‘Breton Morning’
Kenneth Rowntree (1915 – 1997)
Acrylic on Card
196 x 196
Undated
£150
2013.009
This is one of the two pictures given to me by Kenneth
Rowntree. It is a retrospective copy of another picture. ‘Breton Morning’,
1965. illustrated in: John Milner, Kenneth Rowntree, Lund Humphries, 2002.
On the surface of it, it’s an abstract and I could easily go on about formal language, picture planes etc. but in fact, as related over our lunch, at some length, it is an erotic fantasy.
I mentioned in my previous post about the other picture (Acomb Grey and Green) that
while he had been talking his wife Diana had become irritated; it was in fact at
this point in our conversation that I noticed her irritation had reached its
peak.
Rowntree told me that in the sixties at Newcastle University he had had a secretary.
She always wore a close fitting black polo neck sweater and a short blue dress.
In this picture she stands to the left,
her head is missing, as are her legs and arms which have been cropped from the
picture hinting at close physical proximity.
In some versions her breast is sculpted out of the surface as
a concave dish. The white triangle in the bottom right is a tent in which he fantasised
that they had spent the night, my version is garnished with a coffee stain in the bottom right, and
the rest is landscape and sky.
I have no idea if it’s true but I like lies - an artist
friend of my father’s once told me as a child that the reason Flemish painters
always did cows standing in water was that they couldn’t do feet. I have chosen
to retain this pearl of wisdom and will carry it to the grave. Stories are always best when told to the credulous.
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