... from yesterday's post, here is one of my favourites from the 'True to Life' exhibition I mentioned on the other blog, another evocative rendition of a farming scene of the wider period of which Alison Uttley writes, this one James Bateman's 'Haytime in the Cotswolds', 1939.
A reviewer at the time said of it, "This is probably not a particular place as it exists, but that kind of place that you would like it to be." The Country Child is a similarly potent, imaginative recreation of a place.
C.F. Tunnicliffe, whose work illustrates Alison Uttley's memoir, is the subject of a forthcoming exhibition at The Royal Academy of Arts.
Following on from The Country Child, I'm now reading Ronald Blythe's In the Artist's Garden, which blends "literature, poetry, spirituality and memory as [the author] muses on the world from his garden gate." Perfect.