A small, meticulously finished surrealist landscape by Patrick Persini in his usual tradition of Magritte and Delvaux, filtered through the French fantastic-realist painters of the 1970s and 80s. A solitary figure in a dark overcoat and blue bowler hat stands at the very base of the composition, a bundle under one arm, holding a length of red cord that trails away across the ground and vanishes off the edge of the picture. Beside him rises a single leafless sapling.
The ground at his feet is a litter of debris — broken timber, pale stones, a cartwheel, twisted metal, an orange fragment of cloth or panel. Above all this the canvas opens into an enormous sky rendered as a graduated wash from acid yellow-green at the horizon through deep viridian to near-black at the top, punctuated by flat white clouds and a thin crescent moon set improbably low and to the right.
The technique is deliberately smooth and impersonal, closer to illustration than to painterly handling, which sharpens the strangeness. Persini's work at auction is consistently catalogued as surrealist landscape at modest cabinet size — one recorded example measures 39 × 31 cm, close to this canvas.
The silver-and-gilt frame with linen slip appears to be the artist's or dealer's choice.
