Name: SIR PETER BLAKE (B. 1932)
Brand: The National Gallery Madonna
Price: 100000.00 GBP
Availability: SoldOut

SIR PETER BLAKE (B. 1932)
The National Gallery Madonna
signed, inscribed and dated ''THE NATIONAL GALLERY MADONNA' - 1994-2000 Peter Blake.' (on the canvas overlap)
oil on canvas
48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm.)
Painted in 1994-2000

Waddington Galleries, London.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's London, 20 May 2009, lot 69.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

M. Livingstone and C. Wiggins, exhibition catalogue, Now we are 64: Peter Blake at the National Gallery, London, 1996, p. 19 (illustrated in colour) (work in progress).
N. Rudd, Peter Blake, London, 2003, p. 97, fig. 82 (illustrated in colour).
Exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy Illustrated, London, Royal Academy, 2003, p. 78, no. 591 (illustrated in colour).
M. Livingstone, Peter Blake: One Man Show, Farnham, 2009, pp. 193, 236, no. 194 (illustrated in colour).
Exhibition catalogue, Peter Blake: A Retrospective, Liverpool, Tate Gallery, 2017, pp. 156-157, 204 (illustrated in colour).

London, The National Gallery, Now we are 64: Peter Blake at the National Gallery, September 1996 - January 1997: this exhibition travelled to Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, January - March 1997 (the work in progress was exhibited).
Florida, West Palm Beach, Waddington & Tribby Fine Art, Peter Blake: British Pop. American Icon, February - March 2001.
London, Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, June - August 2003, no. 591.
Liverpool, Tate Gallery, Peter Blake: A Retrospective, June - September 2007, exhibition not numbered.

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Lot Essay

A bold collision of past and present, The National Gallery Madonna (1994-2000) is a compelling postmodern painting from one of Peter Blake’s most important late bodies of work. In September 1994, Blake took up a residency as Associate Artist at London’s National Gallery. Tasked with responding to works in the collection, he worked with unusual vigour in the gallery’s basement studio, fired with inspiration from the Old Masters around him. At four feet in height, The National Gallery Madonna is among the largest paintings he produced. It is based on Bartolomeo Montagna’s The Virgin and Child (1485-87). Rather than slavishly copying the original, Blake has reinvented the painting in his own distinctively crisp, Pop-inflected style – the rich fabrics and softly-lit skin of his subjects are alive with tactile realism – and transposed his medieval Madonna into the interior of the National Gallery itself: a view onto Trafalgar Square, complete with Nelson’s Column, Big Ben and distinctly contemporary cars and buses, unfolds through the window behind her. He has also switched the Virgin’s face for that of Cecilia Chancellor, a prominent fashion model in the 1990s.

Elsewhere in his ‘National Gallery’ works, Blake took Renaissance Virgins to Venice Beach, and depicted a gang of Venuses by Cranach, Botticelli, Velázquez and others frolicking in landscape derived from Constable. Playing directly with the London context of its creation, the present work is a more focused and intimate reflection on Blake’s relationship with his artistic forebears, and a joyful example of the constant dialogue with art history and popular culture that continues to inform his practice. ‘You never stop learning how to paint,’ Blake has observed, ‘and what you learn changes all the time’ (P. Blake, quoted in M. Livingstone, Peter Blake: One Man Show, London, 2009, p. 192).

Post Lot Text
Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot. You must pay us an extra amount equal to the resale royalty and we will pay the royalty to the appropriate authority. Please see the Conditions of Sale for further information.