rolf harris 2011 collection

THE NEW collEcTioN from RolF HARRiS

compRiSES TEN mAgNiFicENT NEW pAiNTiNgS

WHicH HE has pERSoNAlly SElEcTEd FRom his

STudio. RolF TAlkS uS THRougH the TREE-liNEd

cANAlS of AmSTERdAm ANd the vAST plAiNS

of THE AuSTRAliAN ouTbAck, to THE SERENE

WATERWAyS of vENicE ANd the AWE iNSpiRiNg

WildliFE oF the kENyAN buSH, THiS collEcTioN

of vASTly diFFERiNg WoRk SHoWS oFF the

vERSATiliTy, dEpTH and viTAliTy of the WoRk of

THE NATioN’S moST bElovEd ARTiST.

THE STudio collEcTioN 2011

Each print has been reproduced to the highest standard and is individually

signed by Rolf. Then, each piece is immediately numbered as a mark of its authenticity and status as a genuine

collector’s item. The sophisticated, cutting edge techniques used to

create these limited Edition prints give them a remarkable closeness to the original, with the true vibrant colours and superb detail. Each print is then

completed by demontfort with a beautiful hand-crafted frame.

“ Amsterdam morning is a composite from a couple of

photographs i took in Holland. i was doing a programme about Rembrandt

for a bbc1 ‘Rolf on Art’ programme some years ago. in one of these

photographs, a man had just gone past me on a bicycle and i was able

to snatch a shot of him going off into the early morning sun. on the left

hand side there was a canal lined with trees, and on the other side of the

canal were all these buildings drifting off into the blue haze of distance.

on the right of the picture, quite a way away, a man was walking towards

me, almost obliterated by the blinding early morning sunlight. i waited ‘til he

got a bit closer so that i could actually see him properly, almost alongside

a parked bicycle, and i took another shot. by this time of course, the cyclist

was way off in the distance, but i was able to combine the two pictures to

have both the cyclist and the pedestrian big enough to register properly.

The line of cars parked alongside the trees by the edge of the canal, and

the buildings to the right completed the picture. i just loved the way the

whole thing went off into the blue grey distance in my painting, and if you

look closely you’ll realise that the road was constructed of bricks laid in a

herring-bone pattern. i started trying to paint each individual brick but

soon gave up. it was driving me mad! i loved the shine put on the stones

along the sidewalk on the right by the millions of feet over the centuries,

and i particularly loved the bits of sun, bursting from the polished cars and

exploding at the far end of the road. if you look closely, you can almost

smell the dutch coffee aroma wafting out of each doorway.

“


AmSTERdAm moRNiNg

canvas edition of 195 copies Size 24” x 19” framed £795

paper edition of 195 copies Size 20” x 16” framed £695


Wildebeest, as you probably know, is another name for the gnu - wildebeest

is how it’s better known today. For Zebra and Wildebeest i conceived an

idea that it would be nice if everything in Africa, instead of being green, green,

green wherever you looked, might look more exciting if all the grassy areas of a

painting were red. it was a good thought. i painted the zebra and the baby

zebra and the wildebeest in their accurate colours, from a photograph i’d taken

out in Africa, but then, instead of green grass everywhere, i painted brilliantly

red grass. i really rather liked the effect. i hope you do.

“ “

ZEbRA ANd WildEbEEST




lioness, mother and cub was very much a delightful exercise in

impressionism, trying to get the feeling of that gorgeous calm, relaxed, loving

mother who’s cuddling that little cub in to her. if you look at it, all the different

colours are so close to one another, the greeny-grey of the background creeps

into the brownish reddish colour of the nose of the mother. Then you get little

bits of brilliant light along the top of the eye, nose and ear of the mother and

the brilliant white of the part just under the nose of the lioness and then the part

of the chin with the little dark areas, and it all comes together. it was a painting

that more or less painted itself.

“ “


lioNESS, moTHER ANd cub




A Sea of grasses, uluru. uluru, formerly known as Ayres Rock, the

mystical aboriginal sacred site, seems to surge up, isolated and magical, from

the very centre of a vast sandy plain. This huge sandstone monolith stands 900

feet high and is about five and a half miles around the base – it is enormous! up

close, it dwarfs we humans into insignificance, and from a distance, its shadows

assume a mantle of incredible soft blue, cast by the haze of the intervening

atmosphere. When the setting sun adds its own amazing red highlights to ‘The

Rock’, as it’s known, this amazing blue creates a wonderful and intricately detailed

contrast to the vibrant orangey-red. Seeing ‘The Rock’ in all its different guises,

it is no wonder that it has been a sacred site since time immemorial.

“ “

A SEA oF gRASSES, uluRu



limited Edition book of 1,950 inclusive of two limited Edition prints £295

This spectacular retrospective of the life and work of Rolf Harris is available as a signed limited edition of 1950 copies. beautifully encased in a presentation gift box, the book is accompanied by two collectable limited editions signed by the artist. its 260 full colour pages reinforce the huge impact that Rolf has had on the world of art, as an educator, an entertainer, and of course as a major artist in his own right.


dead Flat calm is painted from a big close-up of two rowboats

just sitting motionless, with gentle ripples on the water and a lovely calmness all

around. it gives me a lovely sense of being totally relaxed. i like the reflection of

the brilliant white boat in the foreground on the left. underneath that boat the

reflection in the water paints itself as a sort of dingy yellow ochre colour. With

the boat on the right hand side, you get a back view of the brilliant white back

section, and that’s reflected in the water as a sort of a pale, pale yellow ochre

colour – a slightly strange shaped reflection but that’s because of the ripples in

the water. if you want relaxation, here’s your picture!

