Eliot Hodgkin

Eliot Hodgkin, “Peeled Lemons”, 12/03/1958, Tempera on Board, 21.5 x 24.7 cm, Estate of Eliot Hodgkin, Exhibition: Royal Academy 1958

Born in Purley-on-Thames in June of 1905, Curwen Eliot Hodgkin was an English painter best known for his highly detailed still lifes. The only son of Charles Ernest Hodgkin and his wife Alice Jane Brooke, he was raised in a Quaker family related to Roger Eliot Fry, a prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group of artists. Eliot Hodgkin was also the younger cousin of abstract painter Sir Howard Hodgkin.

Hodgkin received his early education at the Harrow School from 1919 to 1923. His initial formal art training was in London at the independent Byam Shaw School of Art. He later enrolled at the Royal Academy School where he studied under painter and draughtsman Francis Ernest Jackson, a student of both William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. Hodgkin left the Royal Academy to prepare works for an upcoming exhibition at Liverpool’s Basnett Gallery.

Eliot Hodgkin was very particular in the choice of subjects for his paintings; he would choose simple things, often natural objects, and meticulously arrange them against the painting’s background. Hodgkin originally painted in oils, both indoors and en plein air. Introduced in 1937 to a method of creating egg tempera by his friend and teacher Maxwell Armfield, he dedicated more of his time to painting indoors with egg tempera on primed hardboard. Hodgkin’s interest in egg tempera was influenced by the detailed work of such artists as Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran, known as the Spanish Caravaggio, and Adriaen Coorte, the Dutch Golden Age painter of small still lifes.

By the middle of the 1930s, Hodgkin had established himself as a painter of still lifes, landscapes and murals through regular exhibitions at the Royal Academy. Between 1934 and 1981, he took part in all the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions. Three of Hodgkin’s works, including the 1939 “October”, were purchased at the summer exhibitions by the Chantrey Bequest founded by wealthy portrait sculptor and painter Sir Francis Chantrey. These three works were later presented to the Tate Gallery collection in London. In 1938, Hodgkin had his first solo exhibition at the Picture Hire Gallery on London’s Brook Street where he showed twenty-three works painted during a ten month span.

During the years of World War II, Eliot Hodgkin joined the Air Raid Precautions, an organization of wardens supporting citizens during air raids, and worked for the Home Intelligence Division of the Ministry of Information. He continued his painting during the war and produced paintings contrasting the ruins of London’s bomb sites with the vegetation that thrived in the devastation. For his work, he received a commission as part of the War Artists Scheme, a project devised and administered by Kenneth Clark, the Director of the National Gallery.

Hodgkin taught briefly as a teacher in 1936 at the Westminster School of Art. He was offered the position of academic at the Royal Academy of Art in 1959; however, he declined in order to concentrate on his painting. Hodgkin wrote a novel, “She Closed the Door” in 1931 and, in the following year, six articles on mural decorations for the book “Fashion Drawing” published by Chapman and Hall. In 1949, he published “A Pictorial Gospel”, a collection of old master illustrations of the Gospel story. His last published work was an article entitled “How I Paint in Temper” for the Society of Painters in Tempera’s 1967 yearbook.

Eliot Hodgkin continued his painting until his late seventies. Due to eyesight difficulties, his work slowly diminished until it stopped completely in 1979. During the last years of his life, he suffered from axatia, loss of full control of his bodily movements. Eliot Hodgkin died in May of 1987 at the age of eighty-one; his ashes are buried in the churchyard of St. John’s Ladbroke Grove in London.

