Keith Grant

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Expressing the North Judith LeGrove When The North Lands opened at Roland Browse & Delbanco, in January 1967, its landscapes were hailed for their ‘sense of infinite space’, their artist, Keith Grant (b.1930), as ‘uncompromising … stern, virile’. Resulting from visits to Iceland and Norway, Grant’s paintings of volcanoes, fjords, avalanches and the midnight sun splintered and blazed, their energy focused – if scarcely contained – through the lens of abstraction. Nearly sixty years on, in the adjacent premises of The Redfern Gallery, The Last Ice presents new paintings. If their subject is similar, the manner of depicting these ‘north lands’ is astonishingly vital. Now in his 95th year, painting with undiminished skill, Grant relays his vision of landscape with authority and passion.

As Grant describes them, ‘these new pictures are an expression of the North’. Returning from Newcastle to the Danish port of Esbjerg, some twenty years ago, he witnessed sheet ice extending for miles, etched with a design of seemingly precision-cut cracks. Arctic ice off Iceland’s north coast in 1965 was equally haunting: ‘huge ice floes, but smooth on the top, and the further out you got, the more they moved’. Grant’s preoccupation with ice, cold and the North reaches as far back as his origins in northwest England. As a boy, he marvelled at Liverpool’s dockyard cranes encrusted with ice in winter, delighted in ‘snow, pine trees and Christmas’, and wondered where the weather came from.

The starting point for The Last Ice was a painting of a meteorite cascade. As Grant worked on the sky, isolating the abstract shapes of meteor trails, their forms began to reflect, in his words, ‘the “cubist” structures I have always associated with the elemental landscapes of the North’.

Such geometry inspired Triptych of the Last Ice, painted

between March and September 2024. Three canvases, Meteor, Volcano and Aurora [illus. pp. 24-25], allude to the melting of polar ice in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions through fire, a broken procession of icebergs, and fracturing. Each element has been seen in Grant’s work before. What is particularly exhilarating about Triptych of the Last Ice, however, is the dynamic arc across its three paintings. Within this, Grant maintains a tightrope balance between ambiguity (the nebulousness of smoke, sea spume, the aurora’s veils) and geometry. It is the last of these, in particular the device of the triangle, that ‘percolated through to everything else’.

So why is the triangle so expressive of ice? Grant explains that the North, where glaciation was extreme, emerged from the Ice Age only around 10,000 years ago. It was effectively a new landscape, with all the acute contrasts that entailed: sharply delineated rocks, ascents, plains and lowlands, vast moraines of sand, and lines indicating the limits of the ice as it retreated to the Arctic. On the north coast of Denmark, gravel beaches taper to a vanishing point where the sea appears to obliterate them. At Grenen, near Skagen, the seas of the Skagerrak and Kattegat collide across a bank of alluvial deposits that shift, tidally, depending on the calmness or violence of the waves.

Several paintings in The Last Ice series allude to such imagery.

Complementing these works, a series entitled The Narrow Road to the Deep North refers to Matsuo Bashō’s prose and verse diary of a journey through Japan in the late 17th century. Bashō’s account has long fascinated Grant, most obviously for its ‘journeying’ (an activity he relishes, particularly over austere, solitary terrain). Grant mapped Bashō’s destinations to locations in Norway to 3

create his own ‘narrow road to the deep north’. The resulting small-scale works on paper, exhibited by the Scottish Arts Council in 1973, evoked landscape with Blakean intensity, in luminous watercolours rimmed by handwritten inscriptions.

When Grant revisited Bashō’s text during the pandemic, he continued the spirit of more recent ‘metamorphic’ paintings by seeking an equivalence between natural forms. Fish Bird Duality (2021) addresses the parity between sea and airborne creatures in tableaux that spiral and float, hybridising feathers with gills, beaks with gullets, eyes with roe or pearls. Grant’s latest Narrow Road to the Deep North paintings contain similarly startling juxtapositions. A bonsai tree anchors the landscape as if glimpsed through a window, framed by brocade drapery or by a phalanx of birch trees resembling a beaded curtain. Stacked, the imagery rises through trees, mountains and cloud to the sky and moon, evoking a symbolic passage so often implicit in oriental landscape painting. The repeated triangle (whether bonsai, curtains, or mountain peaks) again serves as scaffolding.

