John Piper (1903-1992)

Portland Foreshore

Piper was a prolific artist and during a long career created paintings, prints, stained glass, set designs and decorations for buildings. Piper believed that art should be accessible to all and was happy to accept public commissions, the most celebrated being the stained glass windows at the new Coventry Cathedral.

He had a lifelong love of buildings and architecture, particularly churches, but after the Second World War Piper looked for fresh subjects in the empty landscapes of Snowdonia and Portland Bill. The remains of Portland's quarrying industry inspired a number of works between 1948 and 1955. Portland Foreshore presents a desolate view of abandoned quarry workings, blocks of stone lying forlorn in a bleak, forbidding landscape devoid of human life.

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