Artist who abandoned figuration and popularity in favour of a more austere abstract vision
In 1957, Alan Reynolds dedicated a large gouache called Sunset, Kent to the critic Robert Melville and his wife, inscribing it on the back, "For Robert and Lillian with love". This picture, with its look of a Brueghel re-imagined by Graham Sutherland, seemed to bear out Melville's faith in Reynolds. "If we are regaining confidence in the future of the most rewarding tradition in English art," he had written of the young painter's landscapes, "then it is thanks to the immense promise of his work."
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