Patrick Heron
Encyclopedia
Patrick Heron was an English
painter
, writer
and designer
, based in St. Ives
, Cornwall
.
, Leeds
in Yorkshire
in 1920, he was the son of Thomas Milner Heron and Eulalie 'Jack' Heron (née Davies), the first of four children (Michael, Joanna and Giles). His father was a clothes manufacturer, pacifist
, socialist
and leading member of the Leeds Arts Club
. In 1925 the Heron family moved to West Cornwall
where T M Heron took over the running of Crysede and four years later the family moved to Welwyn Garden City
where Tom founded the firm Cresta Silks and was to become the original mind behind Utility Clothing during the war, see Heron's Memorandum to the Board of Trade dated April 1941.pp 60-64 Rebel and Sage . It was here at his new school that Patrick Heron met his future wife Delia Reiss, daughter of Celia and Dick Reiss (R.L.Reisshttp://cashewnut.me.uk/WGCbooks/web-WGC-books-1965-1.php, co-founder of Welwyn Garden City ).
in Harpenden
and on a school visit to the National Gallery, London
in 1933 saw paintings by Paul Cézanne
for the first time. He immediately began to paint in a Cézanne-influenced style. Shortly after this he was asked to make designs for Cresta Silks and continued to design for Cresta until 1951.
When he was 17 he attended The Slade School of Art for two days a week, returning to the West Country to draw the landscape. In World War II
he registered as a conscientious objector
and worked as an agricultural labourer for three years, then at the Leach Pottery
at St Ives
between 1944-5, where he met Ben Nicholson
, Barbara Hepworth
and many other leading artists of the St Ives School
. He had just seen Matisse
's The Red Studio, exhibited at the Redfern Gallery, London
and soon after this completed what he later considered to be his first mature work, The Piano in 1943.
in 1946 deeply impressed him and he wrote an essay on Braque for The New English Weekly. Then up to 1953 he spent time in Europe
visiting Paris
, Provence
and Italy
. Heron visited Braque in his Paris studio and presented him with the New English Weekly article. His first one-man exhibition was at the Redfern Gallery in London in 1947. In 1953 he organised, wrote the catalogue and exhibited in Space in Colour, an exhibition of ten contemporary artists, at Hanover Gallery, London. Following this he exhibited twelve paintings at the Il Bienal di São Paulo
, Brazil
. The same year he began teaching at Central School of Arts and Crafts
in London and continued there until 1956. In 1956 he saw, and praised highly the American
Abstract Expressionists
who showed their work for the first time in England at the Tate Gallery. He was inspired by this group of eight painters, their confidence and the large scale and flatness.
A development towards abstraction had been evident in his paintings, for example, Square Leaves (1952) and Winter Harbour (1955) The effect on Heron of the New York
painters, together with his move to live at Eagles Nest, overlooking the cliffs at Zennor
, that year was a pivotal point in the transformation into his now characteristic language of interlinking forms; his balancing of colour and space. Heron's deepest influences were Braque, Matisse and Bonnard
and he was connected first of all to the pure abstraction of European lineage; Naum Gabo
, Pierre Soulages
.
"Heron used that most rare and uncanny of gifts: the ability to invent an imagery that was unmistakenly his own, and yet which connects immediately with the natural world as we perceive it, and transforms our vision of it. Like those of his acknowledged masters, Braque, Matisse and Bonnard, his paintings are at once evocations and celebrations of the visible, discoveries of what he called 'the reality of the eye' "
, editor of The New English Weekly to contribute to the journal. His first published article was on Ben Nicholson
, followed by essays on Picasso
, Klee
, Cézanne and Braque. Two years later he became art critic of the New Statesman
until 1950. He became London correspondent to Arts Digest, New York,(later renamed Arts(NY)). 'The Changing Forms of Art', a selection of his criticism was published in 1955. A further selection of writings , edited by Mel Gooding, was published in 1998 to coincide with his Tate Gallery retrospective exhibition
In 1966, 1968 and 1970 he published a series of articles in Studio International questioning the perceived ascendancy of American artists. His final essay on the subject was in a closely worded article of some 14,000 words published over a period of three days in The Guardian in October 1974.
