Lot Essay
Painted in 1964, Homage to Douanier Rousseau is one of the most important early works by John Bellany to come to market. Depicting The Beatles, alongside the artist himself (far right) and his friends, the monumental diptych has not been seen since its only notorious public exhibition in 1964, having remained in the same private collection for almost 60 years.
Whilst at Edinburgh College of Art, Bellany was awarded a travel scholarship which enabled him to visit Paris for the first time in April 1963 along with his contemporaries Sandy Moffat and Alan Bold. There, they managed to complete a survey of French painting since the Revolution, firing Bellany’s imagination and making him determined to paint on an epic scale. As the title of the present work suggests, the painting belongs to a body of work which sees Bellany pay homage to these great influences: Titian, Rembrandt, Piero Della Francesca, Bellini, Edvard Munch and Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes along with, in the case of the present work, Douanier Rousseau.
When he returned to Edinburgh, he painted a mural in the backyard of a Greek restaurant near to his flat, in the style of Fernand Léger, with a piano in the middle. John McEwen explains, ‘The piano was a protest against the restrictions of college life and the prim requirements of bourgeois taste. Music spoke to all, so why not art? And it also had a socialist intent by taking art out of the exclusive domain of the galleries’ (J. McEwan, John Bellany, Edinburgh, 1994, p. 46).
In emulation of Courbet’s socialist approach to his practice (being the first artist to propose an alternative to the Academy), Bellany and Moffat decided to hold an exhibition of their work on the railings of Castle Terrace during the Edinburgh Festival in August 1963. The notoriety of this exhibition ‘made them realise they had created a polemical situation, which they determined to exploit … they had the audacity in 1964 and 1965 to win a street trader’s license from the City Council to show their work on the Mound, the site of the Royal Scottish Academy and the National Gallery of Scotland. For a minimal sum they were allowed to use the railings flanking the garden side of the RSA and the National Gallery throughout the three weeks of the Festival. Every visitor was virtually certain to see their work … Considering the difficulties young painters always face when trying to exhibit their work, it was a wonderfully bold stroke and one that has deservedly entered folk legend’ (ibid., p. 48). The present work was exhibited on the railings outside the Royal Scottish Academy in August 1964, firmly placing Scottish art into the gaze of the visitors to the sell-out Delacroix exhibition and acting as a defining moment for both Bellany’s career, and in the examination of Scottish art.
As McEwan suggests, music was another important influence in Bellany’s life, having been a member of a pop group late into his art school career. In the present work we see Rousseau’s artillerymen replaced with members of pop music’s first super group, The Beatles, who by 1964 were emblems of the iconoclasm and revolution sweeping the country during the Swinging Sixties. One of Bellany’s mentors at the Royal College of Art in London was Pop artist Peter Blake, who would go on to design the legendary album artwork for The Beatles’ 1967 album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It is not inconceivable that Blake was aware of Bellany’s recent work.
Whilst at Edinburgh College of Art, Bellany was awarded a travel scholarship which enabled him to visit Paris for the first time in April 1963 along with his contemporaries Sandy Moffat and Alan Bold. There, they managed to complete a survey of French painting since the Revolution, firing Bellany’s imagination and making him determined to paint on an epic scale. As the title of the present work suggests, the painting belongs to a body of work which sees Bellany pay homage to these great influences: Titian, Rembrandt, Piero Della Francesca, Bellini, Edvard Munch and Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes along with, in the case of the present work, Douanier Rousseau.
When he returned to Edinburgh, he painted a mural in the backyard of a Greek restaurant near to his flat, in the style of Fernand Léger, with a piano in the middle. John McEwen explains, ‘The piano was a protest against the restrictions of college life and the prim requirements of bourgeois taste. Music spoke to all, so why not art? And it also had a socialist intent by taking art out of the exclusive domain of the galleries’ (J. McEwan, John Bellany, Edinburgh, 1994, p. 46).
In emulation of Courbet’s socialist approach to his practice (being the first artist to propose an alternative to the Academy), Bellany and Moffat decided to hold an exhibition of their work on the railings of Castle Terrace during the Edinburgh Festival in August 1963. The notoriety of this exhibition ‘made them realise they had created a polemical situation, which they determined to exploit … they had the audacity in 1964 and 1965 to win a street trader’s license from the City Council to show their work on the Mound, the site of the Royal Scottish Academy and the National Gallery of Scotland. For a minimal sum they were allowed to use the railings flanking the garden side of the RSA and the National Gallery throughout the three weeks of the Festival. Every visitor was virtually certain to see their work … Considering the difficulties young painters always face when trying to exhibit their work, it was a wonderfully bold stroke and one that has deservedly entered folk legend’ (ibid., p. 48). The present work was exhibited on the railings outside the Royal Scottish Academy in August 1964, firmly placing Scottish art into the gaze of the visitors to the sell-out Delacroix exhibition and acting as a defining moment for both Bellany’s career, and in the examination of Scottish art.
As McEwan suggests, music was another important influence in Bellany’s life, having been a member of a pop group late into his art school career. In the present work we see Rousseau’s artillerymen replaced with members of pop music’s first super group, The Beatles, who by 1964 were emblems of the iconoclasm and revolution sweeping the country during the Swinging Sixties. One of Bellany’s mentors at the Royal College of Art in London was Pop artist Peter Blake, who would go on to design the legendary album artwork for The Beatles’ 1967 album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It is not inconceivable that Blake was aware of Bellany’s recent work.