Bowl Of Fruit On Table ,1958.0
Notes : Although Peter Clarke had no formal art training, and no contact with art schools until he spent a few months at Michaelis in 1961, he had been sketching since his schooldays and attended art groups while he worked at Simon’s Town docks, finally giving up his job to become an artist in 1956. Most of his earliest works were in pencil, ink, or inexpensive water-based paints, but his friend Roland Alexander had introduced him to oils when they were out painting together in 1948, and an artist named Gordon-Taylor gave him some tubes of paint. Clarke continued to use watercolour and gouache, but experimented with oils for his more studied paintings, usually quite traditional themes such as land- and seascapes, and still life groups, perhaps preferred when the weather was inclement. Sometimes they were no more than an array of his mother’s kitchen paraphernalia, but for Fruit Bowl he set up a conventional still-life group of fruit in a white china container on a table, a subject favoured by historical European painters from Caravaggio to Chardin.Much of Clarke’s knowledge came from studying art books, and here we sense his admiration of the Post Impressionists. Cezanne’s creation of form through colour is particularly evident in the oranges, Gauguin’s vibrant palette in the different fruits and the brilliant blue backdrop, Van Gogh’s expressive brushwork in the free paint application that enlivens the table cloth and the background. The table is tipped up to give the subject a sense of immediacy, and the palpable three-dimensionality of the forms is further enhanced by the deep cast shadows. These qualities, together with Clarke’s judicious colour harmonies, such as the dull pinks of the tablecloth followed through in the plums and even the oranges, make this painting a remarkably accomplished work for a young self-taught artist.
Elizabeth Rankin
