Edward Wadsworth
The Beached Margin (1937)
Tate
Edward Wadsworth’s painting was a continuous voyage of discovery in the possibilities of his art.
His early landscapes of the Black Country proclaimed the arrival of a painter of distinct originality. Sweeping away the inessentials of detail, he extracted its basic pattern from the uneven landscape, and yet in the architecture of his design lost none of the emotional implications of the scene itself.
In the pictures of streets and harbours of Southern France, Wadsworth allowed himself a nearer approach to realism than in the Black Country landscapes, and this phase in his development led directly to the canvases of this exhibition. The line, though taut and strong, is much finer than before. The design is more spacious, and the forms are freer in their environment.
These qualities are wedded with the same remarkable skill in Wadsworth’s latest work.
