The Artist’s Eyes
Cyril’s work could almost be a case study straight from The Artist's Eyes: Vision and the History of Art by Michael F Marmor and James G Ravin. The book conveys the effect that the deterioration of vision had on the style, medium and subject of a number of famous artists without arguing whether later works were inferior or superior to earlier works as a consequence.
As a an excellent draughtsman with a fine tuned eye for observation, Cyril’s work exemplifies an artist who cannot see the detail but knows that the detail is there. Cyril would also have appreciated that Patrick Trevor Roper, ophthalmologist, gay rights pioneer and author of an earlier classic The World through blunted sight, helped establish the Haile Selassie Eye Hospital in Addis Ababa.
