euan uglow

The recently published catalogue of Euan Uglow's oeuvre contains  some surprises. Firstly it confirms that  he is a much more competent painter within his own very narrow focus than his friend and mentor Coldstream was in his. (There was an artist whose reputation came because he was well connected and one of the great and the good rather than for any quality  as a painter.) Uglow's portrait work lacks any attempt at insight into character, but you could say the same about Cezanne's portraits which are also exercise in style.The faces in Uglow are often a little too mask like. Some of the nudes hold strikingly memorable poses and no doubt he will have been accused of sadism towards models. There are a few works which will be long remembered- the diagonal nude is perhaps the most successful and any artist should be satisfied  with that. What I frequently like about the later work is the colour which is something  personal and striking. He had no feeling for landscape whatsoever and the formalism/parallelism is to be seen early on.