Adam's MID-CENTURY MODERN 10th May 2022

18 Tuesday 10 th May 2022 19 PATRICK HERON (1920-1999) THREE SQUARES IN YELLOW (CERULEUM, NAPLES, OCHRE) (FEBRUARY 1960) Oil on paper laid on hardboard, 70.5 x 44.5cm Provenance: With Waddington Galleries, London; Private Collection, Dublin € 20,000 - 30,000 Patrick Heron is one of the finest colourists to emerge in 20th century painting. For an artist whose work is basically so pleasant and chromatically rich, it’s hard to imagine him being regarded as a challengingly disruptive presence on the British art scene, but that is pretty much how he was treated in the latter 1950s. When he exhibited his first ‘stripe’ paintings in a group show at the Redfern Gallery in London in 1957 the reception was, he recalled: “quite violently hostile.” The appalled Sunday Times critic complained that “bands of colour” didn’t make a painting. Despite cor- rective views offered by no less than Winifred Nicholson and William Scott, the gallery turned the lights out after three days, took down the work and closed the show. He and Bryan Wynter quit the Redfern and joined the Waddington in protest. Heron, a lively, curious and immensely creative artist, was effortlessly cosmopolitan from the first. He was born in Leeds. His father, who manufactured silk blouses, was enthusiastic and informed about the arts. Patrick designed his first fabric aged just 14: he began and remained a champion of art as decoration. By the time he attended the Slade School he was to some extent formed as an artist, open to French painting, including Cézanne and then Matisse and later Braque, and he found the insular English teaching “a complete wash-out.” With childhood connections to Cornwall he worked in Bernard Leach’s pottery, a prelude to his later, in 1955, settling in Eagle’s Nest house and garden in Zennor. Rothko became another important influence. In 1953, after much thought, he titled one of his exhibitions Space in Colour, and realised he’d pinned down the core of his artistic concerns, but he found the British public averse to colour, abstraction and ‘foreign’ influences in general. Even as the stripe paintings - now highly prized - proved a step too far for public opinion, he was exploring another possibility: “The first squares followed the first stripes very closely indeed - almost the same week, actually. I always thought that the squares arose from stripes in two directions crossing over.” It is clear that the squares paintings developed pretty much in tandem with the stripes, allowing him greater flexibility in exploring the colour relationships between areas of intense, pure colour laid on equally intense though often contrasting colour grounds. These two series produced some of the best, most satisfying work of his career. Here, in complete com- mand of his means, he relishes the dancing interplay between the vibrant, luxuriant yellow ground and the foreground squares, variously calming (Naples yellow) and enlivening (that burst of cerulean blue), in a beautifully textured composition. Aidan Dunne, April 2022