Christopher Bramham
Encyclopedia
Biography
Bramham was born in BradfordBradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
. He studied at Bradford School of Art from 1970 to 1971, followed by Kingston-upon-Thames Art School
Kingston University
Kingston University is a public research university located in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, United Kingdom. It was originally founded in 1899 as Kingston Technical Institute, a polytechnic, and became a university in 1992....
from 1971 to 1973. From 1975 to 1986 he worked as a part-time teacher in various art colleges in London before holding his first solo exhibition, at the Fine Art Society
Fine Art Society
The Fine Art Society is an art dealership with two premises, one in New Bond Street, London and the other in Edinburgh . It was formed in 1876...
in London in 1988.
Bramham is a close friend of the artist Lucien Freud, whom he first met in 1982. Freud painted Bramham alone in 1989, and again with Bramham's children, Polly and Barney, in 1990. They also exhibited together at the Browse and Darby Gallery in London in 2007, in a three person show along with the painter Duncan Wood. Prior to this Bramham exhibited at Marlborough Fine Art in London in the 1990s, and again in 2002.
Bramham has work in the collection of the British Council, and the Elaine and Melvin Merians Collection, and he was included in the exhibition of this latter collection at the Yale Center for British Art
Yale Center for British Art
The Yale Center for British Art is an art museum in New Haven, Connecticut at Yale University which houses the most comprehensive collection of British Art outside the United Kingdom...
in New Haven, in 2000.
Bramham lives and works in Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
and is represented by Marlborough Fine Art in London.
Style and Influences
Bramham is predominantly a landscape painter, although he has also painted interiors and still lives, and his landscape views are frequently of objects in the natural landscape seen close to rather than traditional landscape vistas. In this he has been described as RuskinianJohn Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
for the way he probes "into nooks and crannies of the natural world". As this reviewer also notes, however, more contemporary comparisons can be made, and Bramham has been associated with the School of London artists, particularly Lucian Freud, and artists such as Peter Doig
Peter Doig
Peter Doig is a contemporary artist born in Scotland. In 2007, a painting of Doig's, entitled White Canoe, sold at Sotheby's for $11.3 million, then an auction record for a living European artist.-Early life:...
and Tony Bevan
Tony Bevan (painter)
-Biography:Bevan was born in Bradford, Yorkshire. He studied at Bradford School of Art from 1968 to 1971, followed by Goldsmiths' College, London from 1971 to 1974, and the Slade School of Fine Art from 1974 to 1976...
.
His images are built up slowly, with layers of paint applied, according to the art critic Andrew Lambirth, almost in emulation of the speed at which a plant being depicted might grow. Yet, according to Jonathan Clark, this is not a result of the romanticisation
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
of nature, rather it is that Bramham paints the things that are near by as subject matter is incidental to him.
In this it is possible to see some connection with other painters associated with the School of London, as there is a comparison to be made between the coupling of the formalist interest in painting as a medium alongside a direct engagement with aspects of the real world in Bramham and artists such as Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...
and Frank Auerbach
Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach is a painter born in Germany although he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947.-Biography:Auerbach was born in Berlin, the son of Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist...
. In this respect Bramham is essentially a realist
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
painter.
Bramham is also well regarded for his drawing skills, and exhibited alongside Paula Rego, Auerbach, Dennis Creffield
Dennis Creffield
Dennis Creffield is a British artist with work owned by major British art collections, including the Tate Gallery, Arts Council of England, the Government Art Collection, Leeds City Art Gallery, University of Leeds collection, University of Brighton collection and others.-Early life and...
and sixty other artists in the exhibition Drawing Inspiration: Contemporary British Drawing, held at the Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal
Kendal
Kendal, anciently known as Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish within the South Lakeland District of Cumbria, England...
, in 2006.
Further reading
- Lambirth, Andrew, Christopher Bramham (London: Jonathan Clark, 2010).
- McCaughey, Patrick and Weeks, Emily, The School of London and Their Friends: The Collection of Elaine and Melvin Merians, exh. cat. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000)
- Petherbridge, Deanna Drawing Inspiration: Contemporary British Drawing, exh. cat. (Kendal: Abbot Hall Art Gallery, 2006)