He defended the independence and autonomy of the English Art Schools, resisting their integration into the polytechnic system. The publication of his article 'Murder of the art schools' in The Guardian in 1971 precipitated an enormous correspondence over a period of six weeks.The article was reprinted in 'Patrick Heron on Art and Education' was published by Bretton Hall Wakefield to coincide with presentation of Honorary Fellowship of Bretton Hall, University of Leeds and a one man show of gouaches.
, 24 September 1988, 34. 29.Daughter Katharine was born early in 1947 and Susanna in 1949. The summer of 1947 was spent in St.Ives (as were consecutive summers until 1956 when the family moved permanently from London to Cornwall) followed by first London exhibition at Redfern Gallery in October.
Heron's writings were admired by American art critic Clement Greenberg
who sought him out in London in 1954. The friendship they formed eventually disintegrated when they disagreed as judges of the John Moores Prize Exhibition
in 1965.
In April 1956 the family moved from London to Eagles Nest in west Cornwall, and in June he exhibited 'Tachiste Garden Paintings' at Redfern Gallery. The following year his first Stripe paintings were exhibited in a group exhibition at the Redfern Gallery 'Metavisual, Taschiste, Abstract' (exhibition title invented by Delia Heron). Towards the end of the next decade Alan Bowness wrote: " I can think of few more disconcerting pictures shown in England in the last twenty years than Patrick Heron's striped paintings of 1957."
"Heron's Garden Paintings of 1956 mark a singular achievement within British Art of the period. With these canvases Heron found a route towards abstraction, not of a given motif, but instead formed from the formal balance achieved between the visual reality of what he saw in the garden at Eagles Nest and the pictorial reality of what he painted. The resulting paintings were executed at a remove from an idea of a representational subject and so freed Heron to deal directly with a pictorial reality.
In 1958, he moved to Ben Nicholson’s former studio at Porthmeor, St Ives, and two years later he held his first exhibitions in New York at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery and at the newly arrived Waddington Galleries in London."The American critical response was enthusiastic and perceptive. Dennison, in Arts (April 1960) was struck by the subtlety and richness of his colour and ....He was able to discern a crucial distinction " Where Rothko arrives at an impersonal and yet lyrical grandeur, Heron develops a personal image.." ......For Stuart Preston of the new York Times, Heron was ' balancing [his specific, squarish shapes ] in compositions of momentary equilibrium. Their state of suspended animation gives his pictures their extraordinary lightness despite the positive existence of his forms.'
He visited Australia in 1967 and 1973, exhibiting at the Bonython Gallery, Sydney. He delivered the Power lecture in Contemporary Art entitled The Shape of Colour.”He wrote ‘ There is no shape that is not conveyed to you by colour, and there is no colour that can present itself to you without involving shape. If there is no shape then the colour would be right across your retina’ “
In 1978 he delivered the William Doty Lectures in Fine Arts at University of Texas in Austin entitled 'The Colour of Colour' coinciding with a presentation of over 30 large canvasses from the previous twelve years This was the culmination of the ‘wobbly hard-edge’ period, works filled with intense fields of unadulterated colour and spatial brushwork. “.. with an immediacy of sensational impact ..only possible in the actual relation of spectator to painting”
On the same visit Patrick and Delia Heron were made honorary citizens of Texas by order of the Secretary of State.
Delia died quite suddenly and unexpectedly at Eagles Nest in 1979. For some years Patrick was unable to paint. He returned to drawing and slowly a foundation for the later Garden paintings emerged. See ‘Red Garden Painting : June 3–5 1985’ illustrated above, completed in time for the retrospective at the Barbican the same year.
In 1989 he returned to Sydney as artist in residence at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Over a period of 16 weeks he produced six large paintings and forty six gouaches creating "...the final great breakout into the freely executed paintings inspired by his new acquaintance with the Botanical Gardens of Sydney and, once more, his abiding love, the garden at Eagles Nest."
In 1994 his Exhibition "Big Paintings" was held at Camden Arts Centre. Heron's largest and most ambitious paintings were 15–22 ft long.