Grant’s retentive visual memory, allied to a limitless facility to reconfigure what he sees, is evident in a rich selection of earlier work. A rock formation near Lødingen, fused with the history of wartime blockhouses there, generated the Rock Horse series (2014) featuring glass frames pierced by icebound peaks. A further twist of the kaleidoscope produced Transfiguration [illus. pp.40-41], replete with unicorn, Goethe’s sphere and Brünnhilde’s ring of fire. The White Horse, the Moon and the Pergola (2022) [illus. p. 67] overlays recollections of the chalk horse at Uffington with a real white horse seen in Luxembourg, near a pergola and a Roman villa that had been ‘tidied up like a Lego game’.

What you see, in a painting by Grant, rarely correlates directly to a specific landscape, much though it may have 4

been inspired by one. Thus, he describes his new paintings as ‘a general statement’ about what one can expect to find in the North. Beaches, mountains, fjords and forests: each might be considered characteristic, yet still Grant finds fresh ways to depict them. Several recent seascapes feature a dark rim of waves that makes the canvas appear crinkled, breaking the predictability of the rectangular format. Transfigured Night III [illus. p.71] shimmers and shifts, instilled with the music of the stars. If many of Grant’s new paintings emphasise night, it is because of Grant’s belief that in the North there is a closer relationship between the earth and cosmos. The interplay between the two – the rivers, ice, hills, skies, aurora, stars, meteors, moon – are reminders of our place in the universe.

Birch trees have long been a symbol for Grant of resistance and survival. Seen from below, they acquire a delicate halo of foliage; standing isolate, they counterpoint the horizontal axis of a reflection that is darker than the original. Are these landscapes uninhabited? Not necessarily, although Grant prefers not to include figures in his compositions. Trees, instead, represent living presences, just as a flagpole and coastal beacon indicate former or recent habitation. A portrait of the much-loved apple tree in Grant’s garden in Norway is a case in point. What cannot be seen are the bird-feeders he fills regularly, or the house decorated for Christmas.

Instead, Grant focuses attention, exquisitely, on the wire fence and gnarled form of the tree. Behind each painting, accumulated memories influence the forms of rocks, trees, space and light: aspects not derived solely from the landscape itself. The Narrow Road to the Deep North intertwines, in Grant’s mind, with Bashō’s account of an abandoned child. A white horse will always recall Vernon Watkins’ epic poem about former agricultural societies,

The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd, while unicorns (should they exist) evoke the splendour of French mediaeval tapestries.

During Grant’s involvement in the 1960s with Medical Aid for Vietnam, he explored parallels between the destructive force of volcanoes and that of military ordnance, albeit never acknowledging the latter overtly in his paintings’ imagery or titles. It is in this vein that he continues to be fascinated by the paradoxical beauty of natural catastrophe. On the fringe of the ice cap in Greenland are now extended coastal strips without ice, such that monumental icebergs can be witnessed passing fields with grass and flowers. Triptych of the Last Ice refers to dissolution while considering its potential to create new forms, new landscapes.

Eruption in the Northern Night (2025) [illus. p. 57] presents a sublime spectacle. Riven by the peak, cloud and meteor’s vector, its canvas shatters into triangles. The assertion that this is a ‘northern’ night is important. Grant’s painting conflates volcanoes seen in Iceland, sometimes at dangerously close hand, with the pristine white pyramid of Mount Fuji, whose shadow bids Bashō farewell as he embarks on his northern odyssey. Were it to be interpreted as Antarctica, it would symbolise not Mount Erebus’s intermittent stuttering but catastrophe on an apocalyptic scale: the reawakening by climate change of icebound volcanoes.

narrative. Since the 1950s he has travelled repeatedly to Norway (where he now lives), to Iceland, Greenland, the Tropics, and twice to Antarctica. Sir David Attenborough, in a catalogue essay from 1991, praised Grant’s ‘ability to convey the awesome mystery of nature at its most monumental and dramatic’, describing him as ‘one of the few painters whose artistic horizons have also expanded’.

For those familiar with Grant’s work, there is a perceptible difference to The Last Ice, executed over a quietly focused period during the last fifteen months. It is as if he has, at last, been allowed to draw breath and exhale. These paintings, among the finest he has produced, are a deeply considered, impassioned homage to the North.

