Valley of the Dordogne III is the third and last in a series on this theme. The first is in the artist's collection (140 x l40cm) while the artist destroyed the second in February 1976. Another two related 1964 works are Souvenir du Perigord (artist's collection, 152 x 91cm) and Stripes in the Perigord (private collection, 122 x 91cm).
British
1956-60, Slade School of Fine Art
1964-67, Slade School of Fine Art
French government scholarship to Paris 1960-61. Harkness Fellowship to USA, 1967-69. Elected Fellow of University College, London in 1991. Featured Artist at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2003.
Green studied at the Slade School of Art from 1956 to 1960, when he received a French Government scholarship to Paris, living there for a year before returning to England. Green returned to the Slade to teach in 1964, and in 1967 received a Harkness Fellowship to the United States where he lived for two years in New Jersey and California.
Anthony Green's double self portrait 'resulted from a driving holiday through the Dordogne and Perigord . . . shirt from Marks and Sparks . . . sunglasses French supplied by 'Les Freres Lissac', opticians, French relatives by marriage . . .'
Green has related his admiration for Rousseau's jungle pictures to this image. 'The tobacco plantations in the Dordogne Valley reminded me of an 'almost' tropical paradise.’ Sharp urban fashion is poignantly contrasted with lush vegetation and exotic dream. The tall format, schematic representation of the river and internally painted frame (as well as tilting figure reminiscent of the configuration of descending and announcing angels) recall the qualities of early religious paintings so much in vogue with the early 60's 'Pop' generation from the Royal College and evident in Green's own first shaped canvas from 1964 and in his Black Crucifix (1965). However, it was not at the Royal College that Green studied but at the Slade, where he started teaching in the same year in which this work was executed. The faux-naïf imagery is combined with a substantial paintwork which becomes more deliberately controlled in his later work.