"One major change that came about in Heron’s painting as a result of his time in Sydney, was a greater awareness of the white primed canvas as a colour space in its own right. ..the Sydney Garden Paintings gave Heron the licence to create works that were seemingly quickly wrought and sparsley painted- which even appear at first to be incomplete or negligent. Ones expectations of what should be are affronted. Nevertheless, this reaction belies a complexity that the artist worked through in his last paintings..and reached a highpoint..in 1998”
"His last paintings were full-on, risky, filled with bright squiggles, painterly flurries and cartoon doodles. They should have been chaotic and absurd, but they were instead open and vital, eye-rocking and beautiful. Heron's retrospective was ravishing, and had the vitality of a much younger artist.
He continued painting until the day before he died. He died peacefully at his home in Zennor, Cornwall, in March 1999 at the age of 79. He was survived by both his daughters, Katharine Heron, now an architect and Susanna Heron , a sculptor.
On 24 May 2004, the Momart warehouse fire destroyed a number of Heron’s most important works.
Patrick heron's paintings are in public collections worldwide.
in 1998 selected by David Sylvester
.
in Liverpool
in 1959 and the silver medal at the São Paulo Art Biennial
in 1965. In 1978 Patrick and Delia Heron were made Honorary Citizens of Texas by Order of the Secretary of State. He was awarded an Hon. D.Litt. in 1982 by the University of Exeter and in 1986 an Hon. D.Litt.by the University of Kent at Canterbury, by Chancellor Jo Grimond whose portrait he had painted for The Scottish National Portrait Gallery. In 1987 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Royal College of Art and In 1989 he was made an honorary Ph.D., CNAA by Winchester School of Art, in 1992 an Honorary Fellow of RIBA and in 1996 an Honorary Fellow of Bretton Hall, University of Leeds. He turned down a Knighthood under Margaret Thatcher and declined to become an RA. He was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery between 1980-1987.
Paintings in Tate
collection can be seen online at and at the National Portrait Gallery
Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford;
C.E.M.A., Belfast;
Bristol City Art Gallery;
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge;
Eliot College, University of Kent, Canterbury;
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff;
Bishop Otter College, Chichester;
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne;
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh;
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh;
Exeter Art Gallery;
Cornwall House, Exeter University;
Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal;
Leeds City Art Gallery;
Leicestershire Education Committee, Leicester;
Arts Council of Great Britain, London;
Barclays Bank Collection, London;
British Broadcasting Corporation, London;
British Council, London;
British Museum, London;
Contemporary Art Society, London;
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London;
National Portrait Gallery, London ;
Shell-Mex Limited, London;
Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, London;
Tate Gallery, London ;
Victoria & Albert Museum, London;
Granada Television, Manchester;
National Westminster Bank Contemporary Art Collection, Manchester;
Manchester City Art Gallery (Rutherston Collection);
Hatton Art Gallery, Newcastle University;
Norwich Castle Museum;
Oldham Art Gallery;
Merton College, Oxford;
Pembroke College, Oxford;
New College, Oxford;
St John’s College, Oxford;
Nuffield College, Oxford;
Plymouth City Art Gallery;
Southampton Art Gallery;
University of Stirling;
Wakefield City Art Gallery;
University of Warwick.
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon;
Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam;
Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, Amsterdam;
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth;
Power Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sydney University;
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane;
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide;
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney;
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto;
London Art Gallery, Ontario;
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts;
Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal;
Vancouver Art Gallery;
Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo;
Ohnishi Museum, Kogawa Prefecture;
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York;
Brooklyn Museum, New York;
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina;
Museum of Art, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor;
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts;
Art Museum, University of Texas at Austin;
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio;
Frederick R Weisman Foundation, Los Angeles;
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut.
Portraits of the artist Patrick Heron can be found at the National Portrait Gallery
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and designer
Designer
A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that "specifies the structural properties of a design object". In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a...
, based in St. Ives
St Ives, Cornwall
St Ives is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times it was commercially dependent on fishing. The decline in fishing, however, caused a shift in commercial...
, Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
.
Early life
Born at HeadingleyHeadingley
Headingley is a suburb of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England. It is approximately two miles out of the city centre, to the north west along the A660 road...
, Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
in 1920, he was the son of Thomas Milner Heron and Eulalie 'Jack' Heron (née Davies), the first of four children (Michael, Joanna and Giles). His father was a clothes manufacturer, pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
, socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
and leading member of the Leeds Arts Club
Leeds Arts Club
The Leeds Arts Club was founded in 1903 by the Leeds school teacher Alfred Orage and Yorkshire textile manufacture Holbrook Jackson, and was probably one of the most advanced centres for modernist thinking in Britain in the pre-First World War period.-History:...
