Eliot Hodgkin

Elizabeth David, gifted by the Artist and thence by descent to the present owner

Elizabeth David, Summer Cooking, Dorling Kindersley, London, 1988 edition, illustrated p.14

Thomas Marks, 'Elizabeth David’s taste in Old Masters', Apollo Magazine, 28 April 2022

Elizabeth David, the British writer and chef, was renowned for her cookbooks full of artistic illustrations of food, which she favoured over food photography. Her groundbreaking works, A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950) and French Country Cooking (1951) - both illustrated by John Minton - and Italian Food (1954), illustrated by Renato Guttuso, all published just after World War II, introduced the English to these cuisines. Later, these were republished with more new illustrations, and one of these was Summer Cooking, which included an illustration of the present lot. As Thomas Marks has written, 'In this series, the presiding spirit of Mediterranean Food became Luis Meléndez, his Cucumbers, Tomatoes and Vessels (1774), for instance, seeming to invite the preparation of the gazpacho described immediately below it; that of Summer Cooking became Eliot Hodgkin, whose Brioches (1977) hung in David’s own kitchen in Chelsea.' - (Thomas Marks, 'Elizabeth David’s taste in Old Masters', Apollo Magazine, 28 April 2022.)