"Sylvia Sleigh wouldn't paint people if she didn't find them interesting and by interesting, I mean attractive. She didn't idealise nudes like the old masters. Instead, the naked bodies she depicted were really, truly beautiful. Many were friends, among them artists and critics. Others were paid models."
"The Bridge shows Lawrenson reclining on a cream-coloured sofa, her upper-half propped up on one of two bluish-green cushions, in front of a window overlooking the 59th Street Bridge. Few exhibitions are worth visiting for a single artwork alone, but this monumental canvas is special."
"There she attended evening art history classes and met her second husband, the art critic and curator Lawrence Alloway, with whom she moved to the US in 1961, settling in New York. The artist was born in Wales in 1916 and studied at Brighton School of Art before moving to London."
Sylvia Sleigh was a realist painter who depicted nude figures based on their genuine attractiveness rather than idealized classical forms. Her subjects included friends, artists, critics, and paid models. The Bridge, a monumental 1963 painting of elegant model Johanna Lawrenson reclining on a sofa, exemplifies her approach. Sleigh, born in Wales in 1916, studied at Brighton School of Art and moved to London where she met art critic Lawrence Alloway, whom she married. They relocated to New York in 1961. The Bridge remained with Sleigh until her death in 2010, when it was donated to a New York theatre company. Now available for sale, it is displayed at Malarkey gallery in London alongside seven other paintings, including her 1941 self-portrait and 1946 Hampstead Heath landscape.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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