WILLIAM BALTHAZAR ROSE
oil on canvas
framed size - 37 × 32 cm
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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oil on canvas
framed size - 48 × 44 cm
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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oil on canvas
framed size - 76 × 62 cm
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2025
oil on canvas
framed size - 79 × 78 cm
Tennis is a game played by people but seldom those dressed as cooks, and even less so are cats invited to play or even allowed on the tennis court. This is a painting that asks questions and gives no answers.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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oil on canvas
45 x 55 cm
Inspired by the geometric forms of the bedspread found on the bed of a rancid and cheap hotel in Venice, the painter adapted the truncated conical design to the forms of a cook or rather in this case, a pastry chef, and because of the location, a Venetian pastry chef.
There is a moral and nutritional implication in this painting, that pastry will make you fat and in some way disembodied. This is expressed in the strange way in which the pastry chefs seem to be separating into halves and are quite round. This disembodiment is also a reference to Venice itself a place which often seems without foundation, floating upon the water, disembodied and with no earthly reality.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2003
oil on canvas
25 × 30 cm
Love of the sea and what comes from it emanates in this quiet painting. The tranquility provided from the observation of humble and beautiful things drives the artist in this deceptively simple piece. The artist believes that it is in this small world the self can be truly nurtured and can in fact turn its back on all the world’s harrowing distractions to enjoy a complete moment of universal harmony.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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1993
oil on masonite
framed size - 33 x 29 cm
This is an early work and was painted in California while the artist was teaching a course in landscape painting. It remains a rare painting in the artist’s output as it expresses a unique moment when he was staying in a friend’s studio and had the opportunity to observe a mysterious friend at his easel, painting, and who subsequently disappeared and is believed to be working in obscurity somewhere on the west coast of California. The work is a true classic, evoking painters as diverse as Daumier, Corot and Tiepolo and even Philip Guston. It is small work which despite it’s size reverberates and echoes in eternity.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2025
oil on canvas
61 x 75 cm
The backside view of this illustrious bridge has fascinated the artist since he first discovered it. Like the society of Georgian Bath, full of grandeur and pretence but also with a steamier more squalid side, Pulteney Bridge has a more dilapidated side in which natural inclination acts itself out.
The bridge also recalls Roman bridges and the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. It is an icon and the artist painted it on several occasions partly to pay homage to Richard Walter Sickert and partly to rival him. As a bridge it has almost no rivals.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2022
oil on canvas
framed size - 169 × 117 cm
This is the most substantial version following the theme of the cook as painter. Here one cook supports a large three tiered chocolate cake while another paints it. Many questions are raised including whether a cook should paint. There is a darkness to the painting suggesting both menace and mystery.
The glorification of a chocolate cake seems almost absurd in this context. The heavy impasto of the paint recalls ancient art and the overall feeling is forbidding though the subject is light hearted. This painting may in fact be in a round about kind of way a homage to the Italian still life painter Giorgio Morandi who elevated simple still life objects to express significant meaning. The chocolate cake is as such a still life object and the painting itself suggests a world of implicit drama and depth.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2025
oil on canvas
framed size - 110 × 79 cm
The moment of truth. The ball is in the air. Like painting itself the world of this tennis court is frozen. Time is deliberately stopped so that what is about to occur is contemplated. This is about the metaphysics of painting and expresses tennis as a metaphysical game.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2025
oil on canvas
119 × 99 cm
Like the painting of David Hockney’s called ‘the Splash ’ this painting is symbolic of the reverberations an artist makes. Hockney made a big splash with his work like someone jumping into a pool and splashing everyone. This painting meditates on the importance of the serve and how it begins the game. A similar kind of statement. A big serve suggesting a big player and a big artist.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2025
oil on canvas
framed size - 46 × 56 cm
This is both autobiographical and a memorial to the passing of Queen Elizabeth the Second and the legacy of monarchy. The artist spent his formative years in the United States and has found readjusting to English traditions difficult. His own family became the centre of Shakespearean intrigue enacting diabolical power struggles in which the rights of inheritance were disputed and the most base power struggles were enacted.
