a career spanning more than forty years, John Virtue has established an international reputation as one of Britain's leading artists. Landscape forms the central focus of his work, and his acknowledged antecedents in this tradition include John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, Jacob van Ruisdael and Philip de Koninck. Virtue's relationship with the tradition of landscape painting is complex, however. While landscape is the underpinning theme of his work, it has never been an end in itself. The topography that has most truly engaged him is the interior world of his responses to existence. In pursuing that objective, particular landscapes have been essential to the approach he has forged, but not because of any picturesque attractions. Rather, each provides a haven and a context for personal exploration. Walking is an essential part of his activity and expressive abstraction and Oriental calligraphy are its alternative sources. As a result, his paintings and drawings have a dynamic aspect that goes beyond static depictions of place. From the outset, his art has proceeded from other, deeper levels of experience.
A selected group of works represent small format paintings from the last thirty years of Virtue's career.
Please scroll down to view works available for sale.
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TESSELLATED WORKS
1989 - 1991 -
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Like the previous work, the next group was made at South Tawton on the northern edge of Dartmoor, in 1990 - 1992, when Virtue began to incorporate passages of white gouache within each small drawing. He further extended that practice, applying the pigment over the ink in order to intensify contrasts between light and dark.
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"I'M WORKING DIRECTLY FROM SOURCE MATERIAL AROUND THE VILLAGE. I WALK AROUND THE GRAVEYARD, AND THERE ARE VIEWS OF THE VILLAGE. I BROUGHT THEM BACK HERE, LAID THEM ALL ON THE FLOOR, AND WORKED LOOSELY ON THEM. THEN I WORKED TIGHTLY ON THEM, USING THE PENS. I THEN USED GOUACHE IN HUGE QUANTITIES. THEN I USED BRUSHES LIKE STICKS, AND FINALLY WENT BACK TO DRAWING ON THEM. THEN I ASSEMBLED IT ALL AS ONE WORK, AND CONTINUED TO WORK ON THE INDIVIDUAL PANELS",
- John Virtue
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On 18 May 2009 Virtue made his walk from Cley-next-the-Sea to Blakeney Point. It was a day that changed his life, and that walk became a weekly event after moving to Norfolk. By contrast to the earlier locations, there are no reference points, no landmarks and eventually, nothing that permits any kind of orientation. The resulting images were both linear and painterly, and only partly based on close observations; they incorporated rapid, gestural marks made without apparent control, while glancing at his surroundings. Virtue refined his working material further, abandoning his long-standing use of black ink and shellac in favour of black and white acrylic paint, acrylic gloss medium and water.
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"YOU START OFF BY THINKING: 'WHAT IS IT? WHAT AM I LOOKING AT?' THE SEA'S IMPOSSIBLE. THERE'S NOTHING THERE; THE PAINTINGS ARE OF NOTHING. AND YET IT'S EVERYTHING. I'M STILL FASCINATED. IT'S ALMOST AS I'VE ALWAYS BEEN MAKING FOR THE SEA", - John Virtue
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FRAMED WORKS ON PAPER
2014John Virtue made this group of drawings in his studio in Holt, North Norfolk in 2014 on the heaviest Arches watercolour paper: "I was seduced by the marks acrylic paint made using rags. These works were all based on hundreds of drawings I made each Friday on an eight and a half mile return walk to Blakeney Point from Cley beach. I had shown earlier works on paper at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, Towner in Eastbourne, Marlborough London, and Firstsite Colchester in 2014 - 2015. I wasn’t particularly looking at anything except Zen Calligraphy", - John Virtue.
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BELGIAN LINEN MINIATURES
2017The following very small paintings on Belgian linen came about after Virtue saw the 2017 Giacometti show at Tate Modern, in London: "The tiny sculptures Giacometti made in exile in Switzerland, in the early forties, made me think you could make vast images from tiny images using the space around them", - John Vurtue.
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WHITE PAINTINGS
2018 - 2019 -
The "white paintings" represent a bold new departure for John Virtue and have become his attempt to break away from any notion of topography or figuration or representation.
John Virtue: "I am thinking about vastness and infinity, but not abstraction. How to make a new imagery that resonates in a visceral way. I'm looking at everything from the last eight hundred years of European Art and Zen Calligraphy".
Acrylic on canvas, dimensions vary
£ 2,000 - £ 6,000 plus VAT
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It has been fair to say that John Virtue has always painted black and white paintings, however, these new works are undoubtedly white and black paintings. In 2017, in a text written by Martin Gayford and in an interview directed by Paul Moorhouse for the book celebrating John Virtue’s 40 years' career, many art historical sources were quoted from Turner, Goya, Pollock to Baselitz and Kiefer. These newest works, with their constant Tachist signature also refer to Zen calligraphy; they are nonetheless entirely apart.
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John Virtue (b. 1947) is one of the most distinguished painters working today in the United Kindgom. Virtue studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1965 to 1969, where his teachers included Frank Auerbach and Euan Uglow. Since 2009 he lived and worked in North Norfolk, where he found inspiration routinely walking four and a quarter of a mile each way along the beach, on the same day and same time weekly. He has recently moved to Hertfordshire. John Virtue is represented in major public collections worldwide, and has been exhibited in museums shows including the Tate St Ives, the Yale Centre for British Art, and the National Gallery.
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* Text excerpts are included from John Virtue by Paul Moorhouse, a monograph published by Albion Barn Publishing and Ridinghouse in 2019. Book is available for £38 plus postage, please email info@albionbarn.com to order a copy.