. In 1925 the Heron family moved to West Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
where T M Heron took over the running of Crysede and four years later the family moved to Welwyn Garden City
Welwyn Garden City
-Economy:Ever since its inception as garden city, Welwyn Garden City has attracted a strong commercial base with several designated employment areas. Among the companies trading in the town are:*Air Link Systems*Baxter*British Lead Mills*Carl Zeiss...
where Tom founded the firm Cresta Silks and was to become the original mind behind Utility Clothing during the war, see Heron's Memorandum to the Board of Trade dated April 1941.pp 60-64 Rebel and Sage . It was here at his new school that Patrick Heron met his future wife Delia Reiss, daughter of Celia and Dick Reiss (R.L.Reisshttp://cashewnut.me.uk/WGCbooks/web-WGC-books-1965-1.php, co-founder of Welwyn Garden City ).
Becoming a painter
He attended St. George's SchoolSt. George's School, Harpenden
St George's VA School, Harpenden is a traditional day and boarding school in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, serving students of both genders from ages 11 to 18 with emphasis on a Christian ethos...
in Harpenden
Harpenden
Harpenden is a town in Hertfordshire, England.The town's total population is just under 30,000.-Geography and administration:There are two civil parishes: Harpenden and Harpenden Rural....
and on a school visit to the National Gallery, London
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
in 1933 saw paintings by Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
for the first time. He immediately began to paint in a Cézanne-influenced style. Shortly after this he was asked to make designs for Cresta Silks and continued to design for Cresta until 1951.
When he was 17 he attended The Slade School of Art for two days a week, returning to the West Country to draw the landscape. In World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he registered as a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
and worked as an agricultural labourer for three years, then at the Leach Pottery
Leach Pottery
The Leach Pottery was founded in 1920 by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada in St Ives, Cornwall, in the United Kingdom.The buildings have grown from an old cow / tin-ore shed in the 19th century to a pottery in the 1920s when Hamada and Leach first attempted to construct a climbing kiln, this was the...
at St Ives
St Ives, Cornwall
St Ives is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times it was commercially dependent on fishing. The decline in fishing, however, caused a shift in commercial...
between 1944-5, where he met Ben Nicholson
Ben Nicholson
Benjamin Lauder "Ben" Nicholson, OM was a British painter of abstract compositions , landscape and still-life.-Background and Training:...
, Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth
Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art in Britain.-Life and work:Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,...
and many other leading artists of the St Ives School
St Ives School
The St Ives School refers to a group of artists living and working in the Cornish town of St Ives.-History:The town became a magnet for artists following the extension to West Cornwall of the Great Western Railway in 1877...
. He had just seen Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
's The Red Studio, exhibited at the Redfern Gallery, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and soon after this completed what he later considered to be his first mature work, The Piano in 1943.
Early influences
The George Braque exhibition at the Tate GalleryTate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
in 1946 deeply impressed him and he wrote an essay on Braque for The New English Weekly. Then up to 1953 he spent time in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
visiting Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. Heron visited Braque in his Paris studio and presented him with the New English Weekly article. His first one-man exhibition was at the Redfern Gallery in London in 1947. In 1953 he organised, wrote the catalogue and exhibited in Space in Colour, an exhibition of ten contemporary artists, at Hanover Gallery, London. Following this he exhibited twelve paintings at the Il Bienal di São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. The same year he began teaching at Central School of Arts and Crafts
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. The school has an outstanding international reputation, and is considered one of the world's leading art and design institutions...
in London and continued there until 1956. In 1956 he saw, and praised highly the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Abstract Expressionists
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
who showed their work for the first time in England at the Tate Gallery. He was inspired by this group of eight painters, their confidence and the large scale and flatness.
A development towards abstraction had been evident in his paintings, for example, Square Leaves (1952) and Winter Harbour (1955) The effect on Heron of the New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
painters, together with his move to live at Eagles Nest, overlooking the cliffs at Zennor
Zennor
Zennor is a village and civil parish in Cornwall in England. The parish includes the villages of Zennor, Boswednack and Porthmeor and the hamlet of Treen. It is located on the north coast, about north of Penzance. Alphabetically, the parish is the last in Britain—its name comes from the Cornish...
