Howard Hodgkin

Catalogue entry

Howard Hodgkin b. 1932
T01117 MRS NICHOLAS MUNRO 1966–9

Inscribed by artist on turnover with dimensions and with arrow indicating top.
Canvas, 50×48 (127×122).
Purchased from Arthur Tooth & Sons (Grant-in-Aid) 1969.
Exh: Kasmin Ltd, March–April 1969 (visible not quite complete in a photograph in the catalogue of the artist at work in his studio.)

The artist wrote (8 May 1970): 'Mrs Nicholas Munro commemorates a moment in March, 1966 when Cherry stripped after lunch in the living room of their cottage in order to put on a 1938 crepe de chine dress (I think by Norman Hartnell for whom her mother-in-law was once a model). The blue disk behind is a mirror which was hung about a year later. I have known Cherry for many years but the portrait is of that moment.

‘The picture has been very much altered while being painted because I wanted if possible to retain the whole figure by itself. I have only once otherwise tried anything at all similar and then all that was left was a fragment (Walker Art Gallery). I didn't want to depict her face’.

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1968-70, London 1970

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