William Balthazar Rose Tennis Battle
William Balthazar Rose Tennis Battle
On view:
Wednesday 15 July, 10am to 8pm Thursday 16 July, 10am to 8pm Friday 17 July, 10am to 2pm
Ground Floor 6 Mason’s Yard Duke Street, St. James’s London, SW1Y 6BU
www.freyamitton.com freya@freyamitton.com 07968 562499
Front cover: William Balthazar Rose (b.1961) Tennis Practice among Cooks
Opposite: William Balthazar Rose (b.1961) Tennis Lessons for Cooks
“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
William Balthazar Rose (b.1961)
Tennis Lessons for 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.
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.
William Balthazar Rose (b.1961)
Can Cooks play Tennis?
signed with initials.; also signed, titled and dated 2026 on the reverse oil on canvas
100 by 150 cm.; 39 ½ by 59 in.
