Object Description
Original Oil on board by Modern British artist Christopher Chamberlin.
There is a certain category of painting that arrives in Panter & Hall from the far flung corners of the secondary market art universe. Signifiers include a certain subtlety of palette bordering on the monochromatic, usually towards the grey/brown end of the spectrum. Unkind words such as ‘dirgy’ and ‘depressing’ are bandied about and there is general agreement that this is a ‘Matthew’ picture. Well this painting is my idea of heaven. I’m not sure why I feel such an affinity for post war Britain, the austerity and rationing, the bomb sites and perhaps most of all the Black & White film. Even I’m too young to remember it but perhaps growing up in the 1970s, with it’s preponderance of Ealing comedies, led to a cultural false memory syndrome. I certainly shouldn’t feel this nostalgia for a time and place I’ve no experience of. Chamberlain’s painting of an industrial site in Chelsea’s Lots Road has it all, an incredibly sophisticated use of colour and tone, a compositional view point that simply places you at the scene and a sense of the times that transports you to the period more effectively than any virtual reality gizmo.
Available at Panter and Hall.