Patrick Heron

Waddington Galleries, London

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Art, British Art Today, 15th Jan-17th Feb, 1963.

Mel Gooding, Patrick Heron, Phaidon, 1994, illustrated p. 155.

Original canvas. There are some very minor scuff marks and handling marks to the edges otherwise in excellent overall condition. Under ultraviolet light, there are some small and minor specks of sensitive retouching by the centre right edge, to the left of the centre point of the composition, in the bottom left corner of the large orange shape in the upper half of the composition, a speck of retouching in the upper right corner and some minor spots scattered to the green circle. Presented in a painted white box frame. Please note that the colours are fresher and more vibrant than the catalogue illustration suggests.
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Amongst the many remarkable features of Heron's career was his ability to continually develop and renew his paintings so that each appears both fresh and adventurous. Throughout the 1950s, discernible groupings of work had succeeded each other, and by the very end of the decade, paintings such as Yellow Painting: October 1958 -May/June 1959 (Tate Collection) and Yellow Painting with Orange and Brown - Ochre Squares: June - Oct 1959 (Private Collection) had achieved a complexity and richness that constantly amaze. However, Heron's work rarely settles at any point, and as 1959 progressed, the paintings began to become simpler again, with reduced numbers of forms, and little overpainting and re-working. Initially this happened through one colour becoming dominant and steadily encroaching upon the others, as in Black Painting - Red, Brown, Olive: July 1959 (Private Collection), which was awarded that year's Grand Prize at the John Moore's Exhibition. As the numbers of forms lessened, so the layering of colours also diminishes, and we can see the introduction of different handling techniques.

In this Big Red with Cadmium Green: July 1960 is amongst the earliest paintings to show the almost calligraphic handling of a large expanse of a single freely brushed colour presented not as a ground colour but as an equally valid element in the composition that functions with the floating amorphous forms. Both the green and yellow forms are very clearly painted in a single thin layer, allowing the white of the primed canvas to glow through and heighten the intensity of the colour whilst contrasting with the denser colours of the orange and claret shapes beside them. Indeed, the thin layer of lemon yellow allows us to see through to what appears to be charcoal underdrawing beneath, again a remarkably early instance of a feature of Heron's painting that would be come much more commonplace later in the decade.

Physically large, the sheer overwhelming power of the individual colours and their juxtapositions in Big Red with Cadmium Green: July 1960 give the painting an intense 'punch' that looks forward to the 'wobbly hard-edge' paintings of the late 1960s and early 1970s.