Study for Sculler, 1976-86
Watercolour
20 x 27 in
50.8 x 68.6 cm
50.8 x 68.6 cm
This painting is presently on view at our Toronto gallery
$15,000
Inscriptions
signed, inscribed and dated, ‘Danby / © ‘76-86’ (top right)Provenance
Private collection, Burlington, Ontario
Exhibitions
St. Catharines, Rodman Hall Art Centre, The Art of Rowing, July 25 - September 5, 1999.
Literature
Don Fraser, “The mystique of rowing: Two art exhibitions celebrate the sport's magic pull,” The Standard; St. Catharines, 23 July 1999: B1 [illustrated].
Study for Sculler, 1976-86 is an important sport related watercolour by Ken Danby.
While Study for Sculler is about an athlete, a rower, for Danby it is as much about the discipline, dedication, sometimes, loneliness that a great athlete hopeful in any sport endures in an attempt to attain those heights. Ken Danby’s Sculler is best read as an archetype of disciplined solitude rather than a portrait of a specific Olympic rower. He turns an athletic subject into a meditation on self-mastery.
The red-and-white singlet evokes Canadian rowing colours without citing any specific club or national team; the lack of maple leaf, crest, or lettering makes clear that this is not meant as a documented likeness of his model, Brian Thorne, or any named Olympian. Instead, the uniform functions symbolically—red suggesting physical power and exertion, white suggesting restraint and control. The shell and oars are likewise generic, stripped of logos or technical idiosyncrasies, so that boat and body read as a single, finely tuned instrument.
For the artist, to depict an athlete in action as opposed to a personality, the model is not facially identifiable. However, Danby did acknowledge Thorne as his model upon which the Sculler 1976 is based. Thorne competed for Canada in the 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1984 World Championships, and medalled in Silver in the ‘79 and Bronze in the ‘81 Championships. In 1987, Thorne won gold at the 1987 Pan Am Games in Lightweight double sculls with his partner John Murphy.
Danby’s fascination was the psychological as well as the physiological demands made on an athlete. He saw close parallels between the lonely dedication of the athlete and the devotion of the artist who secludes himself in order to achieve the goal he has set for himself. Both are ultimately competing against themselves.
In 1976 Ken Danby painted a comparable and much celebrated work The Sculler as one of a collection of 6 watercolours known collectively as The Olympic Watercolours. The “Olympic Watercolours were painted for the National Sport and Recreation Centre, and reproduced as multiples for fundraising purposes. Galerie Alan Klinkhoff sold them 5 years ago. The Study for Sculler, a work clearly dated 1976-86 identifies itself as being one conceived originally for the Olympic sculler composition and resurrected to pursue its completion fully 10 years later.
Danby had recorded that in October of ‘75 he had “accomplished a ‘blitz’ with his camera and sketchbook” and that he had adequate material to develop the Olympic watercolours, except the high jumper. One might reasonably assume that our Study for Sculler is completed in 1986 from his research done in 1975. Returning to the motif long after the immediate context of the Montreal and Los Angeles Olympic cycles, Danby reworked it as a personal, enduring symbol rather than a piece of Games iconography. Over that span, the sculler image shifted from topical Olympic commission toward a distilled statement about solitude, discipline, and the pursuit of an inner standard—placing it among the most resonant works of postwar Canadian realism.
The year Danby began this watercolour and the “Olympic Watercolours”, 1976, is the year Danby was honoured as the first recipient of the R. Tait McKenzie Chair for sport. The Chair was established to commemorate Dr. R. Tait McKenzie’s contributions to Canadian Sport. Dr. McKenzie (1867- 1938) was an outstanding Canadian, a medical doctor, an artist with a particular talent in sculpture, a McGill University athlete of distinction, and a lieutenant during WWI. Dr. McKenzie had a significant commitment to physical exercise as preventative medicine. This was a novel manner of thinking in the day, so much so that he is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Physical Education in Canada”. Danby agreed with McKenzie’s claim that ‘nothing is more beautiful than the figure in the flower of its youth showing its strength, grace and agility in the sports and games of the playing field, swimming pool and gymnasium.’
