Year 1958 Artist John Brack | Medium oil on canvas Created 1958 | |
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Dimensions 122.2 cm × 68.7 cm (48.1 in × 27.0 in) Location Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Similar First Daughter, The Car, Men's Wear, Still Life: Corner of a Table, The Bar | ||
The correct way to lay the breakfast table
The Breakfast Table is a 1958 still life painting by Australian artist John Brack. The painting depicts a table after breakfast but before the plates, cups and cutlery have been cleared.
Breakfast has finished and the participants have gone, although the detective-like artist has set out visual clues that tell us about the people who were here. To begin with Brack himself, his painter-wife, and their four daughters are signified by a glass, a tea cup and four mugs. Of course, all these vessels are empty, much like the egg shell in its cup, and the five plates dotted with a few crumbs left from toast. Even bottles are drained of liquids. Not a scrap of food remains. No crusts, no dabs of butter, no unconsumed dregs of milk.
The viewpoint of the artist is from over the table, laying out the objects in a geometrical pattern with tubular bottles and jars, flat plates, and knives tilted at different angles. The painting foreshadows some of Brack's later work—his 1960s still lifes portraying knives and his allegorical conflict paintings of the 1980s.
Previously part of the Grundy collection, the Art Gallery of New South Wales acquired the work in 2013 for A$1.3 million.