Timothy Brooke Memorial Exhibition

Timothy Brooke
Memorial Exhibition

One Off is pleased to present

Timothy Brooke
Memorial Exhibition

Exhibition opens Saturday 21 January 2023
11am to 4pm

There will be a tribute to Timothy at 11am
when together we can celebrate his life
followed by refreshments

Exhibition Run:
Saturday 21 January through 15 February 2023

Gallery open:
Tuesday through Saturday, from 9am - 5.30pm
Sunday, from noon - 5:30pm

'Ebb and Flow', Peterson Kamwathi Exhibition Invitation

The master has gone but his masterclass remains

In praise of Timothy Brooke, a magical realist who caught the fleeting moment in paintings and drawings that urged us to conserve and protect the land we have

Old soldiers never die, they say, but only fade away — and fine artists can never die either.
They live on to excite us, shock us, amuse, uplift and educate us through their work.
And my comrade-in-art Timothy Brooke was among the finest of fine artists.
His physical self might have left us last week, at the age of 80 but for sure his paintings will continue to snap and sing from many a wall.
Tim was arguably the most technically accomplished painter in the entire region; his grasp of line and form, tone and mass, light and colour rarely surpassed.
It sprang from his ability to draw; a talent often overlooked in this world of video, installations and electronic gimmickry. I mean, what for heaven’s sake is an NFT and who among us really cares?
Tim was born in England and came to Kenya, aged three, shortly after the Second World War; his father the architect who designed the Post Office in Nairobi City Square and the Banana School chapel.
Sent back to the UK to complete his schooling, he then worked in an advertising studio and honed his drawing by attending evening classes at St Martin’s School of Art, London, taught by James Dring RA.
Dring, a noted portrait painter had himself studied under the formidable Henry Tonks, the Slade Professor of Fine Art in London, whose associates included such storied artists as James McNeil Whistler, Walter Sickert and John Singer Sargent.
Tonks was one of the first British painters to be influenced by the Impressionists — particularly Degas — and his pupils, as well as Dring, included such Modern British luminaries as David Bomberg, Mark Gertler, Augustus and Gwen John, Stanley Spencer and Paul Nash.
I risk boring you with this roll call of honour because it helps to hammer home one of the most decisive factors in Tim’s approach to painting: Pedigree.
For Tim was rooted in the examples of these modern masters and it shows in every single painting and drawing he produced.
Of course it is the work itself that really drives home the point… that this artist, working seemingly endless hours in his Nanyuki studio, simply reeked of class.
***
After St Martin’s, Tim went to Farnham, near London, to study life drawing, before returning to Kenya.
If you can draw the nude you can draw anything and it remains true that a great strength of Tim’s painting is the solid draughtsmanship that underpins each work.
“I learnt to draw freely, using the whole arm,” he told me.
With that came a certain fluidity — the knack of capturing the fleeting moment; the essence of a landscape sketch. You see it in all Tim’s work as he caught the lightness of being and held the essence of a vanishing Africa to our eyes.
For Tim was a master of the moment, of a magical realism that records what to many must seem commonplace but which might not be with us for much longer.
It stemmed from his ability to seize on the essentials of any scene, animal or object with a few economical brushstrokes as well as the innate characteristics of the subjects he selected; whether elephants congregating in a river, big cats on the prowl, the haughty stare of a lone giraffe, or even something once so common as aloes flowering beside a ditch and now as scare as the wooden cart wheel he saw hanging on a wall.
Preserve this, each painting seems to say.
***
Tim started work at 7.30 each morning, seven days a week, using oils straight from the tube, either in the studio or out and about with his sketchbook, canvas and paints beside him in his old Land Rover.
Living in Nanyuki he often drove past Mt Kenya — one of his favoutire subjects, caught in all weathers, times of day and different moods — and took the short drive north past Isiolo then out into the deserts with their nomads herding cattle, goats and camels, women at the well and wildlife in abundance.
All was grist to his mill; a love of the natural wonders that gained him support from Laikipia Wildlife Forum grateful for his record of what has been around for thousands of years but what we stand to lose if we do not act now.
Tim found an artistic soul mate in Carol Lees at the One-Off gallery and his regular exhibitions there became a hunting ground for eager collectors and for other artists who found a lesson in every work.
In fact Tim’s canvases filled with gorgeous colours applied in plush strokes with a broad brush, were sought by collectors internationally. They fetched high prices too (Tim was a man who knew his worth) but they rarely remained unsold.
Latterly they became pared down, spare, leaving only the essentials… focused on the heart of the matter. This reductive brilliance that can take a lifetime to achieve ensured his paintings and drawings created their own reference points and became entities; coherent beyond the realities they set out to project.
Tim leaves his beloved family lost in grief.
But his wife Jill and daughters Abigail and Rebecca and his multitude of friends must take comfort because, unlike so many of us, Tim will live on through his work… thousands of paintings and drawings, all of which will continue to delight and be cherished by generations to come.
And offer artists a masterclass on the wall.

*Some sections of this notice appeared previously, in condensed form, in The EastAfrican.

