Empuriabrava, a Canal Scene

With its swirling blue sky, pink peeling buildings and sluggish waters, Alistair Grant’s Canal Scene brings the modern-day Spanish waterways to life with painterly gusto.

Painted in the mid-1960s, Canal Scene represents Grant on the very cusp of his transition to the abstract, having worked predominantly with figurative subjects in the preceding post-war years. While his tumultuous sky and slow-rolling river owe an obvious debt to Van Gogh’s Starry Night and the late works of Monet, in the simplified waterfront buildings and their blurred windows and walls Grant was moving closer and closer towards the colour-form abstraction that would define the latter half of his career.