May, 2025

Judith LeGrove is a writer who has worked extensively with artists and their archives. Trained as a musicologist before completing a PhD on Geoffrey Clarke, she has published catalogues raisonnés and monographs on the work of Geoffrey Clarke, Michael Lyons, Keith Grant, Kenneth Draper and Egon Altdorf, and essays on Bryan Kneale, Jeremy Gardiner and the Britten–Pears art collection. She is currently researching sculpture in Derbyshire for a forthcoming volume in the ‘Public Sculpture of Britain’ series.

Is The Last Ice elegiac? Possibly, although Grant is adamant that the series should not be considered as an environmental statement (‘other people can make those if they wish’). Rather, as he explains, these new paintings imply that something is happening: ‘a story, perhaps, about the workings of nature’. Grant is well placed to tell such a 5

Aurora of the Transfigured Night 2021 Oil on linen | 150.5 × 130.5 cm Literature Keith Grant by Judith LeGrove, Lund Humphries, 2023 (Pl.95, illustrated p.115)

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Last Ice with Crescent Moon (Last Ice Series) 2025 Mixed media with collage | 18 × 16 cm

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Last Ice on a Basalt Beach (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas over board | 32.5 × 63 cm

The Crescent of the Super-Moon, Approaching South Shetland, Evening 2018 Oil on linen over board | 92.3 × 107.3 cm

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Icebergs on a Horizon under the Evening Star 2025 Oil on canvas over wood | 20.5 × 34.5 cm

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Squall in Fading Light (Last Ice Series) 2025 Oil on canvas over wooden panel | 26.5 × 32 cm

A Song at Sunrise 2018 Oil on linen | 115 × 132 cm Literature Keith Grant by Judith LeGrove, Lund Humphries, 2023 (Pl.138, illustrated p.164)

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Emerging Moon and Turning Tide (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas | 22 × 27 cm

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Moon, Mist and Rising Tide (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas | 22 × 27 cm

Last Ice, the Moon, the Milky Way and Stars (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas | 100 × 140 cm

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Night Sea (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas | 21.5 × 26.5 cm

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The Stillness of the Arctic Night (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas | 61 × 50 cm

Marine Eruption 2015 Oil on canvas | 78.8 × 78.8 cm Literature Keith Grant by Judith LeGrove, Lund Humphries, 2023 (Pl.42, illustrated p.59)

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Last Ice Series: Meteor, Volcano, Aurora 2024 Oil on canvases [triptych] | each panel 100 × 100 cm

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Horizon, Moon and Stars (Last Ice Series) 2025 Oil on canvas | 30 × 40 cm

The Old Apple Tree, Bonfire and Wire Fence, Christmas Eve, Gvarv 2024 Oil on canvas | 80 × 70 cm

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‘I know of no painter who can convey the wonderful world of the Poles more vividly, accurately and thrillingly.’

Sir David Attenborough, 2018

Ice Antarctic Peninsula 2018 Oil on linen over board | 78 × 87 cm

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Four Birch Trees Reflect the Moonlight At the Fjord's Edge 2024

(Last Ice Series) 2024

Oil on canvas | 24 × 19 cm

Oil on canvas | 24 × 19 cm

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Silence of the Arctic Night 2024

Moon, Cloud, Curtains and Bonsai 2024

Oil on canvas | 24 × 19 cm

Oil on canvas | 24 × 19 cm

Sea Breach, Night (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas | 27 × 35 cm

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Pale Green Aurora with Crescent Moon (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas | 80 × 80 cm

Squall Obscuring the Maritime Moon (Last Ice Series) 2024

Iceberg Under a Full Moon 2024

Oil on canvas | 24 × 19 cm

Oil on canvas | 24 × 19 cm

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Birches in Moonlight 2025

The Birch in Winter (Last Ice Series) 2024/25

Oil on canvas | 24 × 19 cm

Oil on canvas over board | 22.5 × 18 cm

Iceberg and Crescent Moon (Last Ice Series) 2025 Oil on canvas | 21.5 × 32 cm

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The Pale Aurora over a Frozen Shore 2021 Oil on linen | 121 × 151 cm

Transfiguration 2015 Oil on canvas | 100.3 × 200.8 cm Literature Keith Grant by Judith LeGrove, Lund Humphries, 2023 (Pl.145, illustrated p.172)

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Tempest at Bird Island (Fugloy) 2012 Acrylic and ink with watercolour | 20.3 × 55.3 cm

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Ragnarok 2012 Oil on canvas over board | 69.3 × 69.3 cm

‘His achievement is to have extended our sense of what landscape might encompass.’

