An important painting in the Bellany oeuvre, and arguably in the context of British art of the 1960s. Painted in February 1967, as signed and dated verso, the painting has remained in sole private ownership for in excess of fifty years.
The players depicts John Bellany (left-facing) and another, playing instruments. It could be argued that the right-facing figure is based upon Antionette, a regular model at The Royal of Art and as such well-known to John (he studied there from 1965 to 1968). Antionette appears in a small number of other works by John of this time, albeit arguably not in as manly a depiction as this.
The composition and execution is a continuation of John's seminal Edinburgh College of Art graduation exhibition works of 1965, and those in the years thereafter. His journey later that year (1967) to the site of Buchenwald concentration camp was to introduce a new, darker and more traumatic body of work to his oeuvre. The Players, along with much of his work in the 1965 to 1968 period, justifiably ranks as not just his finest painting, but as some of the most engaging and powerful work of any British artist of that era, or since.
