Le Bouc
- Artist:
- Type: Painting
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Production Date: 2022
- Description: This painting is from a recent body of work completed after a period of special access to the archive of work by Allan Ramsay (1713-1784) held in the National Galleries of Scotland.
Alison Watt has long been an admirer of Ramsay‘s portraits with female sitters, particularly those of his first and second wives. Taking objects that appear in Ramsay‘s portraits and drawings as signs or symbols of aspects of the sitter‘s life and character, Watt has over the past few years produced a series of paintings of single objects which are neither portraits nor still lifes. In the artist's own words: 'I think still life can be incredibly intimate. Because we attach so much meaning and significance to objects, they reflect us. They are a form of biography. As far as I'm concerned, the still life is a portrait without likeness.'
Ramsay's undated 'Sketch of a goat' in black chalk which is held at the National Galleries of Scotland no doubt inspired Watt in her series of paintings of goat skeletons, which simultaneously follow Ramsay's close observation from life in an almost scientifically rigorous manner, while inviting the viewer to linger, and to ponder on the more symbolic use of the portrayal of a skull in painting - as a reminder of one's own mortality.
'Le Bouc' was part of a second exhibition associated with Watt's deep period of research. Entitled 'A Kind of Longing,' it was held at the Tristan Hoare Gallery in London in a house designed by Robert Adam.
As Adam was part of Ramsay‘s circle (and sat for a portrait by Ramsay in 1755), Alison Watt had expressed a wish to show her new paintings in an Adam interior. And as Airthrey Castle at the University of Stirling was also designed by Robert Adam, there is here too a pleasing link through this painting back to Allan Ramsay.
- Dimensions: The canvas, unframed 78cm H x 80.5cm W
Framed size: 89.5cm H x 91.5cm W
Notes from the framer Framework Picture Framers in Edinburgh (October 2024):
float on white with 40 mm margin all around
frame 22 x 47 mm tulipwood painted the same white
laminated anti ref glass + UV (70%)
white spacer - Acquisition Note: A fully funded purchase, enabled by The National Fund for Acquisitions, David Armstrong and The Art Fund
- Digital Copy:A digital copy exists.
- Location: Store
- Accession Number: 2024.4
- Contact: University of Stirling Art Collection
