Echo Lake
- Artist: Peter Doig
- Date: 1998
- Medium: Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 2305 x 3605 x 52 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is the "Echo Lake" by Peter Doig, created in 1998 as an oil on canvas that stretches across a wide horizon. The work shows a nocturnal scene split by a thin white line that marks the shore. Above the line, a band of earth and scrub is lit from the center‑right by the headlamps of an American‑style police car. The light spills over the tops of nearby trees and the telegraph pole to the left, balancing the composition. The sky above is a deep purplish‑black, with a few distant twinkling lights suggesting far‑off houses. The policeman, in black trousers, white shirt, and a narrow tie, stands at the water’s edge looking straight into the painting, his hands around his face and mouth open in a shout that echoes across the darkness. The lower half mirrors the upper scene in a blurry reflection, making the lake itself a visual echo. Doig often uses such reflections as portals to other worlds, and here the echo title signals that only the shout returns. The painting combines thick impasto with thin glazes, a hallmark of Doig’s late 1990s landscape series.
See it in person
Echo Lake 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.
