Roy Turner Durrant

Roy Turner Durrant (1925–1998), reticent to the point of reclusive – he shunned even his own exhibitions – was not a ‘group’ artist and yet his exhibiting career was long and distinguished, culminating with work in major public collections in the UK and internationally. His 1950 solo exhibition at Helen Lessore’s Beaux Arts Gallery, London, while still a student, was an early indication of his talent and commitment.

Durrant was emerging at an interesting point in English modernism, with painters such as Piper, Sutherland and Bacon newly dominant, and Nicholson with the younger St Ives painters, Heron, Frost, Lanyon and Hilton soon to assert themselves. Coldstream and Rogers, too, held sway. Through all this, Durrant moved inexorably, and in his own idiosyncratic way, to abstraction, although with a strong sense of landscape.

This monograph is a reminder that quality will survive to be celebrated in due course – a truth attested to today by the growing number of collectors of Durrant’s work.