Detail of Alpinist, 2022 (full picture below)
(Picture: Peter Doig)After years of being based mostly in Trinidad, the artist Peter Doig is back in London. And just as his move from here to the Caribbean prompted a marvellous shift in his paintings more than 20 years ago, adding looseness and luminosity, so his return seems to promise a newly fecund era.
Canal, one of 12 paintings in this Courtauld show, was completed this year (perhaps I am kidding myself that I could smell the paint), and is a view of the Regent’s Canal. The composition is apparently based on a birthday card Doig made for his young son, who sits at a table with a pair of fried eggs on a plate, a canal barge to the left and a bridge behind.
