Though he had a keen technical interest in his subjects, it is atmosphere that is the key to his style. Each picture is carefully planned and drawn before he starts with colour. Like Stanley Spencer, he worked across from the centre of his composition: “An unfinished work had the appearance of colour by numbers!” But, when complete, the detail fades around the subject like an early photo.
Apart from his own knowledge of the cars he had owned and had contact with Peter maintained an extensive photo-library. Not all of the many hundreds of photographs in the collection are of modern origin, since he also has a collection of Victorian and Edwardian photographs which provide essential reference material for backgrounds and settings.
Peter knew most of the cars he had painted and he has studied them at close quarters. He firmly believed that a painter should know his subject, and have a feeling with that subject, be it a building, a person, a landscape or a motor car, in order to paint it with love and conviction. He took hundreds of photographs of his wheeled subjects and he also had a collection of Victorian and Edwardian photographs which he used as reference material for his paintings, this was the starting point for his paintings.
Peter stretched his own canvasses and he worked out the initial composition in his head before he put pencil to paper. Many thumbnail sketches were drawn to make the ideas tangible. He normally began with a pencil drawing, making use of all the source material he had collected.
He used many pencil lines to keep the verticals and horizontals true and also to work out complex perspective guidelines.
A very detailed drawing was made on the white canvas, first in pencil, this sometimes took two or three days for a large canvas. When he was happy with this initial drawing, Peter would go over the pencil lines with diluted burnt umber oil paint. The drawing in oil paint would be left to dry, usually overnight, and then the canvas was given a thin wash of umber or sienna, which removed the glaring white canvas. The very thin coat of paint was then left to dry. The actual painting then begins – usually with the most interesting part, as in this painting the gramophone.
Peter used a very limited colour range (titanium white, burnt and raw umber, sepia, cadmium yellow deep) and often the paint was used virtually straight out of the tube and mixed with brush on his palette. Each mixture is carefully resolved on the palette and then laid on the canvas stroke next to stroke. The horn area is developed like this with very gradual changes of colour and tone, a very soft tonal range being built up.
After two or three days the painting is beginning to resolve itself. The window areas are worked on again using a limited range of paint: white, Payne’s grey and blue black, with umber and ochre for the framework. He would then go back and to an earlier section which had dried, and emphasise the drawing, in this case on the horn. He added delicate highlights using white and cadmium yellow trying to create the glint on polished metal. Work has started on the tablecloths as well, using a touch of cadmium red and white to bring out the stripes.
An interesting area is the mirror reflecting the horn and the room. This is worked using ochres, whites and browns. The lamp in the centre was painted in and some of the brown wash has been purposely left off the oil lamp in the foreground, the patch of brilliant white canvas giving the final layer of oil paint a glow and luminosity. The initial colour wash gives a unity to the work as a whole. The white patch is really prominent. All the decorative iron work under the gramophone is completed. The ferns behind the horn are finished using a green mixed with umber and yellow. The dark structural areas of the mirror are strengthened and emphasised. Little touches of highlight are added to try and get the beautiful glowing reflective quality. The scrolls on the iron work below the horn are softened and strengthened. All the chairs and tablecloths are finished and the addition of nearly pure white touches or white with Naples yellow bring out the dappled light effects on the cloth. The lamp shade in the foreground is worked into over the white patch of canvas.
About ten days later and ten hours work each day, the painting is virtually finished. The left-hand side is completed after being wiped off and reworked several times. All the highlights have been added, sometimes over and over again, particularly in the centers of interest, such as the horn light and oil lamps. Some dark areas have been ‘bought out’ to give more depth.
Much of this careful planning might be obliterated in the final painting but the basic foundation and skeleton lines are always there. Initially, Peter started with the most interesting part. Each section of the painting is virtually finished as it goes along and each day the work grows. Sometimes corrections were carried out if he felt things were not working out as they ought. But there is no compromise at this stage and there are instances when he wiped away three days of work and started again!
He worked every day for eight to ten hours. A large canvas took approximately two weeks for completion if everything went well. When the last area of the painting is completed, it was usual to appraise the whole work and rework certain sections, usually adding highlights and strengthening the dark areas. Peter always worked on one painting at a time and even though a small painting may be completed in a week, the larger ones took a month or two. Linen canvas was always used as the surface is just right to obtain the soft effect which is a hallmark of his paintings. Peter worked exclusively in oils as their plasticity, versatility and smell appealed to him although he would produce watercolours or pastel sketches beforehand.
Peter fulfilled many commissions, but he preferred to paint what he wanted when he wanted.