Melting Langres La Cave on Midnight Blue − 2018

“Is it a problem that I have when painting artisan cheeses, that they melt? No. When they start to melt things get interesting.” - Christian Furr 2018

Coming out of his interest in the still life genre, Furr’s first cheese painting ‘Finn’ was painted in 2009. It is a painting of an artisan cheese with the first painting of a mass produced cheese occurring in 2011 with ‘Dairy Lea 2011’ followed by ‘Baby Bel’ in 2014.

The first series of cheese paintings up to 2014 are predominantly depictions of artisan cheeses on a traditional mid brown / wood’ background, similar to the background of the fish still life paintings painted at around the same period. Furr would paint the still life subjects on a varnished piece of wood in this period it is only later in 2016 that different background colours are tried out when Furr would hand paint backgrounds for the still life corner he had set up in his studio in Ham and choose the colours according to the cheese that were placed on them. Every cheese would be painted from life in a few hours.

With this masterly depiction melting cheese, the dark 'midnight blue' of the setting complements the oranges and creamy colours that are rendered in the soft cheese. 

As one critic mentioned there is often a dichotomy between the subject featured and it’s background. “(The cheese paintings) place hyper-realistic cheeses on an abstract background that look more like paint than a table, providing a subtly satisfying combination of registers” – Paul Carey Kent reviewing Bartha Contemporary Fish and Cheese show in 2024

When asked about the inspiration for the works at his first showing of them in 2013 Furr said:

“Initially I had the idea of painting the series of cheeses because there’s so many different cheeses and I thought I’d start with the Great British cheeses and then there was a few French ones too. They’ve got their own characters I think and their own textures and people really seem to like them. I think a lot of people get hungry looking at them actually. I’m hungry now. I think my favourite one is the ‘Petit Langres’ which is a French cheese which is very tasty. What made me do it in the first place? Well I just thought it would be a fun thing to do, it’s a fun series and I like to give myself challenges. I really like the old Spanish still life painters so I thought – take on that tradition and you know do it with cheeses. The first ones were traditional cheeses but I did do a Dairy Lea – I threw that in as a red herring originally, that was my nod to modernity.”

The first cheese painting exhibition occured at ‘Outside the Square’ gallery in Margate, UK on 23rd November 2013. It was a sell out show, the works bought by mainly one collector.

Furr’s next exhibition was ‘The Humble Cheese’ in 2016 at the Knight Webb gallery in Brixton. The cheeses backgounds started to appear in different colours and the mass produced cheeses were given equal importance with the artisan. Furr said that he went from putting the cheeses on a piece of wood in his studio to creating carefully chosen different coloured painted backgrounds for them to sit on. These colours included ‘midnight blue’ ‘midnight grey’ and Furr’s invented dark green/blue ‘Lautreamont green’. Brighter ‘pop art’ colour backgrounds occur c2019 with titles like ‘electric blue’ and ‘neon pink’. There are sometimes multiple versions of paintings of the same cheese. Sometimes with a rotated view as with ‘Barkham Blue- Right side 2013’ or simply with slightly different rendering as with the Baby Bels and Galette des Templiers. The two different paintings of Neufchatel in 2016 have different coloured backgrounds, one mid brown the other ‘Lautreamont Green’.

When asked about his motivation Furr stated: “I suppose It started with milk. ‘Cheese – milk’s leap toward immortality’ – Clifton Fadiman A forgotten milk bottle to be exact 25 years ago. In my studio in 41 New Road, Whitechapel in 1993 a half full bottle of milk had gone off and I painted it. My friend Steve Cope bought it off me and suggested a few years later that I might paint cheese so I guess the idea must have been curdling in his head . Either way, I thought it was good one. The mass produced cheeses also have an appeal for a different reason. They are more pop art. I went to the supermarket for them like Andy Warhol.

In 2018-2021, Furr’s ‘cheesescapes’ appear – being depictions of cheeses with the suggestion of a landscape in the background. These paintings fuse two genres that of still life and landscape. Five are painted in all.

“Cheese as an object of beauty in itself has recently been rediscovered by Christian Furr. They have this humour about them that I really like” – BBC Culture , ‘The Cheese that inspired Dali’, Cath Pound. 5th May 2017

‘London based Christian Furr has painted the humble cheese for over a decade. The cheese has become his metaphor for simplicity, tradition and artisan dedication; all of which are attributes many critics have associated with the artist’s own oil painting practice.’ – Artlyst

‘As Sensous as Lucien Freud’s portraits’ – Ian Brice

‘The paintings themselves are discreet, intimate, like little jewels hanging on the wall’ – Luxury London