Collections

Diana Surprised by Actaeon

Artist: Forbes, Ronald, RSA · b. 1947

This is one of a number of paintings by Forbes on Classical themes. A similar painting 'Diana Surprised by Actaeon' catalogue number 38 was exhibited at the RSA Annual Exhibition in 2003 (image of this painting on CD of 2003 Annual Exhibition images). Forbes supplied text written in the third person (below) regarding his diploma work in an e-mail on 28/11/2007 (full copy of e-mail in Forbes' file) Ronald Forbes RSA "Diana and Actaeon, is typical of the work of Ronald Forbes in general and of the period (1998-2001) in which it was painted.... it was substantially repainted in 2001, having been first completed in 1998. Forbes has on a number of occasions re-visited and re-worked paintings that have been exhibited, having used the gallery setting to reappraise the work and having seen areas for possible improvement and potential development.
The clues to the painting’s subject matter – its narrative - lie in the title. This is a myth, committed to paper by the Roman writer Ovid, and which has been the subject of many paintings in history. Forbes in fact refers here to two such by Titian, whose work Diana Surprised by Actaeon hangs in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. The story tells of Actaeon, a hunter, chancing upon Diana (the goddess of the hunt, but also of modesty) and her group, bathing in the forest. She is so angered that she turns Actaeon into a deer, the type of animal he has been hunting. He is later hunted down by his fellow hunters, who naturally do not realise that their prey is in fact their friend. Forbes is primarily a figurative painter, but the term “imagist” may be more appropriate since the human figure in his work is usually de-constructed and re-assembled, synthesised from a range of fragments of images which carry traces of recognition from their source but which have gained a new identity in their new juxtaposition. These fragments appear at first view to be collaged. This illusionistic collage is a personal invention that has underpinned his work for many years, and continues now (in 2009) in his pursuit of a notion of illusionistic three-dimensional collage. He even creates edges that make the pieces look like torn paper. The use of fragments of images causes the viewer to form an imaginative link with the work where they are participants in the creation of the narrative. There is a feeling of familiarity created by the hints of images that may come from mass media sources such as magazines, but which take on a new life with new potential meaning as they are re-structured.Typically the figures are depicted in an environment that also is a synthesis of pictorial elements, which includes the natural and the man-made. The work has an affinity with theatre, with these figure substitutes acting as characters on a stage surrounded by the props necessary to relate some unwritten story.The subject matter is often structured as if within the traditional genres of figure, still life and landscape painting, but is more about these than of these. A range of subjects has been constant for a number of years. Gardens in general have been used as a metaphor for nature or landscape, and the Garden of Eden in particular has been central as a reference to our relationship with Nature, and about ideas of knowledge, good and evil and the fall from grace. Figures entangled with keep-fit machinery, often accompanied by after-the-hunt type still-lifes or set in luxuriant landscapes, have featured prominently. Images of food, usually as celebrated in advertising, are a constant element. Taxidermy, fakes, museums; and the dream-like disassociation caused by long-distance travel have all been explored. Often, use would be made of the structure of great works by artists from the past as the basis for paintings using easily recognised current day images and objects.The unexpected combination of the archaic and the contemporary reflect the roots of Forbes’s way of thinking in Surrealism, nurtured through Pop, leading to uniquely personal work, which uses contemporary detail to explore universal and perhaps timeless issues.