λ JOHN PIPER (BRITISH 1903-1992)TWO SCENES OF THE TOWER OF LONDONOil on linen with scratching out laid down to board, a pairBoth signed (along lower edge)Each 14.5 x 19.5cm (5½ x 7½ in.)Together with another similar view of London, signed (lower right), 19.5 x 14.5cm (3)Provenance:Sir Osbert Sitwell (1892-1969), at 2 Carlyle Square, London, and thence by descent at Weston Hall. Catalogue Note:Osbert Sitwell (1892-1969) 'discovered' the neo-Romantic artist John Piper (1903-92) when he reviewed Piper's Brighton Aquatints (1939) in The Listener. In 1942, Piper was commissioned to design a curtain backdrop for Façade, a theatrical production based on Edith's poetry, music by the Sitwell's composer protégé, William Walton, with Osbert and Sacheverell as organizers and impresarios (The Sitwells and the Arts of the 1920s and 1930s, National Portrait Gallery, 14 October 1994 to 22 January 1995, Exhibition Catalogue, London, 1994, pp. 78-79, 93, no. 3-15). The same year, Piper was invited by Osbert to stay at Renishaw Hall, Yorkshire, the principal Sitwell seat, with a view to commissioning illustrations of Renishaw, other Sitwell domains and neighbouring estates for Osbert's autobiography. By 1943, Piper had produced more than fifty watercolours and oil paintings in his favoured picturesque style. As these were intended for the book and would be reproduced in monochrome, many were done in grisaille. Furthermore, they were painted in the winter of 1942-43, in overcast conditions, portraying the house in a romantic and atmospheric manner. Most of these artworks were shown in The Sitwell Country exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, London. Piper was to be instrumental 'for preserving a record, parallel to the autobiography, of the association between patron and artist' (ibid., p. 186). He also painted Weston Hall in gouache in this period (ibid., pp. 210-211, no. 6.18). Piper became devoted to Osbert, referring to him in the 1960s as: 'the most generous person I've ever known' (D. Seward, Renishaw Hall: The Story of the Sitwells, London, 2015, p. 207). Medium Oil on linen with scratching out laid down to board, a pair