Jack Crabtree

Title: Miner

Description: Mixed media portrait in watercolour and pencil, signed, titled and dated lower left. The date and title are partly obscured and have not been examined out of the frame.
A striking and direct miner portrait, with the sitter filling almost the entire composition. Crabtree builds the face through dense areas of watercolour, pencil and vigorous linear marks, setting the heavily worked features against the much lighter drawing of the helmet and clothing.
There is an immediacy to the portrait that feels characteristic of Crabtree’s close observation of working people. Rather than idealising his subject, he allows the individual character of the sitter to emerge through the marks themselves — particularly in the eyes and the suggestion of a smile.
Slight rippling of the paper. Framed.

Dimensions: 37 x 36.5 cm (Image size) 62 x 60.5 cm (Framed)