Patrick Caulfield, R.A.

Waddington Galleries, London, where acquired by the present owner 1st July 1976

Lincoln, Mass., De Cordova Museum, The British Are Coming!, 12th April - 8th June 1975;
Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council Gallery, Patrick Caulfield Paintings and Prints, 25th October - 16th November 1975, cat. no.1;
London, Waddington Galleries, Patrick Caulfield Recent Paintings, 25th November - 20th December 1975, illustrated (unpaginated);
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Patrick Caulfield: Paintings 1963 - 1981, 22nd August - 4th October 1981, cat. no.27, illustrated p.60, with tour to Tate Gallery, London;
London, Hayward Gallery, Patrick Caulfield, 4th February 1999 - 11th April 1999, cat. no.18, with British Council tour to Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art, Luxembourg, Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigao, Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut.

Marco Livingstone, 'Patrick Caulfield: A Text for Silent Pictures,' Art & Design, 1992, Academy Group Ltd, London, illustrated p.40;
Marco Livingstone, Patrick Caulfield Paintings, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, p.71, illustrated p.77.

The following condition report has been prepared by Philp Young Conservation, Unit F11a Parkhall Trading Estate, 40 Martell Road, London SE21 8EN; +44 (0)20 8670 0044: Sotheby's, London 6th April 2011 The painting was examined at Sotheby's warehouse, west London, on the above date. CONDITION The painting is in a good and sound condition. Condition details are as below. The stretcher is the artist's original, it is sound, flat and in good condition, as is the staple attachment of the canvas to the stretcher. The canvas has never been removed from the stretcher. There are joint key positions but no keys in place; canvas tension is adequate. The back of the canvas has been partially primed by the artist after stretching, this is presumed to be to cover an abandoned image on the canvas verso. The back of the canvas is dirty and there is loose debris behind stretcher bars. The joints are visible from the face on all corners, particularly in the lower left corner. The face of the painting is clearly dirty with a general overall dirt layer, loose fibres, cobwebs, dripmarks and flyspots. The cobwebs are seen mostly in the upper areas, the dripmarks in the lower. The general dirt is a pale grey and significantly distorts the image and the colours of the composition. Flyspots are heavy and widespread, they have clearly been in place for many years and some have spread staining outwards. What may well be an artist's retouching (as characterized by similar addition on other paintings) is a darker area just above the lower edge at the centre, this addresses a relatively small knock in the paint over the stretcher edge still visible through the retouching. All edges have fingermarks in addition to the general marking. In a number of places in the canvas are soft creases, these would have been present at the time of painting and are fixed and inherent. TREATMENT The painting can be surface cleaned to remove the dirt as described above, the flyspots may not all lift without some blanching or staining and the extent of this can only be assessed once cleaning is in process. Some may need minimal adjustment afterwards if staining is visible. The back should also becleaned. The artist's retouching can be toned down reversibly
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Café Interior: Afternoon exemplifies the bold stylization and dynamic use of intense saturated colour for which Caulfield has become most well known. It belongs to a highly important series of works from the late 1960s and early 1970s which focus on the interior; a traditional subject innovatively updated and reconfigured in Caulfield's trademark style. The interior motif accounted for an important period of transition in Caulfield's work. There came a busier sense of form via a more complex linear grid, which was set against a simpler use of colour. His paintings became larger; board was replaced by canvas and oil gave way to acrylic.

These seminal interiors consist of familiar objects and invented places that create the illusion of three-dimensional space through clever use of two-dimensional forms and devices. The viewer is encouraged to feel as if they are walking into the room, which is maximised by the large scale and perspective at eye-level. As engaging is Caulfield's distinct use of colour that animates the composition in conjunction with the emphatic diagonal lines, exemplified in the present work. Colours which one would imagine could not succeed in a painting combine and dazzle – it is from such effects that Caulfield has justifiably been referred to as 'the most inventive colourist of any British painter of the late twentieth century' (Ibid, p.11). Caulfield's employment of colour also offsets the sense of detachment in the drily descriptive line and precise finish of his paintings by the emotional response it engenders in the viewer.

Perhaps most impressively of all is the sense of light that Caulfield achieves in the crisp blocks of colour which give it a palpable physical reality. Leading up to this date, Caulfield had become increasingly interested in the multifarious effects of light and more specifically on the subtleties imbued in different sources of light, such as the warm glow of Smokeless Coal Fire (1969, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester) and the artificial light silhouetted in Lit Window (1969, Private Collection). In Café Interior: Afternoon, the play of light and shadow achieves its most dramatic result, literally bursting across the picture plane in a vigorous pattern of diagonals.

Caulfield's imagery is readily drawn from the realm of the familiar, which he treats in a formalised manner. The convivial interiors of his paintings take on a cool, detached atmosphere, which is achieved through a conspicuous absence of human presence and by containing the objects within fixed, rigid lines. This method maximizes their presence and suggests a symbolic content, although no further meaning is explicated. As with Caulfield's paintings, subtleties and visual metaphors lie under the surface for the spectator to determine themselves. A subversive humour often resounds and Café Interior: Afternoon, with its moulded plastic seats, possesses a hint of irony shared in similar works such as Interior with Room Divider (1971, Private Collection) and Dining Recess (1972, Arts Council Collection, London) that draw upon slightly out-dated, popular suburban design.

One of Caulfield's most impressive achievements is his ability to convey direct and immediate images through such an economic but sophisticated use of colour and line. Bold and assured, the graphic appearance of Caulfield's paintings belies their spatial and stylistic complexity. In executing these paintings, Caulfield purposefully adopted a clean, impersonal style which has paradoxically become his identifying signature. However, in Café Interior: Afternoon, Caulfield places a hint of the personal in the pipe that rests on the table, referencing one of his favourite habits and which was to appear in the last of his paintings. As a symbol of Caulfield, it goes hand in hand with the vitality that is exuded in the present painting.