John Piper at Portman Gallery

A friend wanted to see a show of John Piper works at Portman Gallery, a commercial gallery off Piccadilly. Piper's best known works are landscapes in a graphic style (they are paintings but look rather like lithographs) in a subdued palette, but there were also some collages and abstract paintings - this added interest in terms of Piper as an artist, but these latter were not, in my opinion, anything like the quality of his landscapes. It's interesting how some artists hit on a successful format but still try other far less successful things - out of boredom perhaps? The prices were relatively low (averaging about £10,000) but few seem to have been sold although the show was about to close, and some of the better pieces were loans - is this a way for a gallery to make the overall quality seem higher than it is? I suppose Piper is not fashionable and his fans will probably have examples of his work already (he died twenty years ago), but the lack of interest seems a shame for an artist of this calibre.