Location: San Remo, Italy
Subject: Cityscape
Medium: Watercolour
Date: 1920s
Signature: Knighton Hammond
Dimensions: 32 cm x 45 cm
Bathed in Mediterranean sunlight, this watercolour has an instinctive feeling for light, colour and tone enabling Knighton-Hammond to produce a work of luminosity and clarity. The market square is delightfully free and sketchy with great fluidity in the application of the paint. Dating from the mid-1920s the work traces the artist’s emerging mastery of urban streetscapes painting in an Impressionist style and shows a deepening understanding of the dynamics of urban life in Italy and France. The large tree and the architecture are important focal points along with the figures and the fact that in each little cluster a human story in being told. The children in particular in the foreground interacting with the adults on the bench are full of spontaneity and movement. The gestures and activities of the figures and horses establish the mood of the scene. The foliage of the tree is painted in very fluid watercolour. This picture demonstrates that the lessons of Impressionism had been fully absorbed by Knighton-Hammond and it is possibly the light that makes the watercolour so brilliantly alive and targets the senses.