Larry Berryman (extract from catalogue essay in Ice and Fire: Paintings by Keith Grant, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1994)

Rock Horses 2014 Oil on canvas | 81.3 × 109.2 cm

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Studies from Imagination. Northern Maritime Cacophony 2013 Acrylic and ink on cardboard panel | 11.5 × 30.5 cm

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Phoenix 2012 Oil on canvas | 89 × 115.5 cm

The Fish/Bird Duality 2 (The Narrow Road to the Deep North Series) 2021 Oil on prepared card over wood | 14 × 26 cm

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Sea Drift by Moonfleet 2020 Oil on linen | 100 × 150 cm Literature Keith Grant by Judith LeGrove, Lund Humphries, 2023 (Pl.113, illustrated p.134 and on book cover)

The Fish/Bird Duality (The Narrow Road to the Deep North Series) 2021 Oil on linen over board | 23 × 33 cm

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The Fish/Bird Duality (The Narrow Road to the Deep North Series) 2021 Oil on linen over wood panel | 38.5 × 46 cm

The Fish/Bird Duality 3 (The Narrow Road to the Deep North Series) 2021 Oil on prepared card over board | 15.5 × 44 cm

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The Fish/Bird Duality 4 (The Narrow Road to the Deep North Series) 2021 Oil on linen | 70 × 70 cm

Last Ice, Horizon and Milky Way (Last Ice Series) 2022 Oil on canvas | 87.5 × 147.5 cm Literature Keith Grant by Judith LeGrove, Lund Humphries, 2023 (Pl.4, illustrated p.12)

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Aurora, Meteor and Moon (Last Ice Series) 2025 Oil on canvas over wooden panel | 30 × 18 cm

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Eruption in the Northern Night (Last Ice Series) 2025 Oil on canvas | 89.5 × 116 cm

Tapestry of the Auroral Night (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil and mixed media on paper over board | 16 × 21 cm

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The Dark Light of the Stars (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas | 60 × 80 cm

The Horizon, Crescent Moon and Morning Star (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas over board | 28.2 × 37.5 cm

New Moon and Morning Star over an Antarctic Promontory 2018 Oil on linen | 127 × 101.5 cm

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The Moon in a Magenta Sky 2025 Oil on canvas | 19.5 × 24 cm

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Late Evening, Low Tide 2024 Oil on canvas | 50 × 61 cm

Moonlight, Stars and Rising Tide (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas over board | 33 × 23 cm

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On the Beach at Night (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas | 60 × 90 cm

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The White Horse, the Moon and the Pergola 2022 Oil on canvas | 90 × 60.5 cm

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Isolate Birch Mirrored in a Forest Lake 2024 Oil on canvas | 36 × 21 cm

Hommage à Bashō, Bonsai and Birches (The Narrow Road to the Deep North Series) 2024/25 Oil on canvas | 86.5 × 60.5 cm

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Last Ice, Iceberg and Crescent Moon (Last Ice Series) 2025 Oil on canvas | 30 × 24 cm

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Transfigured Night III (Last Ice Series) 2025 Oil on canvas | 100 × 120 cm

Photo: Kjell Bitustøyl 19.08.2022

Biography

Selected Exhibitions

1930

Born 10 August, Liverpool

(Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions)

1948–50

National Service, RAF

1955

A Student’s Progress, Bootle Art Gallery

1950–58

Studied at Working Men’s College, St Pancras

1960

New Art Centre, London

(1950–52); Willesden School of Art (1952–5); Royal

1962

New Art Centre, London

College of Art (1955–8)

1964

New Art Centre, London

1956–61

Married to Valerie Owen

1965

Galleria Montenapoleone, Milan (with John Grome)

