Patrick Heron 1920-1999
Allover reds, Green and Orange, April 1972-1974
oil on canvas
66 by 60 inches


Provenance
Waddington Gallery, London
Tooth Galleries, London
Heinz Art Collection
Private Collection

Exhibited
London, Waddington Galleries, Patrick Heron Painting 1971 – 1975, May 1975, illustrated in the catalogue

Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 10, 1975

Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Institute, details untraced

Austin, Texas, The University of Texas Art Museum, Paintings by Patrick Heron,1965 – 1977, no 16 Austin 1979, illustrated in the catalogue

Literature
Patrick Heron, The Colour of Colour, The University of Texas at Austin, 1979

Mel Gooding, Patrick Heron, Phaidon, 1994, illustrated, p 200



Patrick Heron’s oeuvre was continually developing throughout his career, he explored every theme in great detail which led to a wealth of invention and gives his oeuvre a sense of continual development. Despite the apparent differences between the paintings of the 1950s and those of the following decades, the underlying exploration of the artist’s fascination with colour and its possibilities led to the creation of a body of work that is remarkably rich and vibrant.
In later years Heron gradually simplified the forms and palette he was employing which was in contrast to the more complex works of the late 1950s. Allover Reds, Green and Orange, April 1972-1974 is a beautiful example of Heron’s painstaking attention to surface texture. The artist commented on his painterly execution, ‘I have myself always believed...in the hand-stroked, hand-scribbled, hand-scrubbed application of paint: putting paint on a flat surface with a brush is just about the greatest possible pleasure I know’, (M. Gooding, Patrick Heron, New York, 1994, p. 189). Elaborating on Heron’s methods, Gooding recounts, ‘Mixing large bowls of a chosen colour, directly from the tube, with turps and linseed, he committed himself to creating the entire area of a designated colour in a single session, knowing that to start and stop again after a break always left a discernable line, a distracting demarcation in a field whose shimmering intensities and subtle sensuousness had to be continuous’ (Ibid, p. 189).