Low Tide, Mousehole Harbour, 1953
Oil on Canvas
Signed and dated lower left recto

The German-born artist’s early work in England demonstrated an interest in structure and surface design that gave German backbone, or discipline, to a very English love of nature and landscape. In particular, the influence of Cezanne’s notion of pictorial space as both a two-dimensional fact and a three-dimensional illusion made its presence felt in Feiler’s subsequently impastoed, slab-like composition of Cornish harbours, coves, coastal recesses and windows.

Slade-trained and tutored on the Isle of Man and in Canada during the war, Feiler became a teacher at the West of England College of Art in Bristol during the later 1940’s when suburban garden scenes in Clifton first enlisted Cezannian perspectives.

He made his first trip to St. Ives in 1949, striking up what would become lifelong association with the Cornish based ‘middle generation’ painters. The following year he began a process of refinement and simplification leading to ‘Low Tide, Mousehole Harbour’ in which a residual Maritime motif is subjected to the spatial ambiguities and distortions of surface versus depth. The blue/black , white, grey, olive and sky blue colours are characteristic of all phases of Feiler’s ‘oeuvre’

The period when this picture was produced ushered in a successful exhibiting career at the Redfern Gallery, London, where he enjoyed sell-out solo shows during the mid- 1950’s. During the early 1950’s William Scott pointed out to his recent acquaintance affinities they both shared with the great contemporary French based painter Nicolas De Stael. Professor John Spier confirmed how, through this important and salient link, “Feiler’s work was in tune with avant-garde taste of the moment.”

John Spier ‘Paul Feiler’ Austin/Desmond spring 1990
76.2 x 101.5 cm (30 x 40 inches)

Provenance:
The Artist’s mother
Inger Witt (the artist’s sister)
Private Collection

Exhibition History:
Jacks Art Gallery, New York
POA