, that year was a pivotal point in the transformation into his now characteristic language of interlinking forms; his balancing of colour and space. Heron's deepest influences were Braque, Matisse and Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...
and he was connected first of all to the pure abstraction of European lineage; Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo KBE, born Naum Neemia Pevsner was a prominent Russian sculptor in the Constructivism movement and a pioneer of Kinetic Art.-Early life:...
, Pierre Soulages
Pierre Soulages
Pierre Soulages is a French painter, engraver, and sculptor.-Biography:Born in Rodez in 1919, Soulages also is known as "the painter of black" because of his interest in the colour, "...both a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens up...
.
"Heron used that most rare and uncanny of gifts: the ability to invent an imagery that was unmistakenly his own, and yet which connects immediately with the natural world as we perceive it, and transforms our vision of it. Like those of his acknowledged masters, Braque, Matisse and Bonnard, his paintings are at once evocations and celebrations of the visible, discoveries of what he called 'the reality of the eye' "
Heron's writing on art and art education
Patrick Heron's writing about art began when in 1945 he was invited by Philip MairetPhilip Mairet
Philip Mairet was a designer, writer and journalist. He had a wide range of interest: crafts, Alfred Adler and psychiatry, and Social Credit. He was also a translator of major figures including Sartre. He wrote biographies of Sir Patrick Geddes and A. R...
, editor of The New English Weekly to contribute to the journal. His first published article was on Ben Nicholson
Ben Nicholson
Benjamin Lauder "Ben" Nicholson, OM was a British painter of abstract compositions , landscape and still-life.-Background and Training:...
, followed by essays on Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
, Cézanne and Braque. Two years later he became art critic of the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
until 1950. He became London correspondent to Arts Digest, New York,(later renamed Arts(NY)). 'The Changing Forms of Art', a selection of his criticism was published in 1955. A further selection of writings , edited by Mel Gooding, was published in 1998 to coincide with his Tate Gallery retrospective exhibition
In 1966, 1968 and 1970 he published a series of articles in Studio International questioning the perceived ascendancy of American artists. His final essay on the subject was in a closely worded article of some 14,000 words published over a period of three days in The Guardian in October 1974.
He defended the independence and autonomy of the English Art Schools, resisting their integration into the polytechnic system. The publication of his article 'Murder of the art schools' in The Guardian in 1971 precipitated an enormous correspondence over a period of six weeks.The article was reprinted in 'Patrick Heron on Art and Education' was published by Bretton Hall Wakefield to coincide with presentation of Honorary Fellowship of Bretton Hall, University of Leeds and a one man show of gouaches.
Later life
In 1947 Heron began a series of portraits of T.S.Eliot. The final cubist version, painted in 1949, was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1966. see Patrick Heron, "The Lost Portraits of a Poet," in The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 24 September 1988, 34. 29.Daughter Katharine was born early in 1947 and Susanna in 1949. The summer of 1947 was spent in St.Ives (as were consecutive summers until 1956 when the family moved permanently from London to Cornwall) followed by first London exhibition at Redfern Gallery in October.
Heron's writings were admired by American art critic Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
who sought him out in London in 1954. The friendship they formed eventually disintegrated when they disagreed as judges of the John Moores Prize Exhibition
John Moores Prize Exhibition
The John Moores Prize Exhibition is a bi-annual competitive art exhibition held at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. It is named after Sir John Moores , the founder of the competition and one-time head of the Littlewoods clothes retailing empire....
in 1965.
In April 1956 the family moved from London to Eagles Nest in west Cornwall, and in June he exhibited 'Tachiste Garden Paintings' at Redfern Gallery. The following year his first Stripe paintings were exhibited in a group exhibition at the Redfern Gallery 'Metavisual, Taschiste, Abstract' (exhibition title invented by Delia Heron). Towards the end of the next decade Alan Bowness wrote: " I can think of few more disconcerting pictures shown in England in the last twenty years than Patrick Heron's striped paintings of 1957."
