The brass bedstead

‘Hideous’ and ‘repulsive’ was how the New Zealand press described this work by Bryan Kneale when the National Art Gallery acquired it in 1957.

The distorted couple lie in bed, framed as if by prison bars and seemingly disconnected. Are they worried about something? Upset after a quarrel? Or simply weary after a long day? Intriguingly, the artist painted the work with a palette knife rather than a brush, creating a woodcut-like effect.

Although controversial, The brass bedstead had its fans. One person wrote to The Evening Post newspaper to praise it as a masterpiece of grotesque beauty, a powerful ‘monument to the misery of middle-aged and misbegotten humanity’.