§ ANNE REDPATH O.B.E., R.S.A., A.R.A., L.L.D., A.R.W.S., R.O.I., R.B.A. (SCOTTISH 1895-1965) Signed, oil on board

(51cm x 61cm (20in x 24in))

Redpath visited Corsica in 1954. She stayed in Bastia, in the north-east of the Mediterranean island, with her Edinburgh friend Donald Duff. It has been suggested that the village depicted in this confident, mature work might be Tralonca or Soveria. Redpath had long been drawn to houses and other architectural elements huddled together in a wider landscape setting. However, this subject came to the fore during the 1950s in works inspired by trips including to Spain and France. In this vigorously painted work, Redpath uses a palette based on earthy tones, layering and mixing colours across the surface of the board support. The implied geometry of the buildings gives way to expressive passages which contain hints of geographical features whilst being highly expressive. Redpath explained in 1961: ‘I think that I have always been interested in the textural quality of paint and painting and I think what I have got out of different countries like the Canary Islands, Corsica, Brittany and Portugal is something structural. So you see I haven’t gone really away from depicting the object although it has a kind of abstraction…I would go to Corsica and paint houses on a hill-side. I would exaggerate the buttress quality of the building…instead of having it at right angles to the earth I would exaggerate the fact that the base of it was broader than the top of it, then therefore it looked as if it was growing out of the hill. So that while I am interested in the structural shapes of the picture, I am also interested in the structure of the objects themselves. And therefore they are really more convincing than they were before.’ (as quoted by Philip Long, Anne Redpath 1895-1965, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, exh. cat., 1996, p. 26). We would like to thank Professor Francis Beretti of the University of Corsica for his help in researching this painting.