Patrick Heron

The Family of the Artist
Waddington Galleries, London, 2nd August 1983
Private Collection

London, Waddington & Tooth Galleries, Patrick Heron - Gouaches, December 1977, exh. cat.;
Austin, The University of Texas at Austin Art Museum, Paintings by Patrick Heron, 1965 - 1977, 1977, cat. no.31, illustrated on the cover;
London, Hayward Gallery, The Presence of Painting - Aspects of British Abstraction, 1957 - 1988, 26th November 1988 - 15th January 1989, cat. no.32, with tour to Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, Newcastle and Birmingham.

'The Colour of Colour', E. William Doty Lectures in Fine Arts, Third Series, 1978, The University of Texas at Austin, 1979, illustrated p.33;
Vivien Knight, Patrick Heron, John Taylor in association with Lund Humphries, London, 1988, illustrated pl.62;
Mel Gooding, Patrick Heron, Phaidon Press, London, 1994, illustrated p.205.

Original canvas. The canvas is very slightly loose on its stretcher and there are some areas of uneveness in places. There are a very few tiny bubbles in some of the thicker areas of paint, only visible upon very close inspection, in keeping with the Artist's technique and materials, and a few tiny specks of studio matter in places. There are a couple of areas of light blooming to the varnish in places. There are a few specks of very light surface dirt in places. Subject to the above the work is in excellent overall condition. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals a single tiny spot of flourescence and retouching in the lower right of the composition, corresponding to a previous tiny loss. The work is held within a simple wood frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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The Estate of Patrick Heron is preparing the forthcoming  catalogue raisonné of the Artist's work and would like to hear from owners of any works by Patrick Heron, so that these can be included in this comprehensive catalogue. Please write to The Estate of Patrick Heron, c/o Modern & Post-War British Art, Sotheby's, 34-35 New Bond Street, London, W1A 2AA, or email modbrit@sothebys.com.

‘The only rule I follow while painting is this: I always allow my hand to surprise me.’

(The Artist, quoted in Mel Gooding, Patrick Heron, Phaidon Press, London, 1994, p.200)

 

 

By the mid-1960s Patrick Heron was at the height of his career, internationally recognised as one of Britain’s most successful Post-War artists. With acclaim came a renewed confidence and creative vigour that impacted the work he produced from this period until the late 1970s. His paintings became instantly recognisable explosions of rich, vivid colour. In these paintings Heron developed the ‘wobbly hard-edge’ manner he had perfected in the preceding years and used free-hand drawing directly onto the canvas, with a fresh and new immediacy that was matched by the playful palette. Each pigment was applied in a single session so as to ensure that the colours remained uniform, with just a single layer of paint to ensure no overlapping. The purity of colour, together with the scale of the works, resulted in a startling visual impact, described by Mel Gooding as ‘wonderfully diverse and consistently visually exciting’ (Mel Gooding, ibid, p.200). As Gooding continues ‘What is true of all the paintings of this entire period… is the variety and delicacy of the painted surfaces, changing from colour to colour within paintings, registering in texture the different movements of wrist, catching light like silk, or reflecting it like mother of pearl, saturated and dense in some areas, luminous and shimmering in others’ (ibid, p.201).

Paintings from this exciting period were exhibited at Austin Art Museum, at the University of Texas, in 1977, including the present work which was featured on the front cover of the accompanying catalogue. The exhibition was supported with a series of lectures by Heron on his continued exploration of the theme of colour, subsequently published as The Colour of Colour, which showcased the energy and excitement of Heron’s work of the preceding decade. To look at works from this period today one is still struck by the explosion of colour, the confidence of form and the striking presence that these paintings possess, all so wonderfully captured in the present work, which appears for the first time at auction.