This painting of a truckle of Tunworth on 'midnight grey' was created in 2016. It features a truckle of the cheese with a slightly pink exterior and a quarter slice taken out to reveal the soft, creamy interior set against warm grey tones.
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.
“Cheese,” as the US intellectual Clifton Fadiman put it, is “milk’s leap toward immortality.” And what milk began, generations of artists have been keen to develop. The humble food stuff has been muse to some of the greatest artists from the Dutch Golden Age to the 21st Century. Latterly it has provided inspiration to the likes of Magritte, Dali, and Lichtenstein.
Cheese as an object of beauty in itself has recently been rediscovered by Christian Furr, famous for being the youngest artist ever to paint the Queen. The two subjects couldn’t be more different but he sees them as equally valid.
Christian Furr paints cheeses from oozing Epoisses to a solid Beemster against carefully chosen backgrounds
Primarily drawn to their visual qualities he tells BBC Culture there is also an, “element of craft that I like to celebrate.” He has painted everything from a solid Beemster to a gently oozing Petit Langres against plain backgrounds carefully chosen to compliment the rich range of textures and tones of the cheeses. Intriguingly he has also found inspiration in mass produced cheeses such as Dairylea. “They have this humour about them that I really like,” he explains. In these, other meanings can inadvertently creep in. He recalls placing a Babybel decorated with a Union Jack in the middle of his studio. “It was just after Brexit and it looked quite lonely.
Furr also finds inspiration in mass-produced cheeses such as Babybel, Laughing Cow and Dairylea
He has said that he wants his cheese paintings to express the full range of human emotions and also believes that you can tell a lot about someone from their taste in cheese. Sarah Lucas’s is apparently 'Tickler' Cheddar. “And when you look at her work, it’s in keeping.” Furr’s own favourite cheese is mature Gouda which, as an heir to the Dutch masters, seems quite apt."
BBC Culture - Cath Pound - 5th May 2017
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.
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. 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.
‘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
Hand Finished
