JOHN BYRNE 1921-2003
CECI N'EST PAS UNE RÉTROSPECTIVE
25 MAY - 16 JULY
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"Paisley 'Buddies' are, to a man and a woman, total oddballs.
I should know, I’m one of them,” said John once.
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John’s formal life as an artist began aged 18 when he entered Glasgow School of Art. His mother said he started drawing in his pram. A year before entering the art school, he started at A F Stoddart & Co in Paisley - a “Technicolour hell hole” - as a “slab boy”. Much of what was to come, visually and literally, drew on what John observed there. Our show begins in 1963 with a church interior which he painted while on a travelling scholarship to Italy after being awarded the Newbery Medal at GSA. He saw the great quattrocento painters: Giotto, Cimabue and Duccio. The light, the exquisite detail and stillness of the Italian primitives is all there in his work of the late 60s and early 70s: Two Children (no.2), Boy in Dungarees (no.3) and The Pink Boot (no.5).
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On seeing John’s show at the Third Eye Centre in 1975, Arthur Watson PRSA, wrote: “The paintings counteracted the abstract orthodoxies of 1975 while also shedding his persona of Patrick. The facial acrobatics of the self-portraits, the monumental cigarette ends sculpted in paint, the double portrait of Billy Connolly and his banjo of the riotous ‘Kingarockinroll’; each work could have been expanded by a lesser artist into a stylistically coherent body of work, but here a stream of ideas exploded round the gallery walls, realised in a tour de force of painterly virtuosity.”
In the decades that followed an extensive iconography unfolded amounting, in some cases, to a kind of pictorial autobiography. Paintings of 1950s Ferguslie Park - Feegie - captured what was once an invention, the “teenager”, as this strange new being emerged in the artist’s own youth. In his Underwood Lane series, the Teddy Boys who loiter are reminiscences of his own past. These pictures often referenced filmic and theatrical worlds, their backdrops lit like stage-sets. Nocturnal themes abounded: moonlit woods; the streets of 1950s Paisley; the self-examining artist, alone and wreathed in cigarette smoke. In a finely balanced act, he pulled together the macabre and humour.
But back to oddballs: running through all of John’s work is the outsider, either as a lone figure or a fragment of society. The vision may be fantastical and magical but it’s what John knows.
emily walsh
The Fine Art Society
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Letter to Portal Gallery as 'Patrick', May 1970
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2. TWO CHILDREN, 1968
signed 'Patrick'
oil on panel
38 x 48 inches
Provenance
Portal Gallery, London, 1968; The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, where acquired by the previous owner in 1992
exhibited
Portal Gallery, Patrick at Portal, London, Nov-Dec 1968; The Scottish Gallery, 150th Anniversary Exhibition, Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh, 1992
The models for this painting are John's eldest children John and Celie.
SOLD
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8. AN UNSOLVED CRIME, 1997
signed 'Patrick'
watercolour and ink on paper
18 x 24 inches
provenance
Portal Gallery, London, 1998; Duncan R Miller Fine Arts, London; private collection, Scotland
exhibited
Portal Gallery, London, 1998
John produced a larger screenprint after this watercolour in an edition of 40 at Glasgow Print Studio in 1999.
SOLD
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Letter from René Magritte to John Byrne, March 1967
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11. CECI N'EST PAS UN AUTOPORTRAIT, 2003
signed and inscribed with title; titled and dated 2003 on frame verso
oil on board
31 x 28 inches
literature
Robert Hewison, John Byrne - Art and Life, London, 2011, ill. pg.90, plate 60 and front cover
SOLD
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14. NIGHT AND DAY, 2012
diptych, signed 'Patrick'
oil on board
56 x 96 inches (each panel 56 x 48 inches)
provenance
The artist's studio
exhibited
The Fine Art Society, John Byrne: The Joyful Mysteries, London, 2012, no.3
SOLD
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19. 'YOUR CHEATIN' HEART', hand painted guitar
signed and inscribed 'Your Cheatin' Heart'
oil
36 1/2 x 13 x 3 1/2 inches
provenance
Private collection, Scotland
SOLD
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![3. BLACK BOY IN DUNGAREES, 1972 signed 'Patrick'; titled 'Black [...] Boy in Dungarees' in pencil verso gouache on primed...](https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_620,h_620,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/artlogicstorage/thefineartsociety/images/view/3c272b5ecdb5f65091e2bab5bf729a5ej.jpg)
