City and River in Orange Landscape

In 1961 and 1962, Robert Ellis took sabbatical leave from his position as senior lecturer at Elam School of Fine Arts and visited Great Britain and Spain. Travels in the latter influenced him deeply. City and River in Orange Landscape is evocative of the sort of Castilian town that he encountered. The sense of aerial perspective no doubt relates to his time serving with the 3 Group Bomber Command Photographic Unit of the Royal Air Force between 1947 and 1949. Ellis has commented, ‘I spent most of my airforce working life in the Photo Section processing thousands of aerial prints containing complex multiple images, each annotated with data … This novel way of experiencing landscape, coupled with the appended notes, made a lasting impression.’[1]

[1] Hamish Keith et al., Robert Ellis (Tāmaki Makaurau: Ron Sang Publications, 2014), 283.