1957

First visit to Norway

1966

New Art Centre, London

1964–96

Married to Gisèle Barka Djouadi

1967

The North Lands, Roland, Browse & Delbanco,

1971

Daughter, Dominique, born

1974

Son, Paul, born (died 1995)

1969

Paintings of the North, Geffrye Museum, London

1996

Settled in Norway

1970

Recent Paintings of the Northlands, Roland, Browse

2000

Married Hilde Ellingsen. Together they have a daughter, Thea

London

& Delbanco, London 1972

Recent Paintings, Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London Paintings of Norway, Folkestone Arts Centre

Teaching 1973

The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Scottish Arts

1958–60

Kingston School of Art

1961–2

Gravesend School of Art

1962–3

Goldsmiths’ College of Art

1963–8

Lecturer, Hornsey College of Art

Browse & Delbanco, London

1968–71

Head of Fine Art Department, Maidstone

Loans and New Works, Folkestone Arts Centre

1971

Byam Shaw School

National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik

1971

St Martin’s School of Art

1973–5 1975–9 1979–81

Gulbenkian Award Artist-in-Residence, Bosworth

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Recent Paintings – Norway and Iceland, Roland,

Aldeburgh Festival 1976

Recent Paintings – Iceland and Ireland, Roland,

College, Leicester

Browse & Delbanco, London

Camberwell School of Art and St Martin’s School of

The Way to Cold Mountain, Rochdale Art Gallery

Art

The Paintings and Drawings of Keith Grant at

Head of Painting Department, Newcastle

Bosworth, Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery

Polytechnic 1981–90

Council Gallery, Edinburgh (and tour) 1974

1977

The Volcano in the North, Portsmouth Museum &

Head of Department of Art, Roehampton

Art Gallery

Institute

Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London

1978

Town Hall, Svolær, Lofoten Islands, Norway

1979

A Winter Journey, Browse & Darby, London

1996

Cercle Munster, Luxembourg Star Gallery, Lewes

Landscapes of the North, Compass Gallery, Glasgow Ibsenhuset, Skien, Norway 1980

1997

John’s International School Art Gallery, Waterloo,

(touring to Loughborough College of Art and Design)

Belgium

Keith Grant: Paintings, Metropole Arts Centre,

Malerier, Ibsenhuset, Skiens Kunstforening, Norway

Folkestone

(supported by the British Council)

The Festival of North Norway: Keith Grant, Harstad,

Galleri Amare, Stavanger, Norway 1998

1983

The Elements: Paintings of Iceland, Norway and

2000

Recent Paintings, Cadogan Contemporary, London

England, Elizabethan Exhibition Gallery, Wakefield

2003

Antarctica, Cadogan Contemporary, London Antarctic Landscapes, Churchill College, Cambridge

Solomon Gallery, Dublin

2004

In Antarctica, Number Nine the Gallery, Birmingham

Yehudi Menuhin School

2005

Recent Paintings, Cadogan Contemporary, London

Paintings from French Guiana, Logica Holdings Ltd,

2006

Arctandria, Oslo, Norway

London

2006

Arctandria, Oslo, Norway

E.S.A. Pavilion, International Air Show, Le Bourget,

2008

Snow, Sea and Stars, Partridge Gallery, London Galleri Arctandria, Oslo, Norway

Paris 1984 1985 1986

Elements of the Earth, Chris Beetles Gallery, London

Recent Landscapes of England and South America,

2010

Browse & Darby, London

2016 Metamorphosis, Chris Beetles Gallery, London

Paintings and Drawings of Sarawak, Francis Kyle

2017

North by New English, Chris Beetles Gallery, London

Gallery, London

2018

Antarctica, Chris Beetles Gallery, London

Between Two Extremes: Painting and drawings of

2020

Invention and Variation, Chris Beetles Gallery, London

French Guiana and Sarawak, Metropole Arts Centre, 1987

Cadogan Contemporary, London Haugesund Art Gallery, Norway

The Sun, Browse & Darby, London

City Art Gallery, Trondheim, Norway 1982

The Northern Element: Landscape Paintings, St

Polytechnic Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

Norway (with the British Council) 1981

Cadogan Contemporary, London

Folkestone

2022

Visions of Nature, Biodiversum, Luxembourg

Paintings of the North and the Tropics, Abbot Hall

2023

One-man exhibition and book launch at Osborne Samuel Gallery, London

Art Gallery, Kendal Landscapes of the Frozen North, Francis Kyle

2024

Retrospective exhibition, The Atkinson, Southport

Gallery, London 1988

Cadogan Contemporary, London

Group Exhibitions

Touring exhibition to Alta, Tromsø, North Norway

1954

Young Contemporaries, Royal Society of British

1989

Cadogan Contemporary, London

Artists, London (and Arts Council tour)

