Howard HodgkinFor Bernard Jacobson 1979

For Bernard Jacobsen
P07377
This print is dedicated to the art dealer and publisher Bernard Jacobsen. It shows the view from a balcony in India at night; the yellow forms and blue dots represent banana leaves. The idea for the print grew out of an aborted project to illustrate EM Foster’s book A Passage to India.

This was one of the first prints to be on the same scale as Hodgkin’s paintings. It is also one of the most technically complicated prints he has ever made. Not only are layers of printing and hand colouring interleaved, but each sheet of paper was hand-dyed using vegetable dyes to achieve its rich dark colour.