George Devlin should be ranked as one of the best British landscape painters of the modern era. His approach to painting landscape was established by the Impressionists in the 1880s: to sit in front of the subject, en plein aire, and work until the picture was essentially complete. In the studio a critical eye would bring him back to the canvas to make a few adjustments, the same rigorous examination he would give to a still life subject or a portrait, but the essentials of the landscape that made it belong to the day it was made were always preserved. 

He approached his subject with a sense of wonder and his ability to make it permanent in oil paint and his gift was generously shared.

He is deeply missed as a man but we have as a legacy his paintings, each imbued with a balance of intuition and consideration, each displaying the energetic mark-making, brilliant colour and assured drawing with the brush which are Devlin’s trademarks. 

Each is a window onto a different experience made permanent by a painter and philosopher we are privileged to have known.

words by Guy Peploe