"Heron's Garden Paintings of 1956 mark a singular achievement within British Art of the period. With these canvases Heron found a route towards abstraction, not of a given motif, but instead formed from the formal balance achieved between the visual reality of what he saw in the garden at Eagles Nest and the pictorial reality of what he painted. The resulting paintings were executed at a remove from an idea of a representational subject and so freed Heron to deal directly with a pictorial reality.
In 1958, he moved to Ben Nicholson’s former studio at Porthmeor, St Ives, and two years later he held his first exhibitions in New York at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery and at the newly arrived Waddington Galleries in London."The American critical response was enthusiastic and perceptive. Dennison, in Arts (April 1960) was struck by the subtlety and richness of his colour and ....He was able to discern a crucial distinction " Where Rothko arrives at an impersonal and yet lyrical grandeur, Heron develops a personal image.." ......For Stuart Preston of the new York Times, Heron was ' balancing [his specific, squarish shapes ] in compositions of momentary equilibrium. Their state of suspended animation gives his pictures their extraordinary lightness despite the positive existence of his forms.'
He visited Australia in 1967 and 1973, exhibiting at the Bonython Gallery, Sydney. He delivered the Power lecture in Contemporary Art entitled The Shape of Colour.”He wrote ‘ There is no shape that is not conveyed to you by colour, and there is no colour that can present itself to you without involving shape. If there is no shape then the colour would be right across your retina’ “
In 1978 he delivered the William Doty Lectures in Fine Arts at University of Texas in Austin entitled 'The Colour of Colour' coinciding with a presentation of over 30 large canvasses from the previous twelve years This was the culmination of the ‘wobbly hard-edge’ period, works filled with intense fields of unadulterated colour and spatial brushwork. “.. with an immediacy of sensational impact ..only possible in the actual relation of spectator to painting”
On the same visit Patrick and Delia Heron were made honorary citizens of Texas by order of the Secretary of State.
Delia died quite suddenly and unexpectedly at Eagles Nest in 1979. For some years Patrick was unable to paint. He returned to drawing and slowly a foundation for the later Garden paintings emerged. See ‘Red Garden Painting : June 3–5 1985’ illustrated above, completed in time for the retrospective at the Barbican the same year.
In 1989 he returned to Sydney as artist in residence at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Over a period of 16 weeks he produced six large paintings and forty six gouaches creating "...the final great breakout into the freely executed paintings inspired by his new acquaintance with the Botanical Gardens of Sydney and, once more, his abiding love, the garden at Eagles Nest."
In 1994 his Exhibition "Big Paintings" was held at Camden Arts Centre. Heron's largest and most ambitious paintings were 15–22 ft long.
"One major change that came about in Heron’s painting as a result of his time in Sydney, was a greater awareness of the white primed canvas as a colour space in its own right. ..the Sydney Garden Paintings gave Heron the licence to create works that were seemingly quickly wrought and sparsley painted- which even appear at first to be incomplete or negligent. Ones expectations of what should be are affronted. Nevertheless, this reaction belies a complexity that the artist worked through in his last paintings..and reached a highpoint..in 1998”
"His last paintings were full-on, risky, filled with bright squiggles, painterly flurries and cartoon doodles. They should have been chaotic and absurd, but they were instead open and vital, eye-rocking and beautiful. Heron's retrospective was ravishing, and had the vitality of a much younger artist.
He continued painting until the day before he died. He died peacefully at his home in Zennor, Cornwall, in March 1999 at the age of 79. He was survived by both his daughters, Katharine Heron, now an architect and Susanna Heron , a sculptor.
On 24 May 2004, the Momart warehouse fire destroyed a number of Heron’s most important works.
Patrick heron's paintings are in public collections worldwide.
Retrospective Exhibitions
He held retrospective exhibitions of his work at Wakefield City Art Gallery Hepworth Wakefield Paintings and Drawings , 5 April - 3 May 1952; the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1968, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1972 and at the Barbican Art Gallery in 1985. A major retrospective exhibition of his work was held at Tate BritainTate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
in 1998 selected by David Sylvester
David Sylvester
Anthony David Bernard Sylvester CBE, was a British art critic and curator. Although he received no formal education in the arts, during his long career he was influential in promoting modern artists, in particular the work of Joan Miró, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.Born into a well connected...
.