The painter identifies with the cook who though bowing as if to receive the crown does not possess it. He will never be king. He is only a cook. The unknown figure in crimson shirt proudly holds the crown and marches forward with glee.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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46 × 56 cm
Eventually the cats will take over! Influenced by the superb film ‘Conclave’ with Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci the artist suggests the possibility of a conclave of cats, after all black cats and religion are both imbued with mystical overtones. In this picture the choice has been made, one black cat has very wisely selected the company of cooks and their world. Cooks will provide food and often delicious morsels and they are safe in their ambitions which are to concoct wonderful dishes and feed others rather than grab power and money. Do not underestimate the cook! The other cats stand in the foreground looking perturbed.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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1998 - 2002
oil on linen
41 x 51 cm
The artist has painted several versions of this scene all of which were initially made in front of the motif. This particular painting was matured over some years and is indicative of a process in which the work of art is contemplated over and over again, and in which minor adjustments are made as their necessity becomes clear. Piero della Francesca is said to have had a similar process of delaying the completion of a painting to insure its depth of development.
Citta di Castello holds particular affection for the artist who found great humour and friendliness in the inhabitants. The tower portrayed in the work is said to have withstood countless earthquakes largely due to the soft mortar used by medieval masons which allowed the tower to sway during earthquakes by slightly contracting, exhibiting a flexibility, and suggesting a living architecture reacting organically.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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1993
oil on wood board
framed size - 16 x 17 cm
The painter has produced several versions of the subject of the painter-cook throughout his career and this is perhaps the first one. It is typical of his early work which is diminutive and tentative although it is also mysterious as is the subject of the painter-cook. The painter-cook is cook, painter and pharaoh, the ruler of a great house. His hat provides stature at a visible level. Perhaps that is what gives this work such a feeling of ancient authority.
The painting expresses a wonderful and profound example of painterly process in which the painter searches within the dark air of the background to find forms which emerge from an intuitive technique in which scraping, daubing and restating reveal it’s forms and what emerges seems like something from the subconscious or the depth of an unfathomable pool of water.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2025
oil on canvas
framed size - 46 × 56 cm
This picture is also autobiographical, though it carries its own meaning and can be freely and personally interpreted as with many of the cook paintings. There are a variety of symbols at work and there is a suggestion of hierarchy, transmitted by the scale differences between the different cooks. The black cat known by the painter as ‘Countessa Bosco’ has been the painter’s faithful companion throughout several years of conflict and tribulation. In the end one can have few real friends and the presence of a small black cat in the studio can be of great solice.
One finds this cat in many of the artist’s paintings sharing in the concoctions the artist produces. Perhaps in this painting the artist has finally been awarded a first birthday of his own, freed from celebrating everyone else’s birthday but never his own, or perhaps this is a painting symbolising rebirth in which the fire of life is safely guarded.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2025
oil on canvas
framed size - 61 × 76 cm
The artist moved to Italy to emulate the tradition of landscape painting the European continentals did so well. This painting celebrates the small town the artist adopted as a home which though not of great size dominates the upper Tiber valley.
The painting has been reworked on several occasions with subtle alterations resulting in a tight and geometrically magnetic arrangement. It is in this reworking and the reliance on memory and reconstruction to do so, that the great mystery of this work lies. It is a deceptively understated piece of which there is little comparison.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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1998
oil on wood board
framed size - 21 × 13 cm
After the artist moved to Umbria he found a small drawing group which worked from an English model. He did a number of small oil sketches on wooden panels of which this is one. What he particularly appreciated was the short time in which he was given to execute a painting (twenty minutes) which forced him to respond spontaneously and forced him to make broad simplified forms.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2016, reworked 2025
oil on canvas
40 x 50 cm
This painting represents an investigation into several interests the artist had at the time he painted it working directly from the motif. In his landscape painting he hoped to extend some of the concerns of Piero della Francesca who has towered over quattrocento painting and was devoted to and lived in Borgo of Sansepolcro.
