1917
55.9×72.4cm, watercolour
Standard reference: Bunt 294
Owner: pwu
Lit and Ill: Famous Water Colour Painters No 1, The Studio London 1928 p5 amd plate 4
Ill: Brangwyn Portfolio 48 (32x43cm)
Huge arched building to left, the interior of which glows with heat. To the right workers in a blue and orange haze. Man appears insignificant against the enormity and cruel heat of the workplace. The colours themselves are not exceptionally vivid but gain in strength from the contrast with the dark areas – very cleverly conceived. In Sandilands introduction to Famous Water-Colour Painters he describes the ‘sulphuric splendour’ of the work and says that Brangwyn ‘distils in the alembic of his genius the horror of these two industrial afflictions the factory chimney and factory smoke, making chimneys appear to be things majestic that dominate gloomy realms of cloud-girt glory’.