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Traditional Cover

© the artist / Bridgeman Images. Image credit: British Council Collection

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Notes

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Farthing is an erudite painter, and several successive enthusiasms have been apparent in his career. From the Cubism of Braque and Leger he derived formal diversity, a self-consciousness about painting manners, and the subject matter of still-life themes in flattened space. After a period in Rome as an Abbey Major Scholar he made many paintings of buildings, and this strong architectural interest remained evident in a subsequent series of depicting the internal space of furnished rooms. His work is generally economical, using the briefest means to suggest his view. Farthing has a dry, pointed humour that enjoys the comparison of the decorative painter's art of tompe l'oeil with the game bird's art of camouflage. The conventions of art are always interposed between any direct perception and its record in painting: here the conventions of the 'picturesque' and 'rural' are tackled in a way to suggest that the artistic appreciation of the genre depends on ignorance of the actuality.

British Council Collection

London

Title

Traditional Cover

Date

1985

Medium

oil & wax on canvas

Measurements

H 123 x W 107 cm

Accession number

P5380

Acquisition method

purchased from Edward Totah Gallery, 1986

Work type

Painting

Inscription description

verso tlc: TRADITIONAL COVER

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British Council Collection

British Council, 1 Redman Place, London, Greater London E20 1JQ England

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