Wet night, Brighton

Clarice Beckett
Wet night, Brighton 1930
oil on board
Private collection
Image courtesy of Art Gallery of South Australia

Wet night, Brighton distils to an essence the vision and feeling that is evident throughout Clarice Beckett’s oeuvre. Beckett had the courage of her convictions, and her clear-headed attention to composition was always calculated to suit her chosen subject. She knew exactly what effect she was after.

At first glance Wet night, Brighton is an unassuming, modestly sized picture of a rainy evening; a flooded bayside suburban road demarcated by four poles, and a rising surf behind. Despite its apparent simplicity its compositional motifs and painterly effects are carefully orchestrated to evoke an atmosphere of silence to heighten its emotional impact and mood. Its power lies in its evocation of feeling, in its suggestion of things intangible and unseeable that can create in the quiet, intuitive viewer an intense encounter with something familiar and simultaneously strange.