Blackheath, London 1953

John Bratby made this painting of Blackheath, London, using thick brushes and a dark, earthy palette, and a bold impasto technique. I can imagine him at the window, feeling the weight of the weather. You know, when you look out the window and see the day bearing down on you? I wonder if it was difficult to see the view through the frame—the horizontal lines interrupting the vista, like bars. It’s almost like being stuck inside. The way he's thrown on the paint so roughly, using house-painterly strokes, seems like he's trying to break through, or maybe close it all down. Looking at the grey sky, and the green of the foliage, it reminds me a little of Auerbach’s paintings of Camden Town. Auerbach and Bratby’s works feel rooted in a particular place and time; post-war austerity, perhaps? Both capture a sense of trying to find beauty amid a bleak reality, and both artists ask us to consider how paintings can mediate between interiority and the external world.