(Above) Jon Benington, the curator at Victoria Art Gallery, with Silence by Howard Hodgkin. Courtesy Victoria Art Gallery
The Victoria Art Gallery in Bath has been able to buy a painting by Sir Howard Hodgkin thanks to a major grant from the Art Fund.
The acquisition is particularly meaningful because the gallery was the first to publically display Hodgkin’s work, as part of a group exhibition in 1952. Silence is the only work by the artist in the Victoria’s current collection.
Hodgkin attended the Bath Academy of Art from 1950 to 1954 and taught there for more than a decade. In 1985 he won the Turner Prize and went on to become a Trustee of both the Tate and the National Gallery. He is considered to be one of the most important artists working in the UK today.
Jon Benington, Manager of the Victoria Art Gallery, said: “The acquisition of Silence fills a very significant gap in the Gallery's collection, given the artist's intimate connections with Bath. Silence is not only a beautiful and lyrical painting in its own right; it also represents the culmination of a development that was nurtured in Bath fifty years earlier.”
Completed four years ago, the work represents significant changes in Hodgkin’s artistic development over the last decade, with the paint applied in thin layers with wide brushstrokes over a found wooden structure. It is in contrast to his earlier paintings which were typically characterised by dots, dashes and scribbles.
The Art Fund, the UK’s leading art charity, donated £62,500 towards the total £75,000 required to purchase Silence. The rest of the money was raised internally with additional funding coming from the Friends of the Victoria Art Gallery and a local fundraising appeal.
David Barrie, Director of The Art Fund, said: “I am delighted that The Art Fund has helped to put such a fantastic example of Hodgkin’s work back on display in Bath - the very city where Hodgkin spent a great deal of his early life as both an art student and art teacher.”
