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Alexander Mackenzie

signed, inscribed & dated 1956 verso

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Winter Landscape is indicative of Mackenzie's work produced in Newlyn, Cornwall during the 1950s. Mackenzie had only moved to Cornwall five years previously and to Newlyn two years later. It was during this period that he became involved with the Newlyn School and began exhibiting with the Penwith Society, founded by Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. These were abstract artists breaking away from the St. Ives Society of Artists, which had been too conservative for their aims.

During this period, Mackenzie frequently used passages of texture in gentle rhythmical compositions of lines, bars and circular forms. Like much of his mature, abstract style it speaks of the sensation of landscape, and in this
case of Winter Landscape; moving through it and over it. It is representative of the paintings produced by the Penwith Society at this time, and although it is richer in palette and resonates a warmth that was lacking in many of his fellow artists works, it pays certain respect to the work of Ben Nicholson.