© The Estate of Leon Kossoff

Christ Church, Spitalfields is one of a series of works on the same subject which Kossoff began in 1987 inspired by novelist Peter Ackroyd’s imaginative rendition of the church’s construction. He was reminded of his own childhood in Spitalfields when he recalled passing the church most days of the week. He has observed that: ‘The urgency that drives me to work is not only to do with the pressures of the accumulation of memories and the unique quality of the subject on this particular day but also with the awareness that time is short, that soon the mass of this building will be dwarfed by more looming office blocks and overshadowed, the character of the building will be lost forever, for it is by its monumental flight into unimpeded space that we remember this building’. And yet in this rendering it is the church which looms while those in the street are dwarfed. Etching is a versatile and expressive medium used here with subtle mastery. The additional use of aquatint augments the drama and a sense of foreboding inherent in this scene.