Bathers ,1967.0
Notes : From around 1960, Peter Clarke began experimenting with stylisation in his work, flirting with the facetted forms of Cubism, although avoiding the palettes of Picasso and Braque who had favoured a restricted range of earth colours. The Bathers is particularly reminiscent of the light-filled paintings of Lionel Feininger, probably Clarke’s favourite Cubist, where crystalline facets create an effect reminiscent of stained glass windows. Clarke’s painting shares a similar luminosity, the delicate tones and fluidity of water-based paint evoking the transparency of the water. Broken into angular shapes of pale blues and greys, the painting mimics the refraction of light through water, a few shards of a warmer hue suggesting beach sand. The sea merges into the sky, sharing the same cool tones, and making it hard to identify the horizon line. The continuous surface flattens space, and distance is defined only by the tiny scale of a far-off figure.Two bathers occupy the scene, the nearer one bending over, perhaps to view his own reflection like a Narcissus, while the distant figure has arms raised in a pose dating back to bathers of antiquity, Venus lifting her arms to wring out her hair. But Clarke is not creating some imagined Golden Age: this is drawn from his own experience. He often portrayed naked boys on the beach that recalled the carefree days of his childhood. But here he set himself a testing exercise in composition, unifying the faceted forms. The linear contours of the predominantly horizontal planes of the water are balanced by the verticals of a jetty. Even the foreground youth is angular, his back bent flat to parallel the lines of the water, his limbs echoing the wooden uprights. Clarke’s confident skill makes the carefully thought-out forms seem effortless, creating a harmonious vision of translucent light and limpid colour.
Elizabeth Rankin
