Title : Tavern Scene  

Medium: Oil on Board

Painting Size :59cm x 29cm

Framed Size: 63cm x33

Signed  : K Baker

Frame : Wood Hand Gilded 

illustrated : no

Cecil Kenneth Baker (1931 1995)

An impressionist in style and inclination, Kenneth Baker always filled his work with people he could relate to, and characters he understood intimately. Painted with the utmost compassion, the working class subjects of his paintings became real people with real problems, often unable to extricate themselves from the vicious cycle of poverty, despair and degradation.

Baker was a self-taught artist and found inspiration in the work of Gregoire Boonzaier in terms of style and subject matter. Before commencing a career as a full-time artist, Baker worked as a sign writer in the Cape Town docks, where he immersed himself in the lives of the fisher folk. The accurate and poignant depictions of harbour scenes, and fishermen handling or selling their catches became a consistent theme throughout his oeuvre.

District Sixs vibrancy and its characters provided Baker with the most suitable subject matter in terms of atmosphere and emotional content. Bakers family was forcibly removed from the Claremont area under the Group Areas Act of the 1960s, and he could intuitively capture and communicate the emotional impact of despair, desperation and grief, that typified life in the fateful history of District Six. In Bakers paintings, the District Six buildings and houses became much more than just that they were transformed into harbingers of their fate, and the impending doom and crisis awaiting those who lived their lives in them.

Gallery Price

R29000.00