Eleonore Koch typically worked from studies on paper, in which she could experiment with colour before translating her work to the canvas. The writing below this image refers to the specific pigments used. Koch was the only student of the Brazilian master Alfredo Volpi, who taught her his own recipe for mixing egg tempera. She brought many of Volpi’s pigments with her to London, which are noted here, including ‘Verde Volpi’ and ‘Vermelho Volpi,’ while others are from European paint manufacturers including Wilhelm Düll.

This work on paper shares its composition with a larger tempera painting on canvas, Untitled (1984/85), differing notably in the blue tone of the sea, and the substitution of the bush in the foreground with the pier pilings in the later painting. Together, these works provide an insight into Koch’s processes, her paintings often composites of objects and landscape features that lend the correct colour or form for that particular piece. Koch sought the ‘resolution of the painting,’ according to Volpi’s teachings, with the landscape serving as a field in which to perfect the relationships between line, colour and space.