Painting

A rare image of Greenwich Wharves in the 1930s. It looks westwards from the east side of the Greenwich Peninsula towards the old gas works now the site of the Dome. It is eerily devoid of figures and nature, both highly atmospheric and sterile. Yet at the same time it provides a detailed visual record of the industrial Greenwich Landscape before its ultimate decline. Cranes cut the sky at different degrees, chimneys provide the verticals. There is great subtlety of composition graduations from grey deepening to black in a study that does not shy away from showing the industrial landscape such as the gas works.

The artist took immense trouble over the paintings. There are at least six preparatory studies for this one, in a combination of pencil, pen, ink, wash and chalk, some of them squared. Cast worked as chief colourist in Harrods's studio before studying at Camberwell School of Art under Albert Rutherston a contemporary of the marine artist John Everett. He then went to the Slade in 1922, where he studied until 1926 under Professor Henry Tonks, who also taught John Everett.

The finished painting dates from about 1938 and is from Sir Brinsley Ford's collection together with the preliminary studies ZBA1765-69. It is also one of a pair with 'Hollick's Wharf', 1934.

Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Donated in memory of the late Sir Brinsley Ford