© Michael Kovner

This cityscape is reminiscent in style of Kovner’s New York views executed in the 2000s. In comparison to the more neatly executed oils, in this gouache, however, the shapes of the buildings are denoted with broad brushstrokes, in a much looser and free-flowing manner. Kovner’s work combines a love of landscape – both pastoral and urban – with a love of colour. American art critic Donald Kuspit observed in 2010: ‘Kovner’s impressionistic-expressionistic rendering of nature [reflects] his aesthetic love affair with nature’, describing his paintings as ‘radiant and intense with light and colour… aesthetic delights’.