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On the Grass 7
acrylic on canvas, 1986
60.8 x 92 cm
I'm not sure when I first saw an image of Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l‘herbe, (Luncheon on the Grass), but I suspect that it was brought up during an Art History course when I first began studying art. I don't think it made a great immediate impression, but some time later, my fascination with the painting began to develop, probably as a result of seeing its relationship to my own work. Perhaps it is the ambiguity and enigmatic quality that attracts me. I recall doing a few small sketches which I used as compositional guides to paintings such as Landscape with a People Tree and Velvet Bedspread. Although these paintings have no direct resemblance to the Manet painting, the original sketches seemed to bear that derivation.
In 1967, I made a fairly large painting Le Déjeuner. For
many years, it was kept in the storage racks — I considered
it unfinished. When it was 'dug out' in 2006 as I was preparing
for "Inside Passage", I realized that the painting
was in fact, not at all unfinished.
I was able to see it in the context of the related work done
since that time.
I made a few etchings in the 1970’s which are also vaguely
similar. For example, see Lovers
in the Trees.
I
t
seems as though the fascination with the 1863 Manet painting
has been with me for a long time, and recognizing this, I did
a couple of watercolour paintings (click
here or the image at left to see), which were more or less
‘copies’ of Manet's “Le Déjeuner
sur l‘herbe”. And over the years,
I have revisited the subject frequently. On and off
between 1986 and 1989, for example, a series of about 15 acrylic
paintings on canvas were completed. Several of the
On the Grass series works are in the Inside
Passage (2006) exhibition.
These paintings are quite abstract and probably allude as much to landscape as to figures. While I developed these paintings from a loosely derived use of Manet’s compositional structure, the viewer may be hard-pressed to see the connection. It is unimportant to me whether or not the viewer does so; it is merely of interest that it came about in this way. I continue to find fascination, curiosity and inspiration with this enigmatic Manet painting.
There are 14 paintings done in 1986 to 1989 in this series
