STEPHEN ROSE (1960 - )

Mallard

Oil on canvas 59.4 x 79.7cm; s. & d. 'Rose 12'

Handmade replica of our late 17th century bolection moulding frame in stained & polished Pearwood

Overall framed size 76.2 x 96.5cm

Click on image to view at larger size

The traditional gamepiece celebrated the spoils of the hunt and also the bounty of food in the homes of the wealthy, from (especially) the 16th to 19th centuries. In works by Dutch artists such as Willem van Aelst, pyramids of fruit and dead birds (often including mallards), depicted in jewel-like cascades of colour against a dark ground, invoked a golden age of abundance with a mythological resonance; behind the unblemished grapes and pale feathers the presence of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, Demeter, goddess of the harvest, and Dionysos, god of wine and the chase, hovered for the classically-educated patrons of these artists.  Stephen Rose subverts the long tradition of the gamepiece in this startlingly modernist work, in which the bent foil roasting tray has become a type of archaic sarcophagus, and the unsettlingly human pose of the dead mallard calls up other gods and myths – Icarus, fallen from the sky, Adonis killed during the hunt, Cycnus transformed into a swan.

Biographical details

Stephen Rose was born in 1960 in Rochford, Essex. His early life was spent in Sevenoaks, Kent .

He trained at Medway College of Art (1979-80), Cheltenham College of Art and Technology (1980-83) BA (Hons), The British School in Rome (1982)

He won a scholarship to attend The Royal Academy of Art (1983-86) R.A dip. 

In 1992 he was elected a Brother of the Art Workers Guild.

He has won numerous awards: The British Institute Award,1983, The Greenshield Painting Prize, The Royal Academy Painting Prize 1984,The Landseer scholarship 1985,The Richard Ford Traveling Scholarship,1986 (where he studied at the Prado, Madrid) The Royal Overseas League International Painting competition ,Travel Prize,1987 (travelling in Northern India) The RBA , Gordon Hulston Memorial Prize, 2010. 

His works also featured in the National  Portrait Gallery (BP portrait competition  1995).  

In 2001 he had his first one-man show at Target, in Munich. 

In 2005 he had a painting chosen from the RA Schools Alumni, by Border Poets, as a subject for an anthology of poetry, at the Martin’s Gallery, The Cheltenham Literary Festival.

His paintings have also been exhibited at the following: Burlington Fine Art; Art and Soul, Bonhams; The Spa Galleries, Tunbridge Wells; ICA, The Mall Galleries; Royal Society of Portrait Painters; The Royal Society of British Artists; Mark Mitchell paintings and drawings (including exhibition in 2013 The Hungry Eye); The Kent Painters group since 2006; Berkeley Fine Art Fair; Olympia Fine Art Fair and Sybilla Steadelmeyer Gallery Berlin.

Clients include: Baroness  Alexandra Steinbeis von Bulow; Lee Childs (author); Amelie de Airault (former editor of photography French Vogue); Huawei Corporation China.

His paintings have appeared in the following Books:

Dear Christo: Memories of Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter, Timber Press 2010

Drawn from Paradise: Errol Fuller, Sir David Attenborough, Harper Collins 2012

Publications: How to paint in Oils, Winsor &  Newton , Search Press  2008.