A painting by Rosa Branson, one of London’s foremost painters, entitled Service above Self, was unveiled yesterday evening by Baroness Hayman, The Lord Speaker, in the River Room at The House of Lords, in front of an audience of politicians, business people and diplomats.
Rosa recently completed this major commission for Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland. The thematic painting depicts the many facets of the humanitarian work carried out by Rotary around the globe. The Family of Rotary: Rotary Clubs, Inner Wheel, Rotaract, and Interact, are all featured representing the work of more than two million members in over 200 countries.
Global campaigns such as the Polio Eradication Programme, Literacy, Health, Hunger and Water are all illustrated. Rosa discovered the work of Rotary on a trip to Liberia to visit Mercy Ship’s latest hospital ship which Rotary Clubs in Great Britain and Ireland helped to equip raising over £1 million for the Ophthalmic Operating Unit. Other charities represented in the painting are Sight Savers, which has been supported by Rotary for more than twenty five years, Institute of Cancer Research, Impact, Wheelchair Foundation, Shelterboxes, and Rotary’s own charity The Rotary Foundation. Rotary International Polio Plus was represented by Mr Gautam Lewis who has been assisting the Foundation against the global campaign to eradicate polio.
Rosa has painted fourteen similar paintings for the Red Cross, the Coram Family Charity the Salvation Army and others. Rosa trained at the Slade and rapidly achieved success as an accomplished painter. The National Gallery recognised her as a gifted painter and reliable copyist, an experience she regards as immensely valuable in her progress to becoming a classical painter in the great tradition. The beautiful paintings that crowd the studio and other parts of her home are evidence of that. After years of painting for commissions, Rosa took up painting for charity at the suggestion of Harold Sumption, then chief fund raiser for Oxfam. Her husband, who died in 1990, had left her a generous pension, allowing her to work for charity on her own terms. Thus she pays all her own travel and living expenses as well as undertaking the paintings at no cost. Rosa has been painting for more than 58 years and continues to work seven hours a day painting in her studio. In addition she makes all the frames for her paintings.
Rosa comments “I have always loved working on a big scale and my training has enabled me to be able to paint anything. My thematic paintings for charity allow me to blend contemporary real issues with the techniques of the Renaissance painters. I feel have found this amazing world and each time I paint one charity painting it leads to another”. Rosa has been described by Sotheby’s as leading a new wave of super realists.
Gautam received a signed print (1 of 150) by Rosa at the end of the evening.
Nice post…i was expecting some thing else.