—----------------------------------------------------
Ken Danby, CM, OOnt, RCA (1940-2007) was one of Canada’s foremost artists of his generation painting in a realist style. He was both a painter and a printmaker of considerable renown. Danby’s works are owned by private collectors worldwide, as well as by many public institutions, including The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. He painted an important collection of six compositions; The Olympic Watercolours in 1976 which included an earlier version of The Sculler.
While Study for Sculler is about an athlete, a rower, for Danby it is as much about the discipline, dedication, sometimes, loneliness that a great athlete hopeful in any sport endures in an attempt to attain those heights. Ken Danby’s Sculler is best read as an archetype of disciplined solitude rather than a portrait of a specific Olympic rower. He turns an athletic subject into a meditation on self-mastery.
The red-and-white singlet evokes Canadian rowing colours without citing any specific club or national team; the lack of maple leaf, crest, or lettering makes clear that this is not meant as a documented likeness of his model, Brian Thorne, or any named Olympian. Instead, the uniform functions symbolically—red suggesting physical power and exertion, white suggesting restraint and control. The shell and oars are likewise generic, stripped of logos or technical idiosyncrasies, so that boat and body read as a single, finely tuned instrument.
For the artist, to depict an athlete in action as opposed to a personality, the model is not facially identifiable. However, Danby did acknowledge Thorne as his model upon which the Sculler 1976 is based. Thorne competed for Canada in the 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1984 World Championships, and medalled in Silver in the ‘79 and Bronze in the ‘81 Championships. In 1987, Thorne won gold at the 1987 Pan Am Games in Lightweight double sculls with his partner John Murphy.
Danby’s fascination was the psychological as well as the physiological demands made on an athlete. He saw close parallels between the lonely dedication of the athlete and the devotion of the artist who secludes himself in order to achieve the goal he has set for himself. Both are ultimately competing against themselves.
In 1976 Ken Danby painted a comparable and much celebrated work The Sculler as one of a collection of 6 watercolours known collectively as The Olympic Watercolours. The “Olympic Watercolours were painted for the National Sport and Recreation Centre, and reproduced as multiples for fundraising purposes. Galerie Alan Klinkhoff sold them 5 years ago. The Study for Sculler, a work clearly dated 1976-86 identifies itself as being one conceived originally for the Olympic sculler composition and resurrected to pursue its completion fully 10 years later.
Danby had recorded that in October of ‘75 he had “accomplished a ‘blitz’ with his camera and sketchbook” and that he had adequate material to develop the Olympic watercolours, except the high jumper. One might reasonably assume that our Study for Sculler is completed in 1986 from his research done in 1975. Returning to the motif long after the immediate context of the Montreal and Los Angeles Olympic cycles, Danby reworked it as a personal, enduring symbol rather than a piece of Games iconography. Over that span, the sculler image shifted from topical Olympic commission toward a distilled statement about solitude, discipline, and the pursuit of an inner standard—placing it among the most resonant works of postwar Canadian realism.
The year Danby began this watercolour and the “Olympic Watercolours”, 1976, is the year Danby was honoured as the first recipient of the R. Tait McKenzie Chair for sport. The Chair was established to commemorate Dr. R. Tait McKenzie’s contributions to Canadian Sport. Dr. McKenzie (1867- 1938) was an outstanding Canadian, a medical doctor, an artist with a particular talent in sculpture, a McGill University athlete of distinction, and a lieutenant during WWI. Dr. McKenzie had a significant commitment to physical exercise as preventative medicine. This was a novel manner of thinking in the day, so much so that he is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Physical Education in Canada”. Danby agreed with McKenzie’s claim that ‘nothing is more beautiful than the figure in the flower of its youth showing its strength, grace and agility in the sports and games of the playing field, swimming pool and gymnasium.’
—----------------------------------------------------
Ken Danby, CM, OOnt, RCA (1940-2007) was one of Canada’s foremost artists of his generation painting in a realist style. He was both a painter and a printmaker of considerable renown. Danby’s works are owned by private collectors worldwide, as well as by many public institutions, including The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. He painted an important collection of six compositions; The Olympic Watercolours in 1976 which included an earlier version of The Sculler.
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