"I painted this a year before I graduated from Fine Art at Leicester Polytechnic (De Montfort University) in 1989. It was one of a series of paintings updating older figurative works in a contemporary setting. Idyll was based on Manet’s ‘Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe’ but I changed things around a bit. The infamous nude woman in the left foreground of Manet’s painting becomes my fellow art student Gary Anderson playing the guitar so introducing a music theme which is more like one of ‘Watteau’s’ scenes. I suppose this is the first of my music inspired pieces. Chris Tosic was the model for the figure on the right. Both these friends appeared in paintings of the time. Manet’s woodland setting becomes a partly cultivated scene of nature in the depiction of ‘Belgrave Hall’ in the background. The hall in Leicestershire was a place I had visited with fellow art students on a study excursion. The distinctive flower urn and the eagles in the garden are clearly visible. I thought the grounds were very nice and I liked the history of the place being haunted. Its maybe why Manet’s bathing woman in the background appears only partially sketched in transparently. I suppose my art historical influence here is transparent too. In the lower left corner I sketched in a cartoonish bottle over the painted grass. I liked the idea of adding cartoon like elements over the representational things so as the play with what this thing is. I did this two years later when I painted 'Dead Student' in London in 1990. I painted a cartoon-like Acid House smiley in the lower corner. I think I must have liked the addition of incongruous almost random things that looked a little bit stuck-on. In this case it was an apple. An element that looks like its fallen from a still life maybe? " - Christian Furr