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拍品專文
The artists' studios at 77 Bedford Gardens, where Colquhoun and MacBryde were based from 1941, became a hub of artistic activity and Peter Watson introduced the Two Roberts to a number of other artists including Freud, Craxton and Vaughan. Minton shared their studio for a short time and the Polish artist, Jankel Adler, took a studio at 77 Bedford Gardens in 1943.
Adler was a huge influence on both the Roberts, bringing a fresh European approach to their painting and breaking them away from their previous involvement in Neo-Romantiscism. Colquhoun was particularly influenced by Adler and this can be seen in the present work. This painting is similar in subject matter, colour and technique to a group of paintings that Colquhoun executed during the war years, which includes The Two Sisters, 1942 (sold Christie's, London, 18 November 2005, lot 29, for £102,000, a world record price).
Although, by the 1940s, Adler's work had become more abstract and Cubist there is a clear link between the two artists (see lot 172). Adrian Clark writes, 'Adler seems to have been seen to represent a world - in his case, Jewish - that he had lost and that was itself literally to be lost during the war. Many of his human pictures are not portraits, but are 'incorporations of his memories', which have been robbed of their characteristics and reduced to types. This strikes a chord when considering many of Colquhoun's unidentifiable female Celtic peasant 'types' (see The reputation and achievement of Robert Colquhoun: A reassessment, The British Art Journal, Volume III, No. 3, Autumn 2002, p. 78).
The sallow yellow and green colour tones of the present work are very close to those that Colquhoun used in The Two Sisters and also in The Fortune Teller, 1946 (Tate Britain). In a BBC programme, broadcast in October 1959, Colquhoun attributed the use of these colours to his Scottish heritage, identifying, 'a kind of nostalgia which took shape in colours, dark greens, yellows, not bright yellows, no bright colours whatsoever and certain rather drooping, maybe sad, shapes' (quoted in A. Clarke, ibid, p. 82).
In the present work the two women stand in an interior and hold hands, over a letter sitting on a table top in front of them. It was a scene that would have been repeated in households across the country in 1944. Colquhoun does not give the women or the bleak interior that they stand in, any particularly distinguishing charcteristics . They have become generalistions of grieving women, depicted at a particular moment when the news is very fresh. One woman leans her head towards the other, who stands with her eyes lowered and lips sealed, and although the women are united in their grief and have contact through holding hands, Colquhoun's painting technique leaves a pervading sense of isolation and undeniable separateness between them.
Adler was a huge influence on both the Roberts, bringing a fresh European approach to their painting and breaking them away from their previous involvement in Neo-Romantiscism. Colquhoun was particularly influenced by Adler and this can be seen in the present work. This painting is similar in subject matter, colour and technique to a group of paintings that Colquhoun executed during the war years, which includes The Two Sisters, 1942 (sold Christie's, London, 18 November 2005, lot 29, for £102,000, a world record price).
Although, by the 1940s, Adler's work had become more abstract and Cubist there is a clear link between the two artists (see lot 172). Adrian Clark writes, 'Adler seems to have been seen to represent a world - in his case, Jewish - that he had lost and that was itself literally to be lost during the war. Many of his human pictures are not portraits, but are 'incorporations of his memories', which have been robbed of their characteristics and reduced to types. This strikes a chord when considering many of Colquhoun's unidentifiable female Celtic peasant 'types' (see The reputation and achievement of Robert Colquhoun: A reassessment, The British Art Journal, Volume III, No. 3, Autumn 2002, p. 78).
The sallow yellow and green colour tones of the present work are very close to those that Colquhoun used in The Two Sisters and also in The Fortune Teller, 1946 (Tate Britain). In a BBC programme, broadcast in October 1959, Colquhoun attributed the use of these colours to his Scottish heritage, identifying, 'a kind of nostalgia which took shape in colours, dark greens, yellows, not bright yellows, no bright colours whatsoever and certain rather drooping, maybe sad, shapes' (quoted in A. Clarke, ibid, p. 82).
In the present work the two women stand in an interior and hold hands, over a letter sitting on a table top in front of them. It was a scene that would have been repeated in households across the country in 1944. Colquhoun does not give the women or the bleak interior that they stand in, any particularly distinguishing charcteristics . They have become generalistions of grieving women, depicted at a particular moment when the news is very fresh. One woman leans her head towards the other, who stands with her eyes lowered and lips sealed, and although the women are united in their grief and have contact through holding hands, Colquhoun's painting technique leaves a pervading sense of isolation and undeniable separateness between them.