The phantom like figure, an industrial worker, is situated – encased, even – within an upper storey warehouse doorway or opening. Courtesy of its almost luminous off-cream aspect this frieze-like figure is akin to a picture within a picture and takes its place alongside other architectural markers, features, and structures – the crane and iron ball to the right, the dark red beam below or textured dark purple-grey walls – to define a raw proletarian scenario. Exhibited at Clough’ s important early solo exhibition, during the spring of 1953, at the Leicester Galleries, Warehouse Crane is typical of the industrial subject matter she favoured throughout the first half of the 1950s. As much as half of this 37 work display depicted lorry subjects, while the rest featured warehouses and cranes – as here – as well as dockyards, disused factories, and telephone engineers. Though a small compositional element, the figure is a crucial narrative symbol, animating an impersonal, mechanical scene and eliciting what Frances Spalding calls a ‘covert sympathy’ . P D.

Redfern Gallery, London
Mrs Winifred Edwards, UK

Leicester Galleries, London, 1953

Benn Levy. UK

Anthony Hepworth Fine Art, Bath

London, Leicester Galleries, Exhibition of Works by Prunella Clough, April 1953, no. 5
London, Fine Art Society, Prunella Clough, November 2003