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The Glassblower
painting
Peake, Mervyn
Europe, United Kingdom, England
1944
1947.390
oil/Oil on canvas
205.4 x 118 cm
The Glassblower 1944
Mervyn Peake 1911- 1968
Oil on canvas
Peake is best known as author of Gormenghast.
In Second World War he was commissioned
by War Artists Advisory Committee
to record the making of cathode ray tubes for radar.
These were made at the specialist glass factory
of Chance Brothers, Smethwick, Birmingham.
Peake also wrote a poem called The Glassblowers
inspired by the sights of the factory:
There is a molten language that is glass
Unborn, a poetry of barbarous birth;
It sings in sand and roars in furnace-fire;
The blowers breathe it voiceless, as they pass
through brimstone halls and girdered aisles of ire.'
Presented by H M Government War Artists Advisory Committee 1947.390
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