The Flight into Egypt

Claughton Pellew 1890 - 1966

Summary

A forest scene. The trees have no side branches and dense leaf canopies, the vertical trunks dominate the picture. The forest has a northern, Germanic, appearance. At the bottom edge of the picture space are two figures, a woman seated on a donkey and a man walking behind to the right. Only the top of the donkey's head and back, and the man from the waist up, can be seen. The man has a beard and is carrying a staff. This large watercolour marks an important turning point from the predominantly religious imagery of the previous decade to the 1920s concentration on landscape. The dense forest evokes a Northern, Germanic atmosphere, with trees forming insistent verticals that recur in some of Pellew's earliest wood engravings.