Ralph Brown

Description

This sensuous sculpture, which in a sense is a two-sided relief, is a development of Relief: Bride 1975, a wall relief, which showed a girl's body tantalisingly revealed through a flimsy curtain. The surreal nature of this body/curtain is reminiscent of a painting by René Magritte, Le modèle rouge 1935, which revolves around the theme of concealment and in which the boots reveal the feet that they cover. So it is with La Sposa, which from the front shows the girl's hands holding the curtain, revealing her nubile form, also visible on the reverse. It is as though she is concealed and revealed within an envelope of the finest silk.

La Sposa appears as a young, virginal bride holding the cloth against her modesty. This act makes her body seem more sensual than if she had been depicted entirely naked, as in the partially clothed nudes of Titian and Rubens, or the female forms of Greek and Roman statuary.

In the woodland La Sposa becomes an elusive nymph, a spectre of human form. Cast in bronze from an original carving in marble which was exhibited in the Royal Academy's summer show of 1999, this version emulates the stone. The pale blue-green patina emphasises the ghostly quality of the form, as it apparently hovers between the trees. Pangolin Editions, the foundry in Gloucestershire which cast the sculpture, is renowned for developing a wide range of unusual colours for bronze, evident in this piece.

Compared with his early works, most famously Meat Porters 1960, La Sposa shows how Ralph Brown has refined form in a gentler theme, although who knows what violence may take place behind the veil. For Brown, the art of the past remains a major source of inspiration.