Awards and Honours
Heron won the Grand Prize at the John Moores Prize ExhibitionJohn Moores Prize Exhibition
The John Moores Prize Exhibition is a bi-annual competitive art exhibition held at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. It is named after Sir John Moores , the founder of the competition and one-time head of the Littlewoods clothes retailing empire....
in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
in 1959 and the silver medal at the São Paulo Art Biennial
São Paulo Art Biennial
The São Paulo Art Biennial was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennial , which serves as its role model....
in 1965. In 1978 Patrick and Delia Heron were made Honorary Citizens of Texas by Order of the Secretary of State. He was awarded an Hon. D.Litt. in 1982 by the University of Exeter and in 1986 an Hon. D.Litt.by the University of Kent at Canterbury, by Chancellor Jo Grimond whose portrait he had painted for The Scottish National Portrait Gallery. In 1987 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Royal College of Art and In 1989 he was made an honorary Ph.D., CNAA by Winchester School of Art, in 1992 an Honorary Fellow of RIBA and in 1996 an Honorary Fellow of Bretton Hall, University of Leeds. He turned down a Knighthood under Margaret Thatcher and declined to become an RA. He was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery between 1980-1987.
Public Works and collaborations
Patrick Heron made several Public Works, in 1992 he designed the coloured glass window for Tate St.Ives and in 1996 a site specific outdoor installation at Stag Place 'Big Painting Sculpture' in collaboration with his son in law Julian Feary of Feary and Heron Architects.Works in Public Collections
38 paintings by Patrick heron are held in Public Collections in Britain seePaintings in Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
collection can be seen online at and at the National Portrait Gallery
Public Collections (British) include
Aberdeen Art Gallery;Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford;
C.E.M.A., Belfast;
Bristol City Art Gallery;
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge;
Eliot College, University of Kent, Canterbury;
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff;
Bishop Otter College, Chichester;
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne;
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh;
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh;
Exeter Art Gallery;
Cornwall House, Exeter University;
Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal;
Leeds City Art Gallery;
Leicestershire Education Committee, Leicester;
Arts Council of Great Britain, London;
Barclays Bank Collection, London;
British Broadcasting Corporation, London;
British Council, London;
British Museum, London;
Contemporary Art Society, London;
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London;
National Portrait Gallery, London ;
Shell-Mex Limited, London;
Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, London;
Tate Gallery, London ;
Victoria & Albert Museum, London;
Granada Television, Manchester;
National Westminster Bank Contemporary Art Collection, Manchester;
Manchester City Art Gallery (Rutherston Collection);
Hatton Art Gallery, Newcastle University;
Norwich Castle Museum;
Oldham Art Gallery;
Merton College, Oxford;
Pembroke College, Oxford;
New College, Oxford;
St John’s College, Oxford;
Nuffield College, Oxford;
Plymouth City Art Gallery;
Southampton Art Gallery;
University of Stirling;
Wakefield City Art Gallery;
University of Warwick.
Public Collections (International) include
University of Galway, Ireland;Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon;
Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam;
Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, Amsterdam;
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth;
Power Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sydney University;
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane;
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide;
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney;
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto;
London Art Gallery, Ontario;
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts;
Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal;
Vancouver Art Gallery;
Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo;
Ohnishi Museum, Kogawa Prefecture;
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York;
Brooklyn Museum, New York;
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina;
Museum of Art, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor;
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts;
Art Museum, University of Texas at Austin;
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio;
Frederick R Weisman Foundation, Los Angeles;
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut.
Photographs of Patrick Heron
The wrong portrait of Patrick Heron was published in Adrian Clark's book (British and Irish Art 1945-1951: From War to Festival, Hogarth Arts, 2010)Portraits of the artist Patrick Heron can be found at the National Portrait Gallery
External links
- Artcyclopedia entry
- Tate Biography
- artcornwall.org on-line journal for art and artists in Cornwall
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/1999/mar/22/guardianobituaries.michaelmcnay
- http://www.waddington-galleries.com/artists/heron/
- http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp09379/patrick-heron
- http://www.bridgemanart.com/search.aspx?key=patrick%20heron&filter=CBPOIHV&sl=gb
- http://robinsimononart.blogspot.com/2010/09/patrick-heron-which-patrick-heron.html">the British art blog: Patrick Heron? Which Patrick Heron?