LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS

John Hall painted landscapes throughout his adult life, in and around his home in East Anglia, where his long familiarity with the characteristics of our locality: its light, weather and land usage, all contributed to a deep knowledge of the landscapes he saw and depicted. But he also painted landscapes much further afield. He travelled abroad from an early age, being posted to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in World War Two, as a young soldier with the Royal Signals and his sketchbooks from that time clearly show how visually stimulated he was by that environment. He continued to love travelling, particularly in Italy and France, observing and painting the many different places he saw, throughout his working life and on into his retirement.

In the manner established by the landscape artists he most admired: Constable, Corot, Monet and Pissarro chiefly among them, John usually painted directly from nature. Occasionally, though, he would reinterpret a sketch or rework a painting back in his studio. The great majority of the landscapes shown in this gallery therefore were painted at his easel, out in the countryside.