Howard Hodgkin (1932-2017)

Howard Hodgkin gifted the present work to the artist and art historian Sir Lawrence Gowing (1918-1991) in 1981. Gowing studied under William Coldstream at the Euston Road School, and went on to have a distinguished and diverse career. He held various positions including Keeper of the British Collection and Deputy Director of the Tate Gallery, London, from 1965-67; Professor of Fine Art at the University of Leeds from 1967-75; and Slade Professor of Fine Art at University College, London, from 1975 until his retirement in 1985. He also wrote extensively on a number of artists including Vermeer, Renoir, Cézanne, Constable, Goya, Turner, Freud and Bacon.

The title of this painting is a comment on Gowing's own 'sous-bois' landscapes. Gowing had written about Hodgkin in the introduction to the catalogue for the Howard Hodgkin exhibition at Knoedler & Co., New York, in 1981: he described Hodgkin as 'a painter more naturally and effortlessly original, more entirely himself than anyone else alive'. Gowing since said that the present painting is 'a caricature of my sous-bois as a reward to me for writing about him' (see exhibition catalogue, Sir Lawrence Gowing, London, Serpentine Gallery, 1983).