Patrick Heron

Acquired directly from the family of the Artist by the previous owner in 1990
Private Collection
Richard Green, London

London, Waddington Galleries, Patrick Heron, 22nd November - 17th December 1960, cat. no.15, illustrated;
Manchester, Manchester City Art Gallery, Middle Roads - 4 British Abstract Painters, June - July 1961, cat. no.14 (as Blues on Black: June 1960);
London, Richard Green, Patrick Heron, The Shape of Colour, May 2006, cat. no.8.

Original canvas. There are some very minor areas of light rubbing and abrasion to the extreme points of the canvas overlap, with some very tiny traces of old loss apparent in these areas upon close inspection. There is an extremely fine reticulation to the black pigment throughout, most probably in keeping with the nature of the artist's materials and techniques, and a very slight possible minor blooming appearing to the black pigment in places. Elsewhere there is very minor surface dirt and traces of very light studio detritus visible upon extremely close inspection, but this excepting the work appears in very good overall condition. Please contact the department for an ultraviolet light report. Float-mounted in a tight white wooden box frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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‘Colour is…as powerful an agent of spatial expression as drawing. Indeed, one “draws” with flat washes of colour, as often as not, and not with line at all. Tonal colour is thus the sole means of bestowing that physical vibrancy and resonance without which no picture is alive. And this vibration can be conveyed in “hue-less colours”- that is, in blacks, whites and greys- no less that by the full, chromatic range. […] Since I have never admired a picture yet which did not, as it were, give off a sensation of space[…] I must for the present consider space in colour to be a useful criterion as any other. Spatial colour is, however, a grammar: the language of space in colour can doubtless be made to express anything that stirs the consciousness of man.’ (Patrick Heron, intro., Space in Colour, Hanover Gallery, London, July- August 1953, reproduced in Vivien Knight (ed.), Patrick Heron, John Taylor/ Lund Humphries, London, 1988, p.26)

The year before Blues and Dull Vermilion in Black : June 1960 was painted, Heron had entered Black Painting - Red, Brown, Olive: July 1959 (Private Collection) for the 2nd John Moores exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, and carried off the main prize. As with much of Heron's work, the exploration of ideas constantly overlaps, with new themes developing and feeding works already underway, something that his habit of precise dating for paintings helps us to see. Black Painting - Red, Brown, Olive: July 1959 is remarkable in a number of ways, coming as it does on the back of a series of paintings that had been focused entirely on the presentation of large areas of saturated colour that overlaid the previous forms, as in Yellow Painting with Orange and Brown-Ochre Squares: June - October 1959 (Private Collection) or Brown Ground with Soft Red and Green: August 1958 - July 1959 (Tate, London). However, close inspection of the surface of Black Painting - Red, Brown, Olive: July 1959 reveals that Heron has here achieved a markedly different effect by his choice of colour and that the richly over-painted image is still present. However it is the contrast between the field of black (which is actually, due to the colours below, a whole range of blacks) and the small windows of bright colour that give this painting such a remarkable visual punch. As the year progressed, Heron produced other works that take this contrast of a single dominating colour as their theme, such as One Form: September 1959 (Private Collection), but what marks these paintings as different from pieces such as Black Painting - Red, Brown, Olive: July 1959 is the application of paint. Whilst the areas of colour overlay clearly discernible forms, the thinness of the paint layers offers a spontaneity and clarity to the composition. In Blues and Dull Vermilion in Black : June 1960, Heron has used this approach to his medium to give us an image which allows the luminosity of his colours to spring out against the black, imbuing the painting with the kind of shallow depth that would become very much the mark of his paintings in the next few years where it is the points at which these colours meet that dictates the overall perception of the painting.   

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.