A fine, early example (c. 1920) of John Anthony Park’s impressionist renderings of a southwest harbours; this painting in Brixham Harbour. In 1919 Park married Peggy and the couple moved to Brixham but by 1921 they had moved again, this time on to St Ives.  A large sailing trawler with its distinctive red canvas mainsail already hoisted sails out of the harbour. A dockside crane in the background is a poignant reminder of Brixham Harbour's rather different past. What is particularly striking about the painting are Park’s bold, clean brush strokes of colour with no attempt to blend them on the canvas; in fact considerable effort had to be made to prevent contamination of the brush from the canvas or palette.

Park is acknowledged  as one of the best of English colourists and unsurpassed as a painter of light. The artist was a link between the traditional St Ives school of painters led by Julius Olsson and the emerging modernists such as Peter Lanyon. His impressionist style harks back to his Parisian training but was acknowledged by many of the new modernists to single him out as the most advanced of the traditional school of painters.