Grandfather and Child Walking Past a Straw Pile in the Alley — Print & Oil Painting

Two backs, walking away, small in a long alley. The artist has placed them slightly left of centre and given them perhaps a tenth of the height of the picture, and every other decision follows from that: we are behind these people, we will not see their faces, and the alley matters as much as they do.

The paving is the finest passage. Old brick runs the length of the lane in a herringbone worn smooth, catching a low warm light along the centre while the edges stay damp and grey, and the artist has rendered it closely enough that you can follow individual courses from the foreground to the point where they vanish. It is the one surface given a polish.

The walls are the opposite: rough, blotched, and full of information. On the left a rendered wall has failed in patches to show red brick beneath, and a tiled roof steps up behind it. On the right a taller wall runs in mottled ochre and grey, lit in broad diagonal bands where sun comes through the trees, and a bank of green sits along its foot. Between them the lane narrows to a bright opening with a small tiled house and a distant walker in a conical hat.

The straw is heaped at the left, mid distance, a pale gold mound spilling onto the paving, and it is the warmest colour in the picture. The elder walks in a dark jacket under a conical hat, one arm down toward the child, who is in a white shirt, red shorts and a small red cap. A dog trots at their heels.

Overhead, four wires cross the sky from a pole out of frame, and the trees come in from both sides in muted greens and dry gold. The saturation measures low throughout, which is what a scene lit through leaves in the early part of the day looks like. From our Vietnam collection, near two children on a brick village lane with chickens and a farmer carrying hay bundles through a brick village gate.