In Chilham Valley, 1955 (oil on canvas)

From Counterpoint Modern Realism 1910-1950. Newton had originally been taught plein-air painting when he was at art school in 1906-7 but it was a method he struggled with for some years. Eventually he gave it up after spending two years studying the Old Masters in the National Gallery, particularly Canaletto. Newton now painted from carefully detailed drawings, squared up for transfer in the academic manner. In his landscape of Chilham Valley in Kent he records with an almost super-real faithfulness the form and texture of the trees and turf, but it is the effects of light contrasted with the threatening clouds of the sky that is the true subject of the picture.