Details

Object type

painting

Title

Marat and the Fishes

Artist/Maker

Alison Watt artist

Culture/School

Scottish; British

Place Associated

Scotland, Glasgow (place made)

Date

1990

Materials

oil on canvas

Dimensions

framed: 1885 x 1852 x 64 mm;unframed: 1524 mm x 1220 mm

Description

Two women sit in an ornate freestanding bathtub with lion’s paw feet and a decorative wave pattern. The bath rather incongruously rests on a black and white chequered bathmat situated out of doors in a garden. The garden has a broken wall and a variety of wild vegetation. Beyond are well clipped trees. The unclothed figure on the left sits submerged in the water, her right arm hanging down over the edge of the bath, holding a dead fish. Another fish is in the bath and a few more in an urn behind it. The second figure sits in undergarments that look like early swimwear, on the edge of the bath with one leg in the water, the other raised. She looks back over her shoulder. A white cloth hangs on a string above them.

This painting is typical of the early figural paintings of Glasgow-based artist Alison Watt in its interest in the female form. As in many of her early works, the two women are based on the artist herself. The serene, static quality of the painting shows the artist’s interest in 15th-century Italian art, as well as French neoclassical art, notably the nudes of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. It is carefully composed and dryly painted in chalky colours with an emphasis on line. The effect is dreamlike and mysterious.

The pose of the slouched figure is taken from a famous painting by French neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David (1743-1793) depicting the death of French Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, who was assassinated in his bath. Although Watt refers to this gruesome subject, the painting has a playful quality. Commissioned by the Trustees of the Hamilton Bequest in 1990 to mark Glasgow’s year as European City of Culture, the artist writes, ‘My aim was to take the ubiquitous Glasgow symbols of the bell, fish and tree out of context. The idea incorporates these symbols with an obsession with the paraphernalia of swimming and water’.

Watt studied at Glasgow School of Art where she won the John Player Portrait Award which led to a commission to paint the Queen Mother. Fabric has always had an important part to play in Watt’s paintings. Her most recent work eschews the body and focuses on the erotic power of folds of cloth.

Credit Line/Donor

Gifted by the Trustees of the Hamilton Bequest, 1990

ID Number

3463

Location

Kelvingrove Picture Promenade