Artists collection

“This is one of two sketches for a painting I created age 26/27 yrs , in the early nineties after I had moved south of the river from North London to live with Emma who was then my girlfriend in 57 Villiers Road in Kingston upon Thames.

I am often inspired by music. A lot of my friends are musicians and maybe I am something of a frustrated musician so my work sometimes includes musical instruments or has musical/lyrical themes.
For ‘Girl with Flute’ the inspiration came from a particular section in Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits where the solo flute appears.
I thought to myself if I were to paint this feeling in a figurative image what would it look like? I asked Emma to pose with a flute for me in our backyard and took photographs to work from. She couldn’t play but I think it looks about right. I think I borrowed a flute from a music shop in return for a print of the work once it was complete.
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For the background, I wanted it to look vaguely like the Scottish Highlands as this is where Emma’s original maternal side of the family hail from. Int he sketch I tried out a background and this changed slightly in the finished oil painting, where I looked more at Manet’s The Old Musician 1862 for some reference. Emma is wearing a white Kookai dress she had at the time and stood in our small garden
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I created two sketches in ink and watercolour, of which this is one before completing the oil painting, after squaring up the sketch, which is how I used to scale up larger works before using optics later.” - Christian Furr