Cecil Collins 1908-1989
Hymn, 1944
ink on paper
15½ by 22½ inches
signed, dated and titled

Provenance
Bryan Robertson
Private Collection, UK

Exhibited
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Cecil Collins: A Retrospective Exhibition- Paintings, Drawings and Tapestries 1928 - 1959, November - December 1959, cat no.193

Literature
Alex Comfort and Conrad Senat, Cecil Collins - Paintings & Drawings 1935-45, Counterpoint Publications, Oxford 1946, p42 illus b/w



Born in Plymouth, Cecil Collins started drawing the surrounding Devon landscape at an early age. He won a scholarship while at Plymouth School of Art which took him to the Royal College of Art, London. Although he was involved with the Surrealist movement, taking part in the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936, he was essentially a visionary artist who became fascinated with Far Eastern art and philosophy and filled his work with images of his own personal mythology.

Collins worked in a variety of media and during his career he developed methods of drawing that complemented his fantastical subject matter. In Hymn Collins has emphasised outlines with repeated swirling forms and shaded areas with recurring calligraphic marks that contribute to the dream-like quality and heightened reality that the work is imbued with.