Hanging Gardens of Hammersmith No.2
The Gardens of Hammersmith No. 2 is related to the view from 16 Hammersmith Terrace, the house beside the Thames in London where Pasmore lived from 1942-7.
The painting is subdivided by diagonal lines drawn in charcoal or pencil and picked out in places with red paint. Several of these lines meet at a point one quarter of the way up the righthand edge, others half way up the lefthand side. The lines represent the division of the gardens and serve as compositional aids. The river border of the gardens is marked by a line running from a quarter of the way up the lefthand side to the middle of the righthand edge. The trees are also arranged geometrically. The trunk of the tree on the far left marks a line bisecting the centre of the top edge. The next tree denotes the golden section of the width of the painting, the third is exactly mid-way.
This precise composition is inscribed in pencil or charcoal on a painted white ground. The bushes have been drawn in charcoal, or possibly conté crayon, and rubbed into the ground to achieve the smudged effect visible through the coloured dots. The trees are rendered in tones of red-brown. In contrast to these pointillist and linear forms, the sky is painted with smooth modulations of white, pale blue and pink.
During the war, Pasmore had studied many of the Post-Impressionists' writings, and in the following years he worked through some of their ideas in his own paintings. The impact of Seurat's Pointillism is particularly evident here.
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