Peinture de John Kirby "man&boy"

Man & Boy by John Kirby

Painter :

I’m going to present you a painting of John Kirby.

Kirby is an English painter from 20th century.

The title of this oil painting is : Man & Boy. The artist painted this work in 1987 (nineteen eighty seven).

He was born in 1949 (nineteen fourty nine ) in Liverpool. He studied at St.Martins school of Art in London and at The Royal College of Art in London too.

Now, the painting.

This painting shows a Man & a Boy shaking hands. On the left there is the man and on the right, the boy standing on a stool. In the middle, the characters hand’s are joined together.

I think, the man must be around 40 years old and the boy almost 9.The two people wear the same clothes (a black suit, black shoes, black tie for men and red for boy). There are stanting side by side. Because the boy is smaller, he’s standing on a stool. Despite they are next to each other they aren’t looking at each other. They seem to be static, frozen. They look very serious and grumpy.

It’s a quite dark painting, the dominants colors are black, brown and yellow (in the middle).

The people are placed in the foreground to attract our attention. Although the boy is young, he looks like an adult, as if he was a clone of his father.

Now I going to search what is behind the impression of this painting :

The father and the son look very near by checking hand but in my opinion I can see the domination of the father on his son.

The relationship seems to be fake because I cannot notice any sign of affection between each other.

Actually, I don’t really like this painting because of its heavy atmosphere.

I prefer the painting of Thomas Gainsborough with its serenity and softness of light and colors.

The representation of the family seems to be more sincere unlike Man & Boy.

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