Gunhills, Windley 1946 - 1952

Curator: This is Douglas Percy Bliss’s "Gunhills, Windley," currently held in the Tate Collections. Editor: It’s immediately striking how the manicured garden gives way to the wilder landscape. The contrast in textures is compelling. Curator: Indeed. Bliss, emerging from the interwar period, engaged with notions of pastoral ideal and rural escape popular at the time, reflecting a longing for simpler times amidst social upheaval. Editor: The painting's made from oil on canvas. The way Bliss builds up layers of paint gives the foliage such a dense, almost tangible presence. Curator: The garden itself, and the labour to maintain it, speaks to class structures. Notice how the figures almost blend into the shadows, perhaps hinting at their role within this idyllic setting. Editor: The materiality of the landscape, represented in paint, becomes another commodity itself, doesn't it? Another thing to be owned and consumed. Curator: An interesting counterpoint! It really does give us pause to consider the different layers of societal and material influence at play here.