View from the artist’s bedroom (12 Maple Road, Dudley), c. 1934, oil on canvas, 520 x 620mm, Dudley Museum & Art Gallery.
Wren’s nest is a famous geological site (and today a Nature Reserve) near Dudley and a green oasis in the industrial Black Country. On its slopes Dudley built the first of its council houses. The Shakespeares (Percy was the fourth of eight children) were re-housed there in the late 1920s, from the Dudley slums. The bedroom, which Percy shared with one of his three brothers, also doubled as his studio and served as the setting for his self-portrait, Morning Exercise, 1934.