“ “

dEAd FlAT cAlm




gondola in the Rain, venice was a fascinating picture to paint

because you’re trying to get the perspective of everything that’s happening with

this strange shape of the canal which goes round in a series of curves to the left

and then back to the right and the buildings going up and up and gradually

disappearing into the background. Nothing is straight! it was fascinating to

paint all that and to get a feeling of impressionism in the shapes of the wall and

to get the perspective of the lines of bricks running along the wall to show the

way it’s all following the complex shapes and curves of the canal. And then to

see that gondola coming towards you with the man controlling it, standing on

the back platform with the white of the muted sunlight reflected off the platform,

silhouetting his legs. The two customers sitting in the gondola underneath the

umbrella, sheltering from the lightly drizzling rain, are loving the whole experience.

i love the odd spreading ripples created by the lightly falling raindrops in the

right bottom corner of the painting.

“ “

goNdolA iN THE RAiN, vENicE




Tsavo orphans After mud Wallow is done from a photograph

that i took when we were in kenya. We’d been to daphne Sheldrake’s orphanage

where she raises tiny baby elephants that have been orphaned by poachers

and she brings them back to maturity and gives them a family of other orphaned

elephants and keepers to join. it was wonderful to go out with the young adult

orphans when they went to a mud wallow. The way this was all done was, they

dug a big hole in the red earth and poured gallons and gallons of water into it.

The elephants couldn’t wait to get in amongst it and they all waded about like

naughty little kids, laying down and wallowing and sloshing about. it was just

wonderful to see. And of course the mud painted them all completely orangey-

red. These photographs were taken after they’d come out of that mud wallow

and they were just relaxing. To try to get the feeling of the thickness of the skin of

these elephants, i first of all used hugely thick, dark brown paint to get the shape

of the elephant’s body, and then, using the thin, pointed wooden end of a small

brush, i scratched lines into the thick wet paint to indicate where the wrinkles

were. When that was all thoroughly dry, i was able to paint the elephants

the correct orangey colour and the grooves in the original thick paint helped

indicate the patterns in the leathery skin.

“ “

TSAvo oRpHANS

AFTER mud WAlloW




The title of this painting, Winter Sunrise, gives you an idea of what

it’s all about. it was painted from a photograph sent to me as a christmas

card, by a dear friend of mine, penny Tweedie. She’d got herself up early

in the morning one freezing cold Winter’s day last year and had taken this

astounding photograph as the sun rose, with the silhouettes of the various

trees against the great mass of greeny-grey trees in the background. in the

foreground you have the darker greeny-grey of shadows on the slightly lighter

colour of the snow. Then once again on top of that you get a much darker

colour pinpointing the edges of the hedge and the little bits of trees and the

trunks covered in ivy and empty of leaves against that orangey sky as the sun

rises. The fascinating thing with penny’s photograph was the intensity of the

sunlight coming from the half orb of the sun on the left hand side, bleaching out

everything around it, even turning the trunks of the trees a vibrant red against

the gleaming white of the sun.

“ “

WiNTER SuNRiSE




Tall Tiger on the prowl. To try and create the painting i started off

very boldly and very bravely – just sloshed on the colour and tried to get the

central part of the nose and the section above the mouth that orangey-red

colour, then tried to paint the rest of it as it went out in all directions into a

yellow ochre-y sort of colour from that basic nose colour. i had two big brushes

and a lot of very wet oil paint and it was all painted wet on wet on wet, sloshing

on the really dark lines of the patterns on the tiger’s coat with very deep purple.

– i didn’t wait for anything to dry in the initial phase, just painted it all wet and

tried to get the perspective, the proportions and all the lines of the stripes as

they went around the face and across the back. Further off towards the back

of the shoulder going towards the real back of the tiger, you can see that

there’s a certain amount of daylight softening the colour of those dark stripes.

The way that i indicated that was, i didn’t use any blue for the daylight, just a

paler version of the purple i’d used for the dark stripes. i did actually wait for

everything to dry before i carefully painted on all those dramatically contrasting

chunks of white everywhere. What amazing patterns tigers have!

“ “



TAll TigER oN THE pRoWl


Fishing Felucca, Hot day Egypt is a title that says it all. it was

just wonderful to paint from start to finish. it was from a photograph that i took

when we were in Egypt many years ago. i’ve got so many photographs sitting

there waiting to be painted and this one was tremendous, mainly because of the

fact that it all seemed to be green. Everything was a sort of bluey green except

for the brilliant sunlight and i was fascinated by the fact that the green-ness

of the photograph, somehow seemed to indicate a terrific background heat.

you felt that heat and i think the reason you felt it, was because of the brilliant

sunlight on the top of the mast and along the bit of bamboo holding the sail,

as well as along the edges of the boat and the fierce yellowy-orangey sunlight

on the curve of the sail and the brilliant sunlight on top of the figures. i think

the whole thing created an impression of intense sunlight coming from above,

even though normally you would think to yourself that to get a hot scorching

sunshine effect, you would want to have orangey-reds everywhere. i love the

poor sea-sick fisherman with his head in his hands. He can’t wait to get off the

boat and on to dry land.

“ “

FiSHiNg FEluccA, HoT dAy EgypT



bronze Sculpture Edition of 595 Size 12” x 10” £995

The sculpture iNTuiTioN was

inspired by Rodin. i got my dear

daughter bindi to pose and

modelled it from her hand in clay

before casting it. i was amazed

when i found out that Rodin has

actually used the same hand twice

but placed it in different positions

in his sculptures like ‘The Secret’

and ‘cathedral Hands’.

rolf harris 2011 collection

Documents

wildebeest i

copies size

studio collection

couple ofphotographs

canvas edition

new collection

cubpaper edition

wildebeestpaper edition