The Rainbow

       The Rainbow 1937

Oh what a revelry of colour! It makes me gasp! These cultivated blooms are plunked down in a basic pot which does not distract the eye.

    Oh what generosity of shape and tone dominates a belt of colour across the picture, not quite in the middle. The pot too is not quite central, almost daring the viewer to point this out. The yellow of the mullein or evening primrose, unpicked, stitches together the colourful band with all but the blue in a rainbow.

    There is our blue in the clouds which scud across the sky, and in it the barest hint of the rainbow which gives the painting its name.

    There is a story here, the brick-red cottage where the gardener lives, the dark chestnut hint of a horse and trap at the door. Before all this colour there must have been rain to green up and glow and smudge a rainbow above the cottage. It has not spoiled the gaudy bunch collected to sit indoors.

    Still-life meets landscape but neither protest a dominance and we are left to enjoy and choose where we want to be led.