01 Painting; the Canals of Venice, with foot notes. #72

John Randall Bratby R.A. (BRITISH 1928-1992) 

VENICE WASHING, c. 1988

Oil on canvas 

122cm x 92cm (47.5in x 35.8in)

Private collection

John Randall Bratby RA (19 July 1928 – 20 July 1992). Despite inauspicious beginnings at Kingston School of Art (which he left upon failing an intermediate exam in arts and crafts), John Bratby's enormous artistic potential soon earned him a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, and would see him become one of the major, and most colourful, figures in twentieth century British art. Originally drawn to Neo-Romanticism, in the post-war years Bratby would become a key exponent of the Kitchen Sink Movement, representing a dramatic shift towards realism and a sharp focus on the details of everyday existence, coupled with an angry sense of social inequality. 

Bratby's work was always suffused with intense colour, and this, along with the less specifically working-class setting of his paintings, distinguished his art from that of his contemporaries, though collectively they would represent Britain in the Venice Biennale of 1956. Although initially left uninspired by Italy when he visited it on a travelling scholarship, after the tumultous years of the 1950's in which he was decried and celebrated in equal measure by the British media, Italy, and Venice in particular, would prove an enduring fascination for Bratby.

He would travel throughout the eighties, creating works such as this painting, typical of his oeuvre in its thickly-applied and vibrant-toned paint, and in its celebration, not of the architectural glories of Venice, but rather the somewhat more quotidien detail of its residents' washing stretching over a canal to dry. More on John Randall Bratby

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