Summary
The imagery of this large three-panel painting, or triptych, is taken from the artist’s memory of an incident he witnessed while travelling around the Maghreb, Algeria, in 1964. ‘[The Emigrants] was prompted by my hearing a story-teller on a ship telling a story to a group or groups of North Africans going to Africa,’ de Francia has explained. ‘To me, it felt as though it had something Homeric about it.’ (Quoted in Dodd, p.8.)
This work’s panels, which each measure almost three metres in height, are designed to be read in sequence: ‘I think of the triptych form like chapters of a book’, the artist has said (quoted in Dodd, p.8). The scenes are loosely painted in large, angular areas of colour. Each one is dominated by a small cluster of figures standing on the deck of a ship. In the left panel, two young men – one facing the viewer and one in profile – are shown idly leaning against a rail. The colours are clear and bright, suggesting daytime. The scene in the middle panel is compositionally more complex than the first and, because of the darkening sky, appears to take place later in the day… (read more)
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