The geometric arrangement is so carefully developed and subtly stated that the overall effect is one which suggests absolute harmony and does not immediately ask the viewer to analyse the brilliance of the geometric structure. The capacity to see structure and geometry in the landscape derives in part from the influence of Paul Cezanne.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2025
oil on wood board
30 × 50 cm
This painting is a response to the famous photo entitled ‘Camille Pissarro, Cezanne, Martinez and others in the garden at Pontoise, 1877’. It is the emotion of this photograph in which Cezanne buries his head in apparent melancholy, that the artist responds. There is a sense that something is over, that something has failed, and a sense of homage. The cook lies flat with a protrusive stomach, and cooks stand beckoning, exclaiming with their gestures a concern about the uncertain state of the cook lying on the ground. Cezanne was claimed to be the father of modern painting. This cook is perhaps the founder of modern cooking? Perhaps he has overeaten and cannot get up or is even dead? Perhaps he is lying in a yogic trance or is drunk, we just don’t know.
The painting also pays reference to the film Conclave. In this film, a decision is to be made about the choice for a new pope. Here, the inference is that the conclave is over and the result is unfathomable, with a cook lying on the floor, we have no idea of the real state of this figure. ls this a deeply mystical painting or just an image of inconsequential kitchen antics?
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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OTHER WORKS
oil on Italian linen
framed size – 95 x 95 cm
The artist throughout his career has been fascinated with the square format and chose it for this painting which was to commemorate the attacks made on the eleventh of September, 2001 in New York City. He had recently moved to Italy and viewed news of the attack in the bar at Oscari's Restaurant in Monte Santa Maria Tiberina, Umbria. The aftermath was extremely melancholic for everyone and the grand but grey landscape he saw from his terrace as winter arrived seemed a fitting eulogy for the event and those that died in it. The painting has been exhibited in a number of venues including the Bishop's Palace, Wells.
framed
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2024
oil on canvas
84 x 64 cm
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2023
oil on canvas
framed size - 36 x 30 cm
A cook, a ballerina, an old man with a white beard who is dressed like a boy and a blue acrobat assemble together. Comrades of the spirit in a world not seen. Beauty and childishness, cooking and acrobatics are the themes which draw this assembly. The artist felt a sense of pathos in making this painting and drew upon the wonderful short story of ‘Tortilla Flats’ by John Steinbeck in which the innocent exploits of youthful innocence is described. Old age can still enjoy beauty, fine dining and the spirit of the acrobatic with childish zeal.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2021 - 2023
oil on canvas
unframed
152 x 122 cm
The artist has elaborated on the figure of the cook throughout his career. He appropriated the cook from a number of sources in historical art. In costume they make reference to Egyptian sculpture and appropriate the pharaoh's hat seen on many figures, particularly Cleopatra. The tall cylindrical hat is also a reference to the white hat seen in Piero della Francesca and the long hat of the puncinello made famous by Tiepelo in Venice. For the artist, the cook is the hero of our age and a co-conspirator. Gauguin appropriated the costume of the fisherman for the artist to wear and William Balthazar Rose has personally appropriated the cook's uniform which he often wears while working. He maintains “Artists feed the world so they should be dressed appropriately like their comrades the Cooks, who also feed the world”.This particular painting suggests a plot; cooks gather, cooks discuss, they mutter and conspire, perhaps planning the next feast.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2023
oil on board
40 x 60 cm
One of the artist’s most dramatic pieces. The ladder is the significant symbol of this piece and it is juxtaposed with the actions of two cooks who seem to hammer the ground. Frustrations versus elevation could be the theme. What is particularly striking is the way in which the ladder seems unsupported and balances itself in the dark air. A choice is suggested, to beat the earth out of anger or to rise through self ordering In which it is only belief that allows the symbol, the ladder, to be suspended without support. This is very much a human predicament.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2023
oil on canvas
framed size 51 x 40 cm
Questions are raised. Uniforms and dancing legs, Are these cooks involved in an elaborate ballet of are they a reference to goose stepping? These are human predicaments which the audience must address. Is this a humorous event or are we being asked to laugh at the horrific? Uniforms are tricky and even the cook must be interrogated as to his decency. Ultimately there is redemption in the cook’s costume, after all it is white signifying purity.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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2003 - 2023
oil on canvas
76 x 61 cm
The artist tends to juxtapose the asian and more specifically the Chinese cook (who wears a straw and triangular hat) with the western chef who wears a tall white, cylindrical hat. Here the Chinese chef is angry, perhaps furious, raising his fist at the other chef.
