Portrait of Heroes - Better Days painting by Heath Kane

Portrait of Heroes - Better Days

Price:
300.00

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Medium: Acrylic paint painted over archival giclée
Paper: Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm 
Specials: Gold ink and pencil
Year: 2019
Edition: 20
Size: 56.0cm (w) x 70.0cm (h)
Signed and numbered

This artwork is sold unframed
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"Napoleon said ‘history is written by the winners’. He might also have said ‘And painted by the rich’. The result is a gross distortion of our past. "

BACKGROUND STORY

The “Portrait of Heroes” collection is based on original artwork from the early nineteenth century, a period of massive growth and change in northern Europe as the industrial revolution transformed the fabric of society. The original portraits depict rich, confident, strong human beings, suggesting a time of great abundance and health.

Classic art, especially when curated in national galleries and esteemed intuitions, is often presented as being representative of a time.

The reality though was often very different. During the early days of the Industrial Revolution a chronic lack of hygiene, a population boom, and a lack of knowledge of medicine lead to fearsome epidemics of Cholera, Typhoid, and Smallpox; between 1800-1850 Tuberculosis alone killed one-third of the population of Britain. At the same many were losing their jobs to mechanization, there were huge disparities in wealth and violent outbreaks of civil unrest.

The Better Days exhibition is intended to question both our view of the past and how we represent ourselves in the present. 

Were those really better days?