Tempera on board
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Chantrey Bequest
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/eliot-hodgkin-1294" aria-label="More by Eliot Hodgkin" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Eliot Hodgkin</a>
Undergrowth
Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1943
flower
landscape
leaf
plant
plants and flowers
sunshine
weather
wooded
painting tempera board
25 May 2019 – 20 October 2019
2019-10-20
25 May 2019 – 20 October 2019
2019-10-20
2019-05-25
Waddesdon Manor (Waddesdon, UK)
2019-05-25
Brought to Life: Eliot Hodgkin Rediscovered
Loan-out
Undergrowth
support: 411 × 364 mm
frame: 560 × 520 × 98 mm
Presented by the Trustees of the <a href="/search?gid=999999977" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Chantrey Bequest</a> 1943
<p><b>N05558</b> UNDERGROWTH 1941
<br/> 
<br/>Inscr. ‘Eliot Hodgkin’ b.r.
<br/>Tempera on canvas, 16 1/4×14 1/2 (41×37).
<br/>Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1943.
<br/><i>Exh:</i> R.A., 1943 (584).
<br/><i>Lit:</i> Maxwell Armfield, ‘Eliot Hodgkin: Painter in Tempera’ in <i>Studio</i>, CXXXIV, 1947, p.39, repr. p.37 (in colour).</p>
<p>Painted in London in 1941 during the artist's ‘days off’ while serving as an air-raid warden, from <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawings</span></a> of plants and flowers made near Purley, Berkshire. He began <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> in <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/t/tempera" title="Glossary definition for 'Tempera'"><span>tempera</span></a> in 1937 and this was the eighth tempera painting he did (letter of 31 October 1957).</p>
<p>The artist wrote in the R.W.S. catalogue, 1946: ‘Why tempera? ...Because tempera enables me most nearly to achieve the effects I am aiming at. What I want to paint are the things that have been seen so often that people no longer notice them - or, if they are noticed, are no longer thought beautiful: such things as an old boot washed up by the tide, cabbages growing, a ruined room carpeted with snow, a tangle of weeds. I try to show these 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 <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/medium" title="Glossary definition for 'Medium'"><span>medium</span></a> is tempera, because it combines clarity and definition with a certain feeling of remoteness.’</p>
<p><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, <i>The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture</i>, London 1964, I
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-10-08T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
flower landscape leaf plant plants and flowers sunshine weather wooded