Is there a deeper meaning to this painting? Is this in fact the embodiment of China angry with the west and ready to fight? Or are we merely witnessing an angry chef who is upset because his food has been stolen or his recipe adapted? Perhaps he is angry because the cat is being protected and he can no longer use it in his soup! The Chinese have been notorious for their ingredients from fresh monkey brains to dogs and cats all which have been readily available in open air markets in China for centuries.
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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oil on board
25 x 32 cm
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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INTRODUCTION
“As a boy I remember feeling a huge mysterious appreciation upon seeing a fully uniformed cook for the first time. The cook appeared dignified and superior like a king or a magician compared to the banal figures around him. The white costume seemed to glow amongst the drab members of the room, and there was a sense of ceremony and importance to his gait. The first cook, whom I remember as rakish and proud, was holding a cleaver and a silver tray, commanding attention.”
I began painting the series I call the ‘Cooks’ in 1991 and have continued to add to it since that time. Since childhood I have been fascinated with the spirit of cookery and in particular the chef; the figure that is so often dressed in white and has a tall hat and checkered trousers. I have always loved the costume of the cook—it seems magical and theatrical, and suggests at times the robes of a priest. I have been intrigued by what the cook does as a creative individual and am aware of how often the cook creates more vastly than any other figure in the arts.
I am still filled with tremendous awe when I glimpse a chef, and grow slightly wobbly at the knees. I think cooks serve and that they are almost like medicine men. They can be manic in the kitchen; overworked and pressured, producing wonderful food but suffering to do it. There is a discrepancy between the nirvana they bring forth in the dining room and the tense world in the kitchen-- there seem to be two worlds each masking the other. My paintings have been an attempt to speak of this world which is to some degree my evoked fantasy of a world I do not know in its depths, but rather guess at.”
THE TENNIS PLAYERS COLLECTION
ʻThe series of Tennis Players stem from my childhood as Tennis was one of the few sports I was able to play or understand.
The first tennis player I ever painted was in fact a portrait of my brother Inigo. He wore a very particular hat which my aunt had purchased for him in Venice. It was a straw hat of a bright yellow and had been blown into a canal and had gotten thoroughly wet. He had been forced to dry it on his finger as he walked home. It had acquired a rather unique shape due to it’s reformation upon his finger. He wore the hat for our tennis lessons. It was a little oriental in feeling.
Tennis is a game of the court with fixed boundaries played mostly between two people. A little like marriage when it has gone wrong or like boxing, it is about opposition and victory, keeping a cool head and fighting it out. Both light-hearted and cruel depending upon one’s outlook. It inevitably reveals the duality of victor and loser.
The tennis players also have unusual hats and costumes which derive from the fanciful and elevated social status of the game.
Another aspect of the series is the racquet which often seems to suggest a hand mirror. This suggestion initiates an alteration of the narrative. The racquet held up as a mirror used to gaze into by the player or to reflect the viewer. A place of introspection and contemplation which is part of the traditional role of painting.
The humour of these paintings is in the delight of the human condition when at a game of Tennis. Though there is opposition (as in war) the opposition is so much more about revealing technique, mastery and spectacular gamesmanship. The players themselves become entranced with the wonder of the event almost like lovers thrilled with their own sexual sophistication as they fight for dominance.’
— William Balthazar Rose
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
William Balthazar Rose was born in 1961 in England. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University. The history of art is visible in his work with noted influences being Goya, Bruegel, and Morandi.
Rose paints landscapes, still life, and symbolic figurative work, but is perhaps best known for his Cooks Series. He says of the cooks “The tall white hats are architectural, turning the human figure into something stone-like and eternal. The chequered trousers are playful and decorative, and the knives symbolic and threatening, full of innuendo and taboo.” Acclaimed chef Michel Roux Jr is a friend and collector of his work, as well as inspiring many of these paintings.
Rose has lived for several years in the Georgian city of Bath and maintains residences in Tuscany and Umbria, where he is also represented. He has exhibited widely in the United States, England and Europe.
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oil on canvas
framed size - 38 × 38 cm
Artist
William Balthazar Rose
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