Bacchante Threatened by a Panther, 1959

In this rapid, assured brush drawing Town tests his mastery of the idealized classical figure within the Western tradition, taking his cue from the neoclassical etchings and brush drawings of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). It is one of a group of drawings in which Town riffs on Bacchanalian scenes by artists such as Titian (c.1488–1576) and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875), creating a series of increasingly violent erotic fantasies. He went on to adapt the allegorical potential of classical myth to convey more specifically contemporary experience.