Signed and inscribed (to reverse of panel): Welsh Farmyard/John Aldridge

Oil on panel, 47.5 by 70 cm (18 ¾ by 27 ½ ins)

Exhibited: The Leicester Galleries, London, Artists of Fame and Promise, 1940, no.129

The 1930s marked a notably successful decade in Aldridge’s development as an artist. His friendship with Ben Nicholson lead him to exhibit with the influential Seven and Five Society in 1931 and in 1933 and 1934 he was chosen to exhibit at the British Pavillion at the Venice Biennale. In 1933 he moved to Great Bardfield in Essex where he established himself at the centre of the artistic community there alongside Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. The Leicester Galleries gave him one-man shows from 1933, as well as including him in group exhibitions such as their Artists of Fame and Promise series where the present work was shown in 1940. This Welsh landscape is a fine example of Aldridge’s work at its strongest and most distinct, by an artist now firmly established as a significant figure in mid-century British landscape painting.