Finis Coronat Opus

Charles Bell began his series of Pinball Machines in 1977. This subject is one of his most renowned for its visual splendor as well as for being one that he returned to time and again. The series was the perfect vehicle for his life-long exploration of light and its portrayal with paint. Finis Coronat Opus is the thirty-eighth and, as referenced by the title, the final example of these extraordinary paintings. By 1995, the last year of the artist's life, Bell's technical abilities and aesthetic judgement had reached their pinnacle and Finis Coronat Opus is truly one of the masterworks from the Pinball Machines series and Bell's entire body of work. Louis Meisel writes, "During the first five years of the nineties...Bell put forth the most intense efforts of his career. He persevered to create paintings that were not only some of his finest and most ambitious, but without doubt among the finest realist paintings ever accomplished" (L. Meisel, Photorealism at the Millennium, New York, 2002, p. 51).