Gallery Rome

My paintings of the Eternal City followed a short stay at the British School in Rome. ‘The Presence of the Past’ was the title of the Venice Biennale for 1980. This set the agenda for my academic concern with architectural post-modernism for the next few years. But it was the matter-of-fact way in which the Romans of today live with the relics of their past, traffic raging where the emperor’s chariots once raced that caught my visual imagination. I wanted to record such scenes just as they were without comment or satire.

Circus Maximus

1996. Oil on canvas. 48 x 36 in (120 x 90 cm).
Today traffic rages past the remains of the Circus Maximus, a stadium where up to 250,000 spectators once watched the chariot races. In the background the ruined palaces on the Palatine hill.

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Eternal City

1996. Oil on canvas. 48 x 36 in (120 x 90 cm).
St. Peter’s great dome hovers in the distance in this view across the Tiber from the Avenine Hill.

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Forum from the Capitoline

1996. Oil on canvas. 36 x 30 in (90 x 75 cm).
Two present day Romans lounge on the road which overlooks the arch erected by Septimus Severus in ####

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Palatine garden

1997. Oil on canvas. 20 x 30 in (50 x 75 cm).
Palms jostle with cypresses in the (restored) Renaissance landscape garden created by the Farnese family on top of the Roman ruins.