1990

Paintings of the Arctic and the Desert, Crane Kalman

Six Young Contemporaries and Hubert Dalwood,

Gallery, London

Gimpel Fils, London

1991

Keith Grant, Artist in Residence: Recent Paintings, Roehampton Institute, London

1992

1993

Thirty Contemporary Paintings, Arts Council (tour) 1955

Recent Paintings: Rainforest and the Kaieteur Falls,

Burlington Galleries, London

Guyana; Arctic Night Skies, Gillian Jason Gallery,

1957

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London

London

1958

Young Contemporaries, Royal Society of British

Farther North: Paintings of the Arctic, The First

Artists, London (and Arts Council tour, 1959)

Gallery, Southampton 1994

1995

Daily Express Young Artists’ Exhibition, New

Ice and Fire, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London 1959

St. Pancras Artists, St Pancras Festival, St Pancras

Ice and Fire, Rocket Gallery, London

Town Hall, London

Glyndebourne Opera House

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London

Paintings and drawings, Cassian de Vere Cole, London

September Selection, New Art Centre, London 1960

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London

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1960 1961

Contemporary Painting and Sculpture for

Public Commissions

Leicestershire Schools, Arts Council (tour)

1957

London Group, RBA Galleries, London 1962

1965

1959

Mural for Rhodesia House, London (destroyed) Shell Guide to Wiltshire

Keith Grant, Terry Lee, Donald Pass. Pictures for Offices, New Art Centre, London

1961

Shell Guide to Cardiganshire and Breconshire

Towards Art?, RCA, London

1962

Shell Guide to Shetland

Contemporary Drawings and Watercolours, New Art

1964

Mural for Silver Springs Hotel, Cork (destroyed)

Centre, London

1965

Stage designs for Ingmar Bergman’s A Painting on Wood and The City, LAMDA, London

St Pancras Artists, St Pancras Town Hall, London 1968

Murals for Verulamium Museum, St Albans (destroyed)

Spring Exhibition, Bradford City Art Gallery

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London

1970

Idomeneo (Arts Council grant)

25 Camden Artists, 1968 Camden Festival, Central

1971

St Joan, Shaw Theatre, Euston Road

Library, Swiss Cottage, London

1972

Mural for Middlesex Hospital (destroyed)

Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Camden Studios,

1975

Mural for Charing Cross Hospital, London

London; proceeds to Medical Aid Committee for

1977

Stage designs for Salomé, Collegiate Theatre, London

Vietnam Sculpture Exhibition: City of London Festival

1980

Mosaic for Charing Cross Hospital, London

1969

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London

1981

Mosaic for Gateshead Metro (two further mosaics,

1970

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London

1982–3) Stage designs for Hamlet, Young Vic, London

Kinetics, Hayward Gallery, London 1971

British Paintings and Drawings, Roland, Browse &

1994

Stained-glass window dedicated to J.B. Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes, Belle Vue Boys’ School,

Delbanco

Bradford

1972

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London

1973

Peter Coker; Alfred Cohen; Keith Grant; Barbara

1999/2000 Stained-glass windows for Charing Cross Hospital

Tribe, Fieldborne Galleries, London

2004

Altarpiece for Kopervik Church, Karnøy, Norway (destroyed)

1974

Ludlow Festival

1976

The Roland Collection, Camden Arts Centre, London

1980

Festival of North Norway, Harstad, Norway

Public Collections

1983

Pintura británica contemporánea, Museo Municipal,

Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal; Alfred East Art Gallery, Kettering;

Madrid

All Souls College, University of Oxford; Art Gallery of

Modern Art and Nature, Scottish National Gallery of

Hamilton, Ontario; Arts Council Collection, Southbank

Modern Art, Edinburgh

Centre; Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport; Beaverbrook

1986

The Ridgeway, Swindon Art Gallery

Foundation, New Brunswick; Borough of Camden Council;

