Peter Howson

Following Howson's important yet highly traumatic experiences in Bosnia, he began work on a major series of paintings which were to be exhibited at Flowers East in 1996 under the title The Rake's Progress and Other Paintings. The artist, a passionate lover of classical music, drew his initial inspiration from Igor Stravinsky's operatic take on The Rake's Progress which he composed between 1947-51 rather than from Hogarth's earlier graphic depiction of the same subject. Robert Heller highlights that "A Night That Never Ends is among the most Bosch-like of Howson's paintings, with what seems to be a severed head, one eye half closed, overlooking the ruined Rake. In the background, below the Christ, are the only normal figures in this harsh depiction of madness and misery – a man whose comforting arm leads Anne/Maureen away from the Rake's final degradation." A Night that Never Ends, painted in 1995 bears remarkable similarity in subject and composition to Mourn for Adonis painted a year later, which includes an equally contorted Rake and a severed head peering over a ledge above his head.

The Rake series, as with a large body of Howson's work, contains an intense narrative and one can read the central figure as representative of the artist's inner demons or even as an imagined self-portrait. The current work was painted at a time of desperate depression through which Howson drank heavily and witnessed the breakdown of key relationships, in particular with Maureen from whom he had been 'gradually drifting apart' for some time. Howson recalls this fact with the cold detachment of a desperate man, a powerless bystander as the tragic course of his life unfolds. Heller further identifies that "the series, with its self-portraits and identification with the Rake, reads like Howson's way of working himself out of black emotions. Apart from any cathartic effect they may have had on his mental state, the paintings, with their strong narrative line proving so effective, gave Howson an artistic uplift" enabling him to produce some of his most haunting and powerful paintings.