Signed l.l.: Cecil Collins/1957 with further inscription (verso) “Musician” (1957) Gouache/ by Cecil Collins/ 15 Selwyn Gardens Cambridge England/ Feb 1957

Gouache with watercolour over brush and ink, 28.5 by 22 cm (11 ¼ by 8 ½ ins)

Provenance: acquired by the family of the present owners from Crane Calman Gallery in January 1968

Exhibited: Gouaches and Watercolours by Cecil Collins, Crane Calman Gallery, 1967, illustrated in colour on the cover of the catalogue

The visionary Neo-Romantic painter Cecil Collins was one of the most original figures in mid twentieth century British art. Claimed as a surrealist soon after leaving the Royal College of Art, his work was included in the International Surrealist exhibition in London in 1936. His influences ranged from Paul Klee who he had encountered in Paris to Eric Gill and David Jones. Like the latter, he completed a number of significant religious commissions, including an altar front for the St Clement Chapel at Chichester Cathedral in 1972. This fine example of Collins’s 1950s work has been in the same collection since it was acquired in a one-man show of the artist’s work held at the Crane Calman Gallery in 1967. It was painted two years before Collins’s major retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1959.