Hanley’s early gouache The Farm creates a complex and dreamlike scene, echoing the surrealist qualities of 1930s British Art. Using diverging planes of colour and contrasting shapes, Hanley portrays a unique view of the Hertfordshire fields with an unusual and playful sense of perspective and place. Pale earthy and silver hues, and a scattering of hay bales set out across the scene gives a distinct nod to Paul Nash who, like Hanley, held a deep emotional connection to the British countryside and its history. At the centre of the composition, the landscape is punctured by a series of ‘windows’ where a farmer sits in his tractor amongst several abstracted shapes, akin to Eileen Agar’s imagined organic forms.