Still Life 1978
Jonathan Bowden
1978
Oil on canvas
24.1 x 34.2 cm (unframed) 33.5 x 43.5 cm (framed)
Signed lower left.
Jonathan Bowden was born in Australia in 1942 and studied at Camberwell College of Arts in the 1960s. He regularly exhibited in London before returning to Australia in 1980.
This still life was painted in 1978 when Bowden was working in London. The picture betrays his study of the Impressionist works at the Courtauld Gallery, as well as 17th century Spanish painting. The splashes of light on the edge of the ceramic bowl might easily have been taken from Velazquez.
Few domestic objects have been more painted than a bowl of apples. Cèzanne famously said that it would be ‘with an apple I will astonish Paris’. In 1945 the painter Lawrence Gowing even wrote a book on the subject which was a surreal, if serious conversation between an idle painter and his sitter. Gowing believed that it was sometimes difficult to see the meaning in everyday objects, hidden as they are behind the ‘familiar veils of usefulness and habit’. It was therefore the painter’s task to bring out the meaning of these apparently unimportant objects.
Jonathan Bowden
1978
Oil on canvas
24.1 x 34.2 cm (unframed) 33.5 x 43.5 cm (framed)
Signed lower left.
Jonathan Bowden was born in Australia in 1942 and studied at Camberwell College of Arts in the 1960s. He regularly exhibited in London before returning to Australia in 1980.
This still life was painted in 1978 when Bowden was working in London. The picture betrays his study of the Impressionist works at the Courtauld Gallery, as well as 17th century Spanish painting. The splashes of light on the edge of the ceramic bowl might easily have been taken from Velazquez.
Few domestic objects have been more painted than a bowl of apples. Cèzanne famously said that it would be ‘with an apple I will astonish Paris’. In 1945 the painter Lawrence Gowing even wrote a book on the subject which was a surreal, if serious conversation between an idle painter and his sitter. Gowing believed that it was sometimes difficult to see the meaning in everyday objects, hidden as they are behind the ‘familiar veils of usefulness and habit’. It was therefore the painter’s task to bring out the meaning of these apparently unimportant objects.
Jonathan Bowden
1978
Oil on canvas
24.1 x 34.2 cm (unframed) 33.5 x 43.5 cm (framed)
Signed lower left.
Jonathan Bowden was born in Australia in 1942 and studied at Camberwell College of Arts in the 1960s. He regularly exhibited in London before returning to Australia in 1980.
This still life was painted in 1978 when Bowden was working in London. The picture betrays his study of the Impressionist works at the Courtauld Gallery, as well as 17th century Spanish painting. The splashes of light on the edge of the ceramic bowl might easily have been taken from Velazquez.
Few domestic objects have been more painted than a bowl of apples. Cèzanne famously said that it would be ‘with an apple I will astonish Paris’. In 1945 the painter Lawrence Gowing even wrote a book on the subject which was a surreal, if serious conversation between an idle painter and his sitter. Gowing believed that it was sometimes difficult to see the meaning in everyday objects, hidden as they are behind the ‘familiar veils of usefulness and habit’. It was therefore the painter’s task to bring out the meaning of these apparently unimportant objects.