The Passing Storm

Description / Expertise

Leaving his wife, Newton went to London where, initially destitute, he became a pavement artist. Studying the paintings in the National Gallery, he came to believe that the Old Masters ‘worked from memory and used their imagination much more than we do’. From Canaletto he developed a distinctive technique of his own, using thin glazes to gave his pictures
neo-18th-century surfaces. The results are reticent, contemplative, and slightly uncanny. Having won fame and success he reflected, ‘I felt I must try to create something in every picture I painted, a mood, a mental atmosphere, a sentiment’.