Charles Hardaker

Still Life: Vertical Structures, Three Times Three

1965

Not on display

Artist: Charles Hardaker born 1934
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1215 x 912 x 20 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1966
Reference: T00861

Display caption

Hardaker studied at Birmingham College of Arts and Crafts, and after completing National Service in 1955 spent three years at the Royal College of Art, London. In 1967 he wrote of this picture: '...it forms part of a series on a theme (or rather multiple themes) which is still developing... Motives for the paintings in general (as much as one dare to define them!) are architectural and philosophical in that the basically cubic container form has been connected with the cube/earth symbol in Plato's Timaeus. But also things as they are is important as any intellectual idea so that the paintings retain strong roots in things seen.'

Gallery label, September 2004

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Catalogue entry

Charles Ernest Hardaker b.1934

T00861 Still Life: Vertical Structures, Three Times Three 1965

Inscr.‘Hardaker’b.l.
Oil on canvas, 48 x 36 (122 x 91.5).
Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1966.
Exh. R.A., 1966 (871).

The artist wrote (19 March 1967): ‘it forms part of a series on a theme (or rather, multiple themes) which is still developing and looks like doing so for some time. There are about 10 more on this theme in my place at present. Motives for the paintings in general (as much as one dare to define them I) are architectural and philosophical in that the basically cubic container form has been connected with the cube/earth symbol in Plato’s Timaeus. But also “things as they are” is as important as any intellectual idea so that the paintings retain strong roots in things seen.’

Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1966–1967, London 1967.