John Bratby

Elm Park Gardens

1955

© The estate of John Bratby. All Rights Reserved 2018 / Bridgeman Images

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Not on display

Artist: John Bratby 1928–1992
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1016 x 1270 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1957
Reference: T00122

Catalogue entry

T00122 ELM PARK GARDENS 1955

Not inscribed.
Canvas, 40×50 (101·5×127).
Purchased from the Beaux Arts Gallery (Cleve and Knapping Funds and Grant-in-Aid) 1957.
Exh: Beaux Arts Gallery, September–October 1955 (14); Arts Council, Six Young Painters, 1956 (10).

Painted in the summer of 1955. The artist wrote (27 February 1957) that the picture was painted in half a day: ‘I often take advantage of...periods of nervous tension...to paint in, for I find my tense state at such times imparts to the picture a tense and alive quality.... For a long time I had looked at the white curtained windows of my room at 63 Elm Park Gardens: the gardens without framed by the window frames and the white, holed curtains, with a table top or chair below, was a scene that demanded to be painted. I am at the moment concerned with a series on that very same visual theme.... ’ He frequently felt better able to maintain the unity of a composition over a short period of time, and this work differs from T00104 in that the latter was built up in stages over several days or even weeks. No.T.122 is painted over a very thinly executed composition, ‘Jean’, March 1955, exhibited at the ‘Daily Express’ Young Artists Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, April–May 1955 (27). Traces of this composition show through on the left and middle of the picture.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I