William Balthazar Rose (b. 1961)
Tennis Practice among Cooks
- signed with initials.; also signed, titled and dated 2026 on the reverse
- oil on canvas
- 100 by 150 cm.; 39 ½ by 59 in.
- “The three paintings are to some degree a response to the battle of San Romano; three battle scenes painted by Paolo Uccello in the quattrocento. The artist has greatly admired Paolo Uccello since he first came to know of his work as a small child and had at the back of his mind the ambition to accomplish his own response but using a contemporary subject. The figures are of tennis playing cooks, a fanciful notion and an abstraction from the professional tennis player, the depiction of which would render too much carnal savagery. The artist wishes to express a metaphysical aspect in his rendition. Tennis is in part a metaphysical activity with mysterious rules and precise measurements. The headgear is suggestive of the white hats sometimes seen in the work of another great quattrocento painter Piero della Francesca. Piero had an absolute sense of placement much like the 20th century painter Giorgio Morandi and would have achieved consummate success if he had turned himself to the subject of tennis. Tennis is as the artist maintains, a game very much located in measurement and the mathematical world of the early renaissance painters and this is perhaps why he chooses it as a subject.”
William Balthazar Rose (b. 1961)
An English painter living in Wells, Somerset. He works in a number of genres of which he is best known for his ‘Cooks’. Michel Roux Jr. has purchased several paintings and displays them in his Le Gavroche Restaurant in Mayfair, and his Roux at Parliament Square restaurant in Westminster.