Uglow, Euan
The pose of the figure in 'Snake' echoes Rodin's famous sculpture of a newly pregnant woman, 'Eve', 1881, and the biblical reference to temptation befits the poetic reference to the serpentine curve of her body in profile. Uglow's palette for this and other pictures painted in the evening, a category shown in 2001 at Browse & Darby in London as the 'night pictures', initially was limited to those pigments - yellow ochre, white and black - that behaved consistently under artificial light.
Along with others entering Camberwell and the Slade in the post-war years, Uglow was taught by outstanding artists like Claude Rogers and William Coldstream; they had founded the Euston Road School in the 1930s at a point when their desire to document local subjects - figurative and landscape - was in part a reaction to the splurge of art movements in the early twentieth century. Uglow's own generation shared a desire to analyse visual appearance.
Catherine Lampert, 'Euan Uglow', Spotlight from the Arts Council Collection broadsheet, 2002
- Artwork Details: 49.5 x 35cm
- Edition:
- Material description: oil on canvas
- Credit line: © estate of the artist
- Theme: Figurative
- Medium: Painting
- Accession number: AC 1586