A Roman Marble Thumb, circa 1st/2nd Century A.D.

Sotheby's, London, April 28th, 1995, no. 107 (part)

Howard Hodgkin (1932-2017), London

then by descent to the present owner

Sir Howard Hodgkin (1932-2017) was an important British painter of the 20th century who became one of the best known visual artists in Europe.

Soon after leaving art school in the early 1950s, Hodgkin developed a reputation for expressive pictures which occupied a space between figuration and abstraction, and which often broke out of the limits of the canvas to decorate the frame of the picture itself. Hodgkin's critical acclaim reached its peak in the mid 1980s when he represented the United Kingdom at the 1984 Venice Biennale, and won the Turner prize the year after. He was knighted in 1994.

In addition to his work as a painter and printmaker, Hodgkin was an avid collector with a broad and varied taste. His personal collection, much of which sold at Sotheby’s in 2017, featured modern and post-war British art, modern Indian art, an impressive array of Islamic art and much European sculpture, furniture and decorative art.