Obituary - Sir Howard Hodgkin, painter

Died: March 9 2017

SIR Howard Hodgkin, who has died aged 84, was one of the most important British painters of the late 20th century; critically lauded, a pillar of the art establishment and popular with the viewing public, he was nonetheless a highly individual artist, whose work defied easy categorisation and belonged to no school.

Hodgkin’s work was vivid, painterly and instantly recognisable. Though his paintings appeared to be bright, splashy abstracts, often on wood and with the paint extending on to the frame, he insisted: “I am a representational painter, though not a painter of appearances, I paint representational pictures of emotional situations.”

He underlined this approach with the titles of his paintings, which often referred to particular events – encounters with friends, meals, poems and locations. His pictures of Venice and India (both abiding themes) were not depictions of the places, yet somehow conveyed a strong impression of his own responses, memories and feelings about the landscapes. His work emphasised emotional connection, and was wary of explicit meaning.

Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin was born on August 6 1932 in Hammersmith, west London, into a family distinguished, on both sides, in an extraordinary range of fields. His father, who worked for ICI, was an exceptionally gifted gardener; his maternal grandfather Gordon Hewart was the Lord Chief Justice who coined the dictum that justice should not only be done, but be seen to be done. Hodgkin’s disease was named for a great-great uncle; another relative categorised and named the types of clouds; Howard’s cousins included the art critic Roger Fry and the conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

At the age of five, he decided he wanted to be a painter; at eight, he was evacuated with his mother and his older sister Ann to the United States, where they lived on Long Island, and he made frequent visits to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. After the war, he went to Eton, where he began to collect Indian miniatures, a lifelong passion (his collection, much of it from the Kota school, was of museum standard). But he was unhappy there, and after running away twice, moved to Bryanston. A psychiatrist concluded that what he really needed was a return visit to America.

In 1949, Hodgkin enrolled at Camberwell School of Art, where his contemporaries included Gillian Ayres; the following year he studied at Bath Academy of Art, where the teaching focused on the techniques of the Old Masters. Hodgkin produced a copy of a Raphael, but remained unconvinced by the method; with Colin Thompson, he arranged the first British showing of André Derain’s paintings. In 1952, he exhibited his first work at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath.

Between 1952 and 1954 he was an assistant art master at Charterhouse School, but characteristically, he resigned as soon as his probationary period was up and he was confirmed in the post. He married Julia Lane, with whom he had two sons, and lived in Hammersmith, working as an occasional tutor at the Slade and Chelsea Art School, and at Bath, where he worked alongside the painter Michael Craig-Martin and the poet James Kirkup.

His paintings of this period, including Mr & Mrs Robyn Denny (1960) and Gardening (1963), gave an indication of his growing interest in abstraction, and the major 1956 and 1959 exhibitions of American abstract expressionists at the Tate made an impact on him, as did the Pollock and Rothko shows at the Whitechapel Gallery. The family moved to Kensington, but Hodgkin’s work did not attract wider notice until, in 1962, he had a joint show, with Allen Jones, at the Institute for Contemporary Arts. Later that year, he had his first solo show at Arthur Tooth and Sons; it was a moderate critical success, but not a commercial one.

In 1964, he made his first visit to India (he was to go back almost every year and, in later life, based himself in Mumbai during the winter months). He liked it, he told the critic David Sylvester, “because it is somewhere else”.

His reputation grew during the late 1960s and he acquired a wide circle of friends and supporters, including the writer Bruce Chatwin and the painters Patrick Caulfield (who took a studio in Hodgkin’s house) and RB Kitaj. He moved to Wiltshire and, in 1970, became a trustee of the Tate Gallery. He held the post until 1976 (from 1978 to 1985, he performed the same role at the National Gallery).

At the beginning of the ’70s he moved to painting directly on wood and in 1973, had his first solo show in New York. By this point his reputation was growing significantly, but Hodgkin himself suffered from depression, which was eventually diagnosed as a by-product of hepatitis, which he had contracted in India some years before. His personal life was also complicated until, in 1975, he separated from his wife and acknowledged his homosexuality.

He came second in the John Moore’s exhibition of 1976 (and again in 1980), was appointed CBE in 1977 and exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad. He began to experiment with hand-coloured prints (working with his son), and bought a building in Coptic Street, near the British Museum, which became his studio. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1984, won the Turner Prize in 1985, was knighted in 1992, and became a Companion of Honour in 2003. In 1984, he also met Antony Peattie, who was to remain his companion.

After the 1960s, Hodgkin’s work was devoted more and more to colour and the expressive possibilities of paint itself, though it was not easily confined to periods or themes. It was, however, very popