Duranty, Charles

About the artist

Charles Duranty, a poet as well as painter, born in Romford, Essex, is best known for his imaginary East Anglian landscapes. Self taught - he claimed that he had been thrown out of his art class at school - he only began painting in earnest when he was in his forties. Over the next 30 years he produced and sold some 1,500 watercolours featuring distinctive, though fictional views of the East Anglian countryside, whose open landscape and wide horizons he had come to love while working on an Essex farm during World War Two.

His landscapes typically feature vast fields spreading over rolling hills, with small figures, ancient vehicles or maybe a building to give focus and scale.

For many years Duranty showed his work at the Thackeray gallery in Kensington. He continued painting well into his seventies; he died in 2006 aged 87. Almost all come from private collections.

Twenty or so works featured here that have a stock reference beginning with “DH” were shown in our When they were young… touring exhibition in 2016. They were originally acquired at the same time from the Thackeray gallery in 1970 by the eccentric collector Richard Cory Smith, who later presented them to a friend.

The Guardian’s obituary of Charles Duranty as well as more information about this exhibition and the extraordinary story behind these paintings can be seen in our NEWS section