The Gathering Hill

An enchanting mid-century naïve style street scene composition, executed in oil onto board.

This painting presents a stylised street scene set against a radiant orange hillside, where a rhythmic procession of figures moves quietly along a winding path. Above them, a constellation of small, brightly coloured houses – each with red roofs and dark punctuated windows – rests across the slope like watchful sentinels. A solitary tree stands to one side, its simplified form lending balance and anchoring the composition within an imagined, almost dreamlike terrain. Below the path, tall, slender flowers rise in neat formation, reinforcing the painting’s sense of order, ritual, and gentle continuity.

Executed in a naïve, folk-inspired style, the work embraces deliberate simplicity and symbolic clarity over realism. The figures with elongated silhouettes are rendered with minimal detail. The houses, reduced to geometric blocks, and the evenly spaced floral motifs contribute to a harmonious, almost ceremonial rhythm across the canvas.

The colour palette is both bold and luminous, dominated by warm tones of burnt orange, amber, and ochre that saturate the landscape with warmth and intensity. These glowing hues are contrasted by jewel-like accents of cobalt blue, forest green, and deep brown within the houses, while flashes of red in the rooftops and flowers punctuate the composition with vitality. The sky, rendered in muted rust tones, enhances the sense of enveloping warmth and creates a cohesive atmospheric envelope.

Brushstrokes are thick, confident, and tactile, lending texture and dimensionality to the surface. The paint is applied with expressive freedom – sweeping and layered across the hillside, while more deliberate, smaller strokes define architectural details and figures. This material presence of paint reinforces the work’s authenticity and emotional immediacy.

This oil on board is is housed in a complementary gilt frame. Both the painting and frame are in excellent vintage condition. 

Size: 55 x 66 cm (including frame)