“Why tempera?… Because tempera enables me most nearly to achieve the effects I am aiming at… I try to show things exactly as they are, yet with some of their mystery and poetry, and as though seen for the first time. And it seems to me that, in trying to depict “a World in a grain of sand”, perhaps the best medium is tempera, because it combines clarity and definition with a certain feeling of remoteness.” – Eliot Hodgkin, 1946, Royal Watercolor Society Catalogue

Note: More extensive information on Eliot Hodgkin’s life and work can be found at The Estate of Eliot Hodgkin website located at: https://www.eliothodgkin.com

Top Insert Image: Howard Coster, “Eliot Hodgkin”, 1953, Silver Gelatin Print, 22.9 x 17.8 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Second Insert Image: Eliot Hodgkin, “Five Gladiolus Bulbs”, 04/03/1954, Tempera on Board, 10.2 x 13.7 cm, Private Collection, Exhibited at Leicester Galleries in 1956

Third Insert Image: Eliot Hodgkin, “Portrait of Douglas Fitzpatrick”, Date Unknown (circa 1930), Pencil and Watercolor, 58.4 x 47 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Eliot Hodgkin, “Orto Chiuso, Malcontenta, Italy”, 1957, Oil on Canvas, 24.2 x 19.7 cm, Private Collection, Exhibition Waddesdon 2019

Agostino Arrivabene

Paintings by Agostino Arrivabene

After his initial training at art school, in which, Arrivabene says, he learnt next to nothing, he toured around Europe and studied the paintings of old masters. He researched how to grind his own pigments, lapis lazuli, indigo, cinnabar and madder, dragon’s blood, orpiment and bistre, and almost forgotten techniques of painting like mischtechnik, a painting technique used by artists such as Albrech Dürer and Grünewald.

In mischtechnik, egg tempera is used in combination with oil-based paints to create translucent layers which, when laid over each other, refract light through the painting creating a sense of light and luminosity. This attention to the minutiae of his craft has resulted in Arrivabene’s paintings actually embodying a process of alchemical transformation, in which the physical matter of painting itself, the lead, the ground pigment, the egg, the oil, is transmuted through the agency of his craft into extraordinary light-filled visions.

The other notable thing about Arrivabene’s work is how densely saturated it is with the history of painting, as his works resonate with a lineage of visionary artists from the past – we can see glimpses of Francisco Goya, Leonardo da Vinci, Gustave Moreau, William Blake, Odd Nerdrum, and even in some of his pencil drawings, Mervyn Peake. And yet, despite this sense of continuity and connection with past masters, Arrivabene’s work feels fresh, contemporary, and distinctly his own.

Ernst Fuchs

Ernst Fuchs, “Transfiguration of the Resurrected”, Egg Tempera, 1961-82

Ernst Fuchs was born in 1930 in Vienna. He has produced many hundreds of paintings, recorded music, designed architecture and is a co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. He brilliantly displays the visionary vistas of the human imagination with surreal themes and spiritual symbolism.

Ernest Fuchs teaches and paints using a painting technique known as Mischtechnik. Mischtechnik utilizes small amounts of paint applied with glazes using egg tempera. This application of paint can be seen in the works of the Flemish masters of old. The thin layers of pigment are separated by the transparent glazes creating depth and vivid colors which are ideal for the visionary realms of fantastic art.

Fuchs utilizes this traditional technique for painting and through it feels a connection with the master painters of old. As though by studying proven techniques of the past he is carrying on the lineage of that painting tradition and carrying with him the lexicon of master painters.

George Tooker

Paintings by George Tooker

George Clair Tooker, Jr. was an American figurative painter whose works are associated with the Magic Realism and Social Realism movements. Working with the then-revitalized tradition of egg tempera, Tooker addressed issues of modern-day alienation with subtly eerie and often visually literal depictions of social withdrawal and isolation. He was one of nine recipients of the National Medal of Arts in 2007.

