Dark Red Mini with Ultra in Cobalt near Lemon : January 1977

PATRICK HERON

Headingley 1920 - 1999 Zennor

Ref: CC 140

Dark Red Mini with Ultra in Cobalt near Lemon : January 1977

Signed, dated and inscribed on the reverse: Title: DARK RED MINI WITH ULTRA / IN COBALT NEAR LEMON : JANUARY / 1977 /
PATRICK HERON

Gouache: 7 ⅛ x 9 ¼ in / 18.1 x 23.5 cm

Frame size: 14 x 16 ¼ in / 35.6 x 41.3 cm

In a white waxed tenoned frame

Provenance:

Waddington Galleries, London [B4730];

Sylvia Stevenson, acquired from the above in 1977;

Waddington Galleries, London [B12397];

Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, 1985;

private collection, UK

Exhibited:

Probably London, Waddington & Tooth Galleries, Patrick Heron: Gouaches 1970-1977 (catalogue untraced)

Manchester, Castlefield Gallery, Patrick Heron, Paintings, Drawings and Gouaches, 20th February-30th March 1985 (label attached to the reverse)

Painted in January 1977, Dark Red Mini with Ultra in Cobalt near Lemon, has a riveting intensity heightened by its compact form. Against the resonant ground of rich, dark red, the soft, asymmetric colour-shapes of ultramarine within cobalt blue abut the curved, irregular edge of the fluorescent, lemon yellow in the top left corner. This eye-catching, near-square section is balanced on the bottom right by a smaller, curved form in the same incandescent hue. While the luminous yellow seems to leap off the paper, it simlutaneously illuminates the complex silhouettes of two feathering, coral-like branches of dark red and one floating disc of dark orange or burnt sienna, hovering weightlessly like an afterimage of the sun. Sustaining the fiery palette, Heron renders a flickering, flame-like circle of bright orange in the centre near the top edge, with playful shapes of indigo and olive green below. On the right, stretching almost the height of the paper, the jagged, sprawling form of dark orange provides a mid-tone between deep red and bright orange. Every inch of this concentrated, jigsaw composition is packed with colour, texture and dynamic form. Though Heron had discarded overt references to the external world in his abstract painting, it is easy to read the outlines, rhythms and colours of his natural environment in his work. The artist moved to his home, Eagles Nest, near Zennor in Cornwall in 1956, and its surrounding landscape of granite boulders, crags and ragged coastline, as well as its verdant garden, immediately and continuously inspired his work.

In the summer of 1967 Heron badly broke his leg in a canoeing accident with fellow artist Bryan Wynter at Lamorna Cove. Consequently, he was unable to paint a single canvas for almost a year and turned his attention to gouache, a smaller-scale, more fluid medium which could be handled from a seated position. This ushered in over a decade of exploration of the medium, resulting in some of Heron’s most intense and delightful works. Heron explained that his works in gouache were ‘not a substitute for the oil paintings. Nor are they preliminary sketches, or means for trying out new colour-shapes or configurations of dovetailed colour-shapes to feature in later paintings on canvas. They are works in their own right; and their quality, in fact, doesn’t even overlap with the canvases’ in many respects…In my gouaches, the tempo is dictated, quite apart from the particular needs of the area-shapes I make, by the nature of the wet medium itself. I like the water in the paint mixture to lead me; to suggest the scribbled drawing which gives birth to the images. My gouaches have always had this fast-moving fluidity of drawing, and a softness, coming from the watery medium itself, which the oil paintings cannot share.’[1]

[1] Patrick Heron, ‘A note on my gouaches’ written to accompany an exhibition at the Caledonian Club, Edinburgh, 1985, quoted in Vivien Knight (ed.), Patrick Heron, John Taylor in association with Lund Humphries, 1988, p.38.