Still life with an Oil Lamp Oil on Canvas by Robert MacBryde c.1955
Only a few weeks to go until we close our exhibition celebrating 40 years of the Fry Gallery ‘Finding a Home at the Fry’, on Sunday 26th October.
One of the themes explored in the exhibition by our guest curator, Ella Ravilious, is how the artists in our collection handled the ‘kitchen table still life’, making images of food, ceramics and domestic flower arrangements. In this wonderful modernist take on the still life, Robert Macbryde demonstrates the flair for colour for which he is celebrated.
Having started working as a labourer, Robert MacBryde (1913 – 1966) went to Glasgow School of Art where he met his partner, Robert Colquhoun. The pair became inseperable as lovers and collaborators, and were known as ‘The two Roberts’. From 1950 to 1954 the writer Elizabeth Smart gave them a home at Tilty Mill near Great Dunmow. They in turn became unlikely carers for her four children.
The painting is soon to leave the Fry Gallery on loan to Charleston in Lewes, where it will appear in the exhibition Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: Artists, Lovers, Outsiders between
Picture purchased with assistance from the HLF Collecting Cultures Grant.
Finding a Home at The Fry ends on Sunday 26th October.