ABSTRACT
In 1959, the artist John Bratby was photographed on the decking in his garden outside his home in Blackheath in South London with his family at this side. The photographer was Ida Kar, and she depicts him as an artist firmly embedded in companionate family life, framed and supported by the structure of the home around him. This chapter takes up the representations of home, family life and gender in Bratby’s art, noted in contemporary criticism of his work and echoed in Kar’s photograph. It explores how Bratby’s art engages with the post-war ideal of home that was emerging in Britain at this moment. The chapter outlines in the introduction. Bratby is our starting point as his paintings focus overwhelmingly on the domestic interior and explore the construction of post-war home from within these traditional parameters.
