JOHN BELLANY C.B.E., R.A. (SCOTTISH 1942-2013) §
ABERDEEN FISHERMAN, C.1971
£22,500
Contemporary & Post-War Art // Prints & Multiples
Auction: Contemporary & Post-War Art: 06 April 2022 | From 11:00
Description
Signed upper right, oil on canvas
Dimensions
161cm x 99cm (63.25in x 39in)
Provenance
Provenance: Phillips Edinurgh, 2000;
Rendezvous Gallery, Aberdeen;
where purchased by the present owner.
Footnote
Note: This fantastic example of Bellany’s work dates from 1971, arguably his strongest decade of output, and is a museum-quality example from the period.
Sandy Moffatt, the Scottish artist and educator, was a fellow student and subsequent close lifelong friend of Bellany’s. He reminisced about the picture for us:
“If I recall correctly, John came up from London for summer breaks….visiting his old haunts in Rose Street and re-charging his batteries.
Leaving his angst-ridden London work behind him he produced these gentler ‘realist’ paintings of solitary old codgers….
He would let his imagination run riot and would invent individual life stories for his characters… old sailors who had sailed the seven seas, old soldiers who had seen action in numerous wars… and so on.”
In this work, a lone figure of a thin old man gazes off into the middle distance, a short whiskey glass nursed in one hand, and a walking cane over the crook of his arm. Surreally, a large fish lies dead and glassy-eyed on the table top.
Anecdotally titled ‘Aberdeen Fisherman’, the gentleman in fact cuts something of an elegant figure, with erect bearing and crossed legs, and clothed in a beret and long black coat. Interestingly, the same figure recurs in the 1972 work ‘Two Drinkers’, which is a more expansive composition featuring a pub interior and a second seated companion; a woman eating a poke of chips.
We are grateful to Alexander Moffat for his assistance cataloguing this lot.