Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> The gravelly green wood- and stone-loving works of Christopher Bramham do not on the face of it share much with the light touch and creamy ambience of Henri Matisse’s Nice-period paintings. But Chris Bramham loves Matisse and in particular Matisse’s early Nice period. Register this begin to sense why – and you have a beautiful key into his work.. In an important sense of course Bramham’s painting needs no key. It is beautiful. urgent intimate work and it convinces instantly without the need for critical intercession. You feel in front of his art both the nervous excitability and the spiritual relief that always arise from unaffected truth teling But besides being direct and plain spoken Bramham’s work is also at odd times anxiously alert even a little sly. (It is art after all) So it is both a pleasure and a secret doorway to deeper connections when you notice the open book facing away on the chair in Bramham’s marvellous. Still Life with Books (pages 27-29). The book that is open on top of the pile is the catalogue for Henri Matisse. The Early Years in Nice 1916-1930 a late 1980s show organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. “Oh I adore it beyond belief” Brambam told me laughing but quite serious over the phone. “It’s a sort of bible to me. He helps me so much!” Leafing through my own cherished copy I glean that Bramham’s in the painting is open to pages 130-131. The spread holds two plates paintings from around 1919 that present classic Matissean motifs (windows curtains shutters Howers an oval mirror a distant palm) in familiar Nice period harmonies (creamy yeliows blues mauves and pinks with eloquent little punches of black) in (919 it worth pointing out all this must still have felt fresh and full of potential to Matisse Two years carber just shy of 50 the native northerner with the serious spectacles and the permanent furrow bisecting his brow had moved south to a series of hotel rooms in Nice. (LL)