Untitled

Borrowing elements from Old Master paintings has been Jonathan Green's practice for several years. This particular picture is one of a number of large still lives of the early 1990s which feature apparently living heads in the midst of the usual trappings of the still life genre. The raspberries themselves come from a heaped plate of raspberries in a still life by the French artist Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (1699-1779). The head is taken from a self portrait by Rembrandt (1606-69), although Green says is also looks like his own father. The juxtaposition of the fruit and head on a platter echo numerous paintings of the theme of Salome with the head of John the Baptist: the Ferens has one of these, currently on show in Gallery 1, by Benjamin West (1738-1820). Green studied art in Cleveland and Norwich, and at the Royal College of Art. He has exhibited in London and New York and has won a number of awards, including a Wingate Scholarship (1993/4) which enabled him to make paintings which used the Old Masters as a starting point for original ideas.