Michael Ayrton, (British, 1921-1975)
Black Still Life - Ram Skull III
Black Still Life - Ram Skull III
signed and dated 'michael ayrton 59' (upper left)
oil on board
101 x 75.5cm (39 3/4 x 29 3/4in).
Painted in 1959
Provenance
With Matthiesen Gallery, London
Andrew Burt
Private Collection, U.K.
Literature
J. Hopkins, Michael Ayrton Centenary: Ideas, Images and Reflections, Estate of Michael Ayrton, 2021, illustrated
Black Still Life - Ram Skull III, is one of a series of four still lives which Ayrton painted in 1959, two black and two white. They were part of his explorations into the different quality of light in East Anglia, where he lived, and Greece, which he visited for the first time in 1957. He noted at the time that there are two lights - the white light of Greece and the black light of Essex, and the difference between the two preoccupied him for months. He compared them in fragments of poetry scribbled in sketchbooks, and considered the contrasts visually through his painted still lives.
Still life painting was something Ayrton turned to when he wanted to consider new developments in his work: in 1953-4 he painted still lives based on the produce from his newly-acquired country garden as he worked his way towards his first sculpture. Those paintings were about the spatial relationship of objects, a prelude to the 3-dimensional thinking that sculpture requires. The still life paintings of 1959 are about light and colour; exercises in the stark effects of monochrome offset by subtle variations in black and white which create a surprisingly rich visual experience.
The ram's skull, he picked up in the garden, probably abandoned by a local fox; cleaned, it lived on the windowsill of his studio among a miscellaneous collection of bones, stones and pieces of wood which provided a constantly changing background to his working environment, and at different times were pressed directly into service in various works. The flowers came from the garden, the egg from the kitchen - the glass held wine or spirits when not acting as a vase. Brought together they gain symbolic resonance: death, birth and the fleeting life between, white against black; light against dark. The shower of falling light behind animates the blackness, the individual spatters not random but carefully placed to appear so.
Just as in 1954, these paintings marked the beginning of a monumental transition in Ayrton's work; shortly after finishing the series he embarked, initially also in black and white, on the images of Icarus flying and falling which stand at the beginning of his involvement with the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, maze and Minotaur which would dominate his work for the rest of his life. He also painted the landscape of Greece - and the Cycladic Landscapes of 1960 grow directly out of the explorations of this still life and its companions.
We are grateful to Justine Hopkins for compiling this catalogue note.
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Black Still Life - Ram Skull III
Black Still Life - Ram Skull III
signed and dated 'michael ayrton 59' (upper left)
oil on board
101 x 75.5cm (39 3/4 x 29 3/4in).
Painted in 1959
Provenance
With Matthiesen Gallery, London
Andrew Burt
Private Collection, U.K.
Literature
J. Hopkins, Michael Ayrton Centenary: Ideas, Images and Reflections, Estate of Michael Ayrton, 2021, illustrated
Black Still Life - Ram Skull III, is one of a series of four still lives which Ayrton painted in 1959, two black and two white. They were part of his explorations into the different quality of light in East Anglia, where he lived, and Greece, which he visited for the first time in 1957. He noted at the time that there are two lights - the white light of Greece and the black light of Essex, and the difference between the two preoccupied him for months. He compared them in fragments of poetry scribbled in sketchbooks, and considered the contrasts visually through his painted still lives.
Still life painting was something Ayrton turned to when he wanted to consider new developments in his work: in 1953-4 he painted still lives based on the produce from his newly-acquired country garden as he worked his way towards his first sculpture. Those paintings were about the spatial relationship of objects, a prelude to the 3-dimensional thinking that sculpture requires. The still life paintings of 1959 are about light and colour; exercises in the stark effects of monochrome offset by subtle variations in black and white which create a surprisingly rich visual experience.
The ram's skull, he picked up in the garden, probably abandoned by a local fox; cleaned, it lived on the windowsill of his studio among a miscellaneous collection of bones, stones and pieces of wood which provided a constantly changing background to his working environment, and at different times were pressed directly into service in various works. The flowers came from the garden, the egg from the kitchen - the glass held wine or spirits when not acting as a vase. Brought together they gain symbolic resonance: death, birth and the fleeting life between, white against black; light against dark. The shower of falling light behind animates the blackness, the individual spatters not random but carefully placed to appear so.
Just as in 1954, these paintings marked the beginning of a monumental transition in Ayrton's work; shortly after finishing the series he embarked, initially also in black and white, on the images of Icarus flying and falling which stand at the beginning of his involvement with the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, maze and Minotaur which would dominate his work for the rest of his life. He also painted the landscape of Greece - and the Cycladic Landscapes of 1960 grow directly out of the explorations of this still life and its companions.
We are grateful to Justine Hopkins for compiling this catalogue note.
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