Bratby, John
John Bratby was born in Wimbledon, London in 1928. His interest in art did not develop until his senior school year when it was inspired by Harold Watts (1900-1999). Bratby enrolled into the Kingston School of Art in 1948 where he stayed for two years failing his intermediary arts and crafts examination but continued to paint still. He took a postgraduate course at the Royal College of Art from 1951 to 1954 when he developed his personal type of realism, painting dustbins, room and kitchen interiors and toilets which was later dubbed “kitchen sink”.
Bratby had his first solo show at the famous Beaux Arts Gallery at the age of 26 and his paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1954. He became an international success and leading art critics compared him to Diego Velázquez ( 1599-1660) and Rembrandt (1606-1669). John won the Daily Express Young Artists Competition the following year. In 1956 Bratby, alongside Jack Smith (1928-2011), Edward Middleditch (1923-1987) and Derrick Greaves (b.1927) represented Britain at the XXVIII Venice Biennale. His work was purchased for the Tate collection the same year. He was an art lecturer at Carlisle College of Art in 1956 and the Royal College of Art in 1957-8.
John Bratby received popular acclaim when his paintings featured in the Horse’s Mouth film in 1957 and he became to be associated with Gulley Jimson, the Bohemian artist, played by Alec Guinness (1914-2000). He won Guggenheim Awards during three consecutive years, 1956, 1957 and 1958, and had several very successful commercial shows in Britain and the USA. Bratby was awarded the first prize in the John Moores Junior Section and elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1959.
His style became more abstract and palette gradually changed to the brighter one. Bratby was attracted to Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) and Expressionism of Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) and Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) which influenced his portraiture works too. He created his renowned Hall of Fame portrait series which included celebrities and wrote several novels in the 1960s and 1970s becoming a Royal Academician in 1971. Bratby travelled to Venice, Paris, Istanbul and the rest of Europe where he painted landscapes and cityscapes in bright colours selling well throughout his entire career. He had his major retrospective in the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1991.
Bratby’s works are present in the major public collections and museums including Tate, Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Yale Centre of British Art, USA and many others.
