Mackenzie Thorpe, Long Was the Night 70cmx70cm signed limited edition print

Mackenzie Thorpe (British, b. 1956) Long Was the Night — signed limited edition print, 27/850 Published by Washington Green Fine Art complete with Certificate of Authenticity

Hand-signed by the artist in pencil lower right, titled and numbered 27/850 in pencil to the lower margin. [Washington Green blindstamp to lower margin.]

A quietly powerful example of Thorpe's Industrial work — the body of imagery drawn directly from his upbringing in 1950s Middlesbrough, where his father laboured and Thorpe himself worked in the shipyards before turning to art. A line of small, huddled figures files across a stone bridge beneath a single lamp, the dark bulk of the works and its chimney rising behind them against a pale ochre sky. Below, the river holds the last of the light. The title says it plainly: a long shift ended, the walk home begun. It carries the whole of Thorpe's subject in one image — the individual made small by industry, the group made warm by company.

The palette is characteristically restrained, slate blues and soft greys set against that single luminous band of sky, and the figures are rendered in the tender shorthand that made Thorpe one of Britain's most widely collected living artists. He was named the Fine Art Trade Guild's Best Selling Published Artist in 2000.

Professionally framed by Castle Gallery in a broad gold gilt moulding with washline double mount, glazed. Framed size 70cm x 70cm