Dark autumn evenings, heavy rain and reflected street lights make this the perfect time of year to introduce our newest canvas print. ‘City Rain’ is an original wallpaper design, hand painted in gouache during the 1950s. It was intended for a feature wall, as was fashionable at that time, and is currently back in vogue!
City Rain: Colours
The colour scheme of ‘City Rain’ is simultaneously dark and bright. Vertical fine lines of magenta and black stream down large magenta hexagon motifs, evoking rain falling steadily. From a distance, the hexagons merge into the black and lilac background as if they were passing city lights. Essentially, this design has only three colours. But the black and magenta lines shade the sides of all the geometric motifs, adding further tones of purple and dark grey. Overall, the shifting rows of linked shapes in this lovely design create an effect of blurred, watery illumination.
City Rain in the 1970s
During the 1970s, the creator of ‘City Rain’ moved to a Victorian lodge cottage, which had a small original sitting hall. The floor was brick and there was a very large fireplace. This had a high, dark wood surround, with carved panels. The walls were painted dark green with a grey-green carpet and two winged tapestry armchairs. Two of the artist’s 1950s wallpaper designs were then made into contemporary abstract paintings for this room. ‘Wax and Wane‘ was one, ‘City Rain’ was the other. They were hung side by side, each under a picture light which, at night, were the only lighting in the room. The effect was very striking!
However, the two pictures were mislaid during a further house move, and the designs were completely lost. There were no sketches or remaining pieces of the patterns. But forty years later, we discovered a set of coloured slides from the 1960s in a cardboard box. And there, to our amazement, were two photographs of ‘Wax and Wane’ and ‘City Rain’. Their condition was surprisingly good and, after they were digitised, our family archivist/conservator was able to make successful fine art prints of these once-lost designs.
Fine Art Prints and Canvases
Our A3 fine art print shows how ‘City Rain’ would have looked on a wall in the 1950s. The new canvas print of the design takes the same proportions that were used for the 1970s wall art. We use archival quality paper and Epson HD pigment inks for our fine art prints, to produce a long-lasting, fade-proof image. The new canvas print of ‘City Rain’ is printed with Epson HD pigment inks on 100% cotton canvas. It is then sealed with a matte varnish and hand-stretched over a solid pine wood frame.
Have fun choosing a piece of exciting wall art from the Goldcrest Gallery fine art prints and canvases!