The Lovers

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John Bellany
Born Port Seton, 1942

The Lovers, 1979

Oil on canvas
Purchased 1981 with 50% NFA grant
Museum number 1-1981

Bellany studied at Edinburgh College of Art and at the Royal College of Art
in London. The Lovers features the artist with his second wife Juliet Lister (1939–85), whom he married in 1979.

This work comes from a series in which Bellany explored the complex emotional
basis of their apparently doomed relationship. The lovers embrace but are literally bound together. Bellany has disguised himself with a puffin’s head, whilst Juliet is barely visible. They stand on the deck of the Ship of Life, behind the ship’s wheel - a Wheel of Fortune. The sense of gambling, risk-taking and uncertainty is emphasised by the playing cards.

The central image is framed by two strips on either side of the canvas, in which blurred images of former voyagers from life to death appear and dissolve into illegibility.