Chair Portrait

While I was looking at Katherine Hattam’s chairs I was reminded of the relationship to John Brack. Brack painted a portrait of Hattam’s father (sitting on a chair).

Connecting chairs everywhere.

Five years before Brack painted his well known Nude with two chairs, he drew this wonderful thing. Walking sticks and and one chair. The striped back drop is very similar to the device used in his early 1990s work. Perfect the way the hem lines slice through the lower part of the picture plane.

| John Brack, Mannequins, 1953 |

I can imagine him wandering around Melbourne and coming across this gorgeously gaunt tableau. Maybe the original Georges department store?

Julia Ritson