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Dimensions: 213.5 by 61cm., 84 by 24in.
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Provenance: Commissioned directly from the Artist by the family of the present owner via the Zwemmer Galleries
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Notes: In an article written for the magazine Encounter in 1954, the critic David Sylvester unwittingly gave the 'Kitchen Sink' tag to the four painters also often grouped together as the 'Beaux Arts Quartet'; John Bratby, Derrick Greaves, Edward Middleditch and Jack Smith. However, recent art historical research has sought to look afresh at these painters, their relationship with each other and their position in the British art world of the 1950s. Now, with over half a century of hindsight, it is becoming possible to see not only how these paintings are informed by the spirit and concerns of the time but also how they fit into both a tradition and context of European social realism.
The 'Kitchen Sink' tag was the painters' equivalent of the contemporary writers' 'Angry Young Men' and whilst it became a convenient form for associating a particular genre of work, it tended to mask the very real differences between the four artists and their work. Of the four artists who made up the 'Beaux Arts Quartet', it was Bratby who consistently drew the headlines. From an early date he was consistently the most aware of his persona as an artist and the way in which press coverage, both good and bad, helped to keep a painter in the public eye. Their appearance in the British exhibition at the 1956 Venice Biennale was a highpoint of press interest in these young artists where the tabloids simultaneously reviled yet actually promoted these young painters, a situation which can be seen to mirror the way the popular press was to become the most effective marketing tool of the YBA's in the 1990s. Most press attention was focussed on Bratby, whose shabby proto-beatnik image came to typify the public perception of the left-orientated artist at the time. The present group of works, covering a period from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, show the core of Bratby's most prominent themes of the period: the interior, the crowded table still-life, images of his wife, Jean Cooke, the self-portrait and sunflowers, the last of which was to become a trademark subject right through to the end of his career.
