Prunella Clough 1919-1999
Sleeping Lorry Driver III, c1947
oil on canvas
14 by 20 inches


Provenance
Leicester Galleries, London
David Carr
Thence by descent
Phillips, London, 5th March 1996, Lot 31
Austin Desmond Fine Art, London
Private Collection, UK

Exhibited
London, Leicester Galleries, Exhibition of Recent Paintings by Prunella Clough, April 1953, cat no.10

London, Austin Desmond Fine Art, Prunella Clough & David Carr: Works 1945 - 1964, September 1997, cat no.3 illus colour



Clough’s first mature paintings, of the men and machinery of Lowestoft harbour, in the late 1940s demonstrated a remarkably individual voice in their depiction of everyday hard work, and she was to develop this theme further in the paintings produced in the London docks in the early 1950s. The Lorry Drivers series has a refreshingly human quality about it, as the figures manage to retain an air of imperturbability in the midst of their grimy industrial surroundings. Here, the sleeping driver, with the face of a pugilist, is a small oasis of calm in a world of noise and activity, catching an illicit forty winks between jobs