Poet Cousins Leslie Gunston & Wilfred Owen

This uplifting, luminous view across the rooftops of Venice by E. Leslie Gunston ARIBA (1895–1988) showcases the architect's hand and eye. Whilst Gunston's urban subject is not the industrial landscape often explored by British postwar artists, his treatment of the view nevertheless shows an engagement with the tension between photographic realism and the artifice of the picture plane.

Gunston, most famously, was the beloved cousin of the First World War poet Wilfred Owen (1893–1918). Cousins Wilfred and Leslie had a lot in common, sharing an interest in Roman remains, visiting Reading's Museum and secondhand bookshops—and above all, sharing a burgeoning love of poetry. The boys had poetry writing competitions between themselves, and when Wilfred enlisted to serve on the front, he regularly wrote to Leslie, including snippets of poems and news of life on the front line. When Wilfred was hospitalised at Craiglockhart in Edinburgh with shellshock, he wrote to Leslie about his transformative meeting with Siegfried Sassoon. At this time Leslie had a volume of poetry published, 'The Nymph, and Other poems', 1917, and Wilfred expressed his eagerness to show it to Sassoon.

Wilfred Owen was killed in action in Northern France on 4 November 1918, exactly one week before the signing of the Armistice which ended the war. Poignantly, after the war, Leslie Gunston designed the Forbury War Memorial in Reading, which was unveiled in 1932. No doubt the memory of his cousin was paramount for him when working on this commission.