John Beard’s ‘After The Raft of Medusa’ is on show in the tithe barn at Messums Wiltshire during May. Also on show is a series of landscape paintings of the Fovant Hills in Wiltshire from Beard’s residency at Messums Wiltshire.
Monumental in both scale and ambition, After The Raft of Medusa is a reflection on Gericault’s masterpiece, replicated at the same size -16ft by 24ft- in monochrome oils. It is accompanied by a mirror image etched into a sheet of black aluminium, like an etching plate, and will fill the far end of the 13th century tithe barn.
Barry Pearce (former Head Of Australian Art AGNSW) wrote: ‘John’s vision of The Raft of the Medusa allows one to inhabit the horrifying, almost uninhabitable Romantic grandeur of the great masterpiece and comprehend its powerful beauty better’
Beard ‘transmutes an overpowering Romantic statement into something intimate. Quite miraculous really, like climbing inside and being caressed and absorbed by Gericault’s neurones.’
Messums Wiltshire
Place Farm, Court St, Tisbury,
Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP3 6LW