Lot 56: JOHN LATHAM 1921-2006

HULL SHIPYARD

76 by 101.5cm., 30 by 40in.

oil on canvas

NOTE

The present work is an extremely rare example of the artist's early work executed circa 1948 and shows the influence of the neo-romantic artists especially Minton, Colquhoun and MacBryde.

Born in Africa, Latham studied at Chelsea School of Art from 1946 - 50. He later taught at St Martin's where he was famously dismissed for chewing pages from the library's copy of Greenberg's Art and Culture, spitting them into a bowl and then fermenting the pages in acid and distilling them into a phial. The phial and his dismissal documents were later acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.