When Christopher Le Brun established his reputation is the mid 1980s it was as one of the most ambitious painters at work in Europe. His paintings, often filled with horses, forests and trees represented an eloquent attempt to fuse abstract and figurative impulses and to enrich painting by building from the art of the past and to invigorate subject matter through recourse to mythology.

Silver Birch well illustrates these concerns. A bold image of characteristic audacity, it places the trunk of a silver birch tree to the right of centre, bisecting the canvas with the certainty of Barnett Newman's stripe paintings. Taking five years to complete, the layer upon layer of blues, greens and silver, punctuated with touches of warm red of Silver Birch, are painted with a delicacy of touch and deceptive simplicity of composition that recalls the surfaces of Monet's late paintings of waterlilies in the Orangerie in Paris.