PATRICK HERON | Girl, Chair and Table : 1950

Redfern Gallery, London, where acquired by Denis Nahum in 1950 and thence by descent to Peter Nahum
Paisnel Gallery, London, where acquired by the present owner

London, Redfern Gallery, Recent Paintings by Patrick Heron, 27th April - 20th May 1950, cat. no.15;
Wakefield, Wakefield City Art Gallery, Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Patrick Heron, 5th April - 3rd May 1952, cat. no.49, with tour to Leeds, Halifax, Scarborough and Hull (as Girl, Chair, and Table);
Nottingham, The Midland Group Gallery, Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by Patrick Heron, 1st - 22nd November 1952, cat. no.36.

The canvas is original. There is some very minor frame abrasion to the extreme lower edge. There are one or two accretions in the paint surface with one or two further instances of studio matter and some very light surface dirt. Subject to the above the work appears in excellent overall condition. Inspection under ultra violet light reveals fluorescence and probable spot retouching towards the lower right corner with one or two spots elsewhere; this has been extremely sensitively executed. The work is held behind glass in a painted wooden frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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‘Although I am convinced that it is the underlying abstraction in a painting which gives that painting its quality, its life and its truth - nevertheless, I believe one’s abstraction may just as well add up to an image of a girl at a window as to an image of electronic energy’ (Patrick Heron, ‘Art is Autonomous', The Twentieth Century, September 1955)



Girl, Chair and Table : 50 is the perfect example of Patrick Heron’s semi-abstract, Cubist-influenced work of the early 1950s, made whilst he was living in London, before his move to St Ives and to pure abstraction. Whilst more ‘figurative’ than his work of the later '50s, the artist himself has said that at the time, the paintings – of nudes, interiors, still life – felt ‘terribly abstract’. Heron had long admired the work of Matisse, Bonnard and Braque – recalling that Matisse’s The Red Studio, which he saw at the Redfern Gallery in 1943, was ‘by far and away the most influential single painting in my entire career’ (quoted in Mel Gooding, Patrick Heron, Phaidon, London, 1994, p.56). Girl, Chair and Table : 50 combines Matisse’s sumptuous use of colour, distributed to all four corners of the composition to give a flat ‘all-over’effect, with the linear qualities of Braque (whose studio Heron had visited a year earlier, in 1949). Yet the feeling in this painting is equally all Heron’s own, the colours definitely more British than Continental, with a lightness of touch and easy formal harmony that prefigures the pictorial qualities that were to define his later abstract paintings.

 

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.