April 20, 1940 (The Blazing Infant)
- Artist: Grace Pailthorpe
- Date: 1940
- Medium: Oil paint on hardboard
- Dimensions: support: 431 x 577 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “April 20, 1940 (The Blazing Infant)” by Grace Pailthorpe. Pailthorpe was a pioneering woman doctor from Durham who later turned to surrealist art and arts psychotherapy. In the early 1940s she was experimenting with the idea that our subconscious could reveal hidden memories, so this piece was born from that exploration.
The work is oil on hardboard, measuring about 431 × 577 mm, and it shows a fiery, almost monstrous infant floating amid a dream‑like landscape. The scene mixes abstraction and fantastic animal imagery with hints of architecture and even a rocket‑shaped object, suggesting the chaotic, almost war‑torn world that surrounded her. Critics read the image as Pailthorpe’s visual expression of feeling detached from her own family, a dissociation that echoes the surreal, cartoon‑style gestures of the figure.
Created in 1940, the painting was added to the Tate collection in 2016 and has toured on loan to venues like the De La Warr Pavilion and Camden Arts Centre. It sits in the historic 1920‑1940 gallery, inviting viewers to ask what memory, fear, or dream might have lit this infant on fire.
See it in person
April 20, 1940 (The Blazing Infant) is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
