Singular sensation

Prunella Clough; Harry Thubron: Collages and Constructions 1972–1984

It was a privilege to be a member of the jury that gave Prunella Clough (1919–99) the Jerwood Prize for Painting in 1999. On the one hand, we wanted to draw attention to the fact that she was an immensely distinguished painter who had remained largely unknown and publicly unrewarded during a long career, and on the other we wished to recognise the high quality of her latest work, some of the finest she’d ever done. In many ways, Prunella was her own worst enemy, being of a modest and self-effacing temperament, much given to doubting her very real achievements. She had enough private money not to worry about selling work, which also made her keep her prices low, much to the fury of contemporaries who had to earn their living by the brush. But she was consistently generous to others in greater need than herself, giving substantial sums often anonymously to art schools and to individuals. She was a remarkable woman and a remarkable artist, and finally the Tate has got round to celebrating her very singular vision.

In three galleries at Millbank is a selection of her early and late work, bearing witness to a continuity of interests, and demonstrating that she was never really a Neo-Romantic artist, though often grouped with them. Clough’s early impetus was in fact towards a stylised realism, focusing on the urban scene and its industrial wastelands filtered through a Cubist faceting. The paintings in the first room seem to share an affinity with the Italian realist Renato Guttuso and reflect the influence of the Picasso-dominated Polish émigré Jankel Adler (1895–1949). On this showing, Clough’s urban grittiness offers a link between Neo-Romanticism and Kitchen Sink.