The Festival of Britain 1951 - special commission

I have included this aerial painting of the Festival of Britain as another digression from the main run of paintings. It was a project shared by my father and myself and involved visualising the Festival from plans, models and notes before it took final shape. In the end the design in full colour proved almost 100% accurate and became the only aerial view postcard and also, for the record, the only official jigsaw puzzle.

My father was a great influence upon me and I loved, as a child, watching him paint. Not so very long ago one of his English landscapes came up for auction and my nephew secured it. When the back was removed an unfinished painting of my brother and myself was revealed. We, or I, had obviously failed to keep still.

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