Brothers III

ARTHUR TIMOTHY (B. 1957)  

Brothers III  

signed with the artist's initials and dated 'ABT 21' (lower right); signed again twice, titled and dated ''BROTHERS III' ARTHUR TIMOTHY 2021 Arthur Timothy' (on the reverse)  

oil on linen  

74 3/4 x 74 3/4 inches (190 x 190 cm)  

framed: 77 x 77 inches (195.6 x 195.6 cm)  

Executed in 2021.

PROVENANCE:  

Private collection, New York

EXHIBITED:  

Accra, Gallery 1957, Arthur Timothy: Grandma's Hands, August-October, 2021.

NOTES:  

Born in 1957 in Ghana and raised between Ghana and Sierra Leone, Arthur Timothy is a contemporary painter whose atmospheric portraits and narrative scenes explore migration, family history, memory, and the cultural hybridity of the Black Atlantic world. After a long career as a RIBA-chartered architect, Timothy turned fully to painting in 2018, bringing to his practice a strong sense of spatial construction and compositional discipline. Drawing extensively from family photographs and personal archives, the artist reconstructs intimate moments of diasporic life with remarkable emotional sensitivity. His paintings are distinguished by their softened palettes, quiet psychological intensity, and deeply human approach to portraiture, offering nuanced reflections on migration, kinship, and belonging.

Brothers III is among the most emotionally resonant works in Timothy’s practice. Derived from a photograph taken on the deck of the MV Aureol, the passenger ship carrying the artist (left) and his brother Desmond toward Britain, the large-scale composition captures a moment poised between intimacy and historical transformation. Two young men stand on the cusp of migration, framed by the geometry of a pool deck and the expansive light of open water. Timothy’s handling of paint is characteristic of his signature visual language: a palette softened and faintly faded, as though the canvas itself were attempting to preserve the fragility and emotional texture of childhood memory.

The monumental scale of Brothers III transforms a private family image into a contemporary history painting. Themes that have come to define much recent diasporic art—migration, kinship, displacement, and the Black Atlantic passage—are distilled here into something profoundly personal and deeply human. Timothy’s architectural background remains visible in the careful structure and spatial clarity of the composition, which gently draws the viewer into the picture plane rather than overwhelming them. The result is a work of remarkable formal restraint and emotional depth, one that quietly expands the visual language through which Black Atlantic experience is represented and remembered.

Timothy’s work has been exhibited internationally and is held in prominent institutional and private collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and the Dean Collection. Brothers III was exhibited in Grandma’s Hands at Gallery 1957 in 2021, an exhibition centered on memory, family, and intergenerational connection within the African diaspora.