Frank Whalley , Nairobi – 2023

Preview of Works

Click thumbnail to enlarge and scroll through all images

Timothy Brooke – Late Afternoon – Oil on canvas – 82h x 92w cm - Kshs 800,000

Timothy Brooke – Sunrise II – Oil on canvas – 66h x 91w cm - Kshs 800,000

Timothy Brooke – Orange Grove | Sagana – Oil on canvas – 81h x 99w cm - Kshs 800,000

Timothy Brooke – Langata Mitsubishi – Oil on canvas – 82h x 107w cm - Kshs 950,000

Timothy Brooke – Langat Hillcrest – Oil on canvas – 65h x 90w cm - Kshs 800,000

Timothy Brooke – Galla – Oil on canvas – 82h x 60w cm - Kshs 750,000

Timothy Brooke – Last Light – Oil on canvas – 62h x 107w cm - Kshs 600,000

Timothy Brooke – Cheetah – Oil on canvas – 76h x 102w cm - Kshs 950,000

Timothy Brooke – Lions Sleeping – Oil on canvas – 82h x 97w cm - Kshs 850,000

Timothy Brooke – Hub – Oil on canvas – 61h x 82w cm - Kshs 850,000

Timothy Brooke – Fever Tree III – Oil on canvas – 82h x 62w cm - Kshs 750,000

Timothy Brooke – The Buffalo’s Tears – Oil on canvas – 100h x 120w cm - Kshs 1,500,000

Timothy Brooke – Lesser Flamingos – Oil on canvas – 80h x 90w cm - Kshs 950,000

Timothy Brooke – Greenhills of Africa – Oil on canvas – 51h x 100w cm - Kshs 600,000

Timothy Brooke – The Cedar House – Oil on canvas – 101h x 120w cm - Kshs 950,000

Timothy Brooke – Mara Dry – Oil on canvas – 47h x 106w cm - Kshs 600,000

Timothy Brooke – Hagenia Forest – Oil on canvas – 100h x 120w cm – Kshs 950,000

Timothy Brooke – Home in the Garden– Oil on canvas – 82h x 99.5w cm - Kshs 600,000

Timothy Brooke – The Great Depression – Oil on canvas – 61h x 82w cm - Kshs 700,000

Timothy Brooke – Harvested Wheatfields – Oil on canvas – 61h x 82w cm - Kshs 850,000

Timothy Brooke – Flood Waters II – Oil on canvas – 47h x 96w cm - Kshs 700,000

Timothy Brooke – Sun Dried – Oil on canvas – 47h x 97w cm - Kshs 500,000

Timothy Brooke – Express – Oil on canvas – 47h x 138w cm - Kshs 900,000

Timothy Brooke – Bougainvillea – Oil on canvas – 80h x 91w cm - Kshs 700,000

Timothy Brooke – Jurassic Park Laikipia – Oil on canvas – 62h x 100w cm - Kshs 700,000

Timothy Brooke – Seven Buffalo – Oil on canvas – 82h x 97w cm - Kshs 1,200,000

Timothy Brooke – Morning Light – Oil on canvas – 77h x 103w cm - Kshs 900,000

Timothy Brooke – Windless Mild Evening – Oil on canvas – 100h x 120w cm - Kshs 1,100,000

Timothy Brooke – Dog My Cat! – Oil on canvas – 100h x 120w cm - Kshs 1,300,000

Timothy Brooke – Samburu Yellow – Oil on canvas – 100h x 120w cm - Kshs 1,200,000

Timothy Brooke – Migration IV – Oil on canvas – 92h x 138w cm - Kshs 1,600,000

Timothy Brooke – Shadows – Oil on canvas – 70h x 90w cm - Kshs 800,000

Timothy Brooke – Secret Ballot – Oil on canvas – 82h x 92w cm - Kshs 700,000

Timothy Brooke – Buffalos – Oil on canvas – 63h x 78w cm - Kshs 1,100,000

Timothy Brooke – Mount Kenya – Oil on canvas – 51h x 96w cm - Kshs 1,200,000

Timothy Brooke – Cattle – Oil on canvas – 97h x 125w cm - Kshs 2,000,000

Timothy Brooke – Women Hoeing – Oil on canvas – 82h x 97w cm - Kshs 1,600,000

Timothy Brooke – Landscape – Oil on canvas – 66.4h x 84w cm - Kshs 1,000,000

Timothy Brooke – Goats and Men – Oil on canvas – 80h x 95w cm - Kshs 1,800,000

Timothy Brooke – Cheetah II – Oil on canvas – 89h x 106w cm - Kshs 1,200,000

Timothy Brooke – Camel and a Woman II – Oil on canvas – 61h x 82w cm - Kshs 900,000

Timothy Brooke – Rainstorm – Oil on canvas – 98h x 118w cm - Kshs 2,000,000

Timothy Brooke – Maine – Oil on canvas – 64h x 80w cm - Kshs 800,000

Exhibition openings are usually on the last Saturday of every month, excluding December. The gallery remains open on Sundays allowing anyone who missed the opening to catch the exhibition the next day. Do join our mailing list so we can send you an invitation.

Timothy Brooke​Memorial Exhibition

Preview of Works

Timothy Brooke
Memorial Exhibition