Letchworth Station

Made:
1912
artist:
Spencer Frederick Gore

Painting, oil on canvas, Letchworth Station, Hertfordshire by Spencer Frederick Gore, 1912. Painting in the Post-Impressionist style depicting Letchworth station, Hertfordshire, with passengers waiting on the platforms. There are station buildings and waiting rooms with red tiled roofs, and a house with a red roof in the distance. There are fields beyond the station. Framed and glazed in acrylic.

Painting, oil on canvas, Letchworth Station, Hertfordshire by Spencer Frederick Gore, 1912. Passengers wait at Letchworth in this post-impressionist oil painting by Camden Town Group painter Spencer Frederick Gore.

Gore completed this painting in the late summer of 1912, while staying with his friend, the artist Harold Gilman, at 100 Wilbury Road in Letchworth. It was exhibited in the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in Mayfair, London from October 1912 to January 1913.

Gore was very active in 1912 and 1913, completing dozens of paintings, but he sadly died of pneumonia in March 1914, aged only 35.

Letchworth was the world’s first Garden City in 1903, but a lack of local employment turned it into one of Britain’s first commuter towns. Gore’s painting was initially seen as a critique of the railway, but the clean and harmonious composition is now generally interpreted as showing its integration into the landscape. Framed and glazed in acrylic.

Details

Category:
Pictorial Collection (Railway)
Object Number:
1983-8607
Materials:
gesso, gilt, perspex and oil on canvas
Measurements:
overall: 945 mm x 823 mm x 80 mm,
frame: 823 mm x 951 mm x 70 mm,
canvas: 625 mm x 752 mm
type:
painting and oil painting
credit:
National Art Collection Fund