Images from Top to Bottom;

George Tooker, “The Subway”, 1950, Egg Tempera on Composition Board, 46 x 92 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

George Tooker, “Divers”, 1962, Egg Tempera on Gessoed Panel, 30 x 46 cm, Private Collection

George Tooker, “Lunch”, 1964, Egg Tempera on Gessoed Panel, 50.8 x 66 cm, Columbus Museum of Art

George Tooker, “Window II”, 1956, Egg Tempera on Panel, 61 x 46 cm, Collection of James and Barbara Palmer

Paul Cadmus

Paul Cadmus, “Stone Blossom: A Conversation Piece”, 1939-40, Oil and Tempera on Lnen on Pressed Wood Panel

Cadmus was a slow, meticulous worker who favored the complicated, time-consuming medium of egg tempera. He finished an average of only two paintings a year. He was more prolific in other media, including drawing, printmaking and photography. Although Cadmus stopped painting toward the end of his life, he continued to draw at his home in Weston, Connecticut, particularly portraits and figure studies of his partner Jon Andersson. Paul Cadmus died in his home in Weston in 1999, just five days short of his 95th birthday.

“Stone Blossom: A Conversation Piece” is signed and inscribed with title and dated lower center in the New York Times newspaper on the ground. The group portrait from left to right consists of the Curator of Exhibitions and Editor of Publications at MOMA Monroe Wheeler, the novelist Glenway Wescott, Hollywood photographer George Platt Lynes, and Paul Levitt pictured mowing the lawn.

Jared French

Top Image: Jared French, “Evasion”, 1947, Tempera on Canvas Mounted to Panel, 54.5 x 29.2 cm, Cleveland Museum of Art

Bottom Image: Jared French, “Learning”, 1946, Egg Tempera on Gesso Panel, 61.6 x 58.4 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

French was well regarded during the 1940s and 1950s as one of the most accomplished and fascinating magic realist painters. A still understudied group of artists, the magic realists revived painstaking old master techniques to make convincing their enigmatic images that address a wide range of personal and social concerns. Part of a series of works French made to chronicle the human condition, “Evasion” symbolizes an individual’s attempt to deny the physical self. As such, the painting manifests tensions regarding sexual mores in mid 20th-century America. While it is reductive to attribute French’s iconographic interest in “Evasion” solely to his bisexuality, the fact remains that French was one of the first American artists whose same-sex desires were recognized and acknowledged by contemporaries who viewed his work.

Note: For those interested in more information on Jared French, I recommend Emily Sachar’s “Jared French’s State Park: A Contextual Study”, which was submitted for he Master of Arts degree. It includes a chapter of French’s artistic circle of friends, including his freindship with Paul Cadmus, as well as several images of French’s most notable works. The article can be found at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1289&context=hc_sas_etds

Michael Bergt

Michael Bergt, “Mocked”, 2010, Egg Tempera on Panel, 68.6 x 55.9 cm, Private Collection

Born in 1956, Michael Bergt is a self-taught artist who began as a watercolor pattern painter, and eventually emerged as an accomplished sculptor and egg-tempera artist in the style of Paul Cadmus. Bergt approached Cadmus in the early 1980s to learn more about the egg-tempera medium and eventually forged a strong friendship with the legendary master.

Michael Bergt sculpts and paints figures from life as well as his fertile imagination. His mark making is delicate and precise, while his palette is bold and exaggerated. Bergt often uses mythology as a reference points in his handling of contemporary subject matter. He has mastered egg-tempera, and is now leading a nationwide effort to call attention to this oft forgotten medium, The Society of Tempera Painters.

“Mocked is inspired by the Hieronymus Bosch painting of the same title; however, the Christ figure in my piece is completely different and based on a contemporary figure. I’ve always been intrigued by Bosch’s Mocked because the characters surrounding Christ are fantastic metaphorical profiles of evil personalities. Meanwhile, the Christ figure is passively awaiting the placement of the crown of thorns on his head. In my painting, the crown being placed on the head of Christ is in fact a metal studded collar that the model I painted might wear in real life. When I looked at the figure on the right in the Bosch painting, I realized he was also wearing a studded metal collar.” -Michael Bergt

Note: An extensive collection of drawings and paintings can be found at Michael Bergt’s website located at: https://michaelbergtart.com/paintings-2007-present/

Insert Image: Hieronymus Bosch, “Christ Crowned with Thorns (Christ Mocked)”, circa 1510, Oil on Wood Panel, 73.8 x 59 cm, National Gallery, London