1987

Susan Foster; Keith Grant; Bill Wilkinson; Don

Britten–Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh; Fitzwilliam Museum,

Wilkinson, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal

Cambridge; Government Art Collection; Hatton Gallery,

Ten Contemporary Scottish Painters, Thackeray

Newcastle; Haugesund Art Gallery, Norway; Imperial

Gallery, London

College of Science and Technology, London; Imperial

Images of Paradise, for Survival International,

Health Charity Art Collection; Leamington Spa Art Gallery &

Harewood House, Leeds

Museum; Leicestershire County Council Artworks Collection;

The Late Dr Guy Howard’s Collection, Abbot Hall Art

Manchester City Art Gallery; National Gallery, Guyana;

Gallery, Kendal

National Gallery of Iceland; National Gallery of New South

1995

SPENN, Sortland, North Norway

Wales; Museum of New Zealand | Te Papa Tongarewa; New

1996

Kunstnerhuset, Sortland, North Norway

Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton; North Lincolnshire Museums

2000

Summer Exhibition, Haugesund Art Gallery, Norway

Service; Portsmouth Museums & Visitor Services; Royal

2010

Volcano, Compton Verney, Warwickshire

College of Art; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich;

2022

London Art Fair

Touchstones, Rochdale; Towner, Eastbourne; Trondheim City

2025

Magma Rising, Science and Art Event at the Heong

Art Gallery, Norway; University of Birmingham; University of

Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge

Surrey; Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1989

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Published to coincide with the exhibition

An Appreciative Note

Keith Grant: The Last Ice 4 June to 4 July 2025

In the mid 1960s I began exhibiting my work at Roland Browse & Delbanco, a

© The artist, the authors and The Redfern Gallery, London

Today the Redfern continues to occupy the same premises in Cork Street and is,

gallery in Cork Street, London, next door to the Redfern, with only a dividing wall between them.

as it was in the 1960s, my favourite venue for seeing the work of contemporary British artists.

Essay: © Judith LeGrove

I remember the Redfern’s show of John Minton’s Caribbean paintings. It was a

Photography: Alex Fox (all works unless stated) Anne Purkiss (inside front and inside back cover; p. 2; pp. 38-39; p. 75; p. 76) Douglas Atfield (p. 49) Design: Graham Rees Design

revelation of jewel-like sensual tropical colour which still lives in my visual memory.

In the early 60s I saw Patrick Procktor’s first show at the Redfern which also made a long-lasting and wonderful impression.

However, perhaps the most influential and creative personal experience I gained from a Redfern exhibition was that of the early paintings of Alan Reynolds which still enriches my approach to landscape. Here I must admit that my admiration of the Redfern Gallery and its artists was accompanied by a prevailing wish to

Print: Gomer Press

become one of them.

Published by The Redfern Gallery, London 2025 ISBN: 978-0-948460-95-1

admit the same excitement as I would have felt had this happened much earlier

Now, in my 95th year, that wish has been realized and I am not embarrassed to

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying recording or any other information storage or retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the gallery.

in my career.

I would like to thank most sincerely Richard Gault and Richard Selby, the two directors of the Redfern, for offering me the opportunity to hold an exhibition in their iconic gallery.

My deepest thanks must go to Judith LeGrove who has at short notice written the introductory essay for the catalogue of my show. Judith’s quality as a writer on art and music is well known and admired. I am immensely proud to be the subject of her interest and support both in respect of my first Redfern exhibition and the splendid monograph Judith wrote on my work which was recently published by Lund Humphries.

front cover (illus. p. 21)

Finally, I am deeply indebted to the poet, artist/collagist, art critic and writer on

The Stillness of the Arctic Night (Last Ice Series) 2024 Oil on canvas | 61 × 50 cm

art and artists, Andrew Lambirth, for his unfailing support and advice. He has maintained a correspondence with me that is both inspirational and creative. No artist could have a more considerate and approachable friend, an assertion which I know is shared by all who know and profoundly respect him.

Keith Grant, Norway, May 2025

20 Cork Street, London W1S 3H L +44 (0)20 7734 1732 info@redfern-gallery.com redfern-gallery.com Mon-Fri 11am to 5:30pm Sat 11am to 2pm

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