View from the artist’s bedroom (12 Maple Road, Dudley), c. 1934, oil on canvas, 520 x 620mm, Dudley Museum & Art Gallery.
This painting shows a view from the artist’s bedroom. Wren’s Nest – a famous geological site (and today a Nature Reserve) near Dudley – was a green oasis in the industrial Black Country. On its slopes Dudley built the first of its council houses. The Shakespeare family were re-housedthere 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 striking self-portrait, Morning Exercise, 1934.
