Vincent Brown
Vincent Brown
Javanese Toilet, 1940
Vincent Brown (1901 - 2001)
lithograph
36.1 x 43.6 cm (frame 58 x 63.5 cm)
titled lower centre below image, signed and dated lower right
Other notes: other impressions of this print are in collections of the National Gallery of Australia Accession Number NGA 78.114; the British Museum, London, Registration No. 1948,1206.9; the Art Gallery of NSW Accession No. 7863; the Queensland Art Gallery, Accession No. Acc. 2:0574, and the University of Queensland, Accession No.2012.88.02
Literature: Vincent Brown: Life & Work (Odana Editions, 1980, p.77)
Vincent Brown: an early Brisbane modernist, Christopher Saines, (Queensland Art Gallery, c1990), illus. p. 6, ref. p. 7.
$450 (framed)
enquire:
simon@ensemblefineart.com.au
0419 540 162
Vincent Brown was at his strongest as a printmaker when working in lithography. The series he drew and printed in 1940 remain among his most highly resolved. and enduring images. Brown described the prints as belonging '...to a series of strangely opposing philosophies…’.
Javanese Toilet reveals just how 'strangely opposing'...Its female nude figure is academically modelled, an outcome of the figure studies which had been central to Browns training at the Slade School in London. Behind the figure is a backcloth featuring three Javanese puppets moving in a frieze-like arrangement across the space. The gentle curves of the model (and of the mirror) make a compelling contrast to the puppet figures which are flat, angular, stylised and hieratically arranged. This contrast, between the pure pictorial space of the background and the implied actual space of the foreground, which creates the subtle and enigmatic tension of the work. Christopher Saines Queensland Art Gallery
Vincent Brown was born in Brisbane and studied at the University of London and Slade School. In 1940 Brown moved back to Australia, married Dorothy Willetts and held many exhibitions before returning to England in 1948. He came back to Australia with his family in 1978.
He had a major retrospective exhibition in Sydney in 1980 and in Melbourne in 1981. A book on the artist’s life and work was published in 1980. A further retrospective was held at the Queensland Art Gallery in 1990 and another focus exhibition in 2001.
His work is represented in the Australian National Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, British Museum, London and regional art galleries and universities.