Harry Weinberger (1924 Berlin, Germany – 2009 Leamington Spa, England)
Welsh Village (in Memory of Heinz), 1982
Oil on canvas
71 x 91 cm
Private collection
© The Estate of Harry Weinberger
Immigrated to England 1939
Weinberger's Welsh Village recalls and pays affectionate homage to the work of his cousin Heinz Koppel, who taught in South Wales at the Merthyr Tydfil Educational Settlement, before heading the Dowlais Art Centre, in the 1940s-50s. Like Koppel's Happy Family - painted some thirty years earlier - the cluster of houses huddled together against the backdrop of a hill forms the heart of Weinberger's composition, although while Koppel's figures float above the town, Weinberger's are embedded within their landscape. The use of the vivid green and blue palette throughout, with colour applied in pure, unmodulated passages of paint, has the effect of blending and uniting the seemingly disparate elements of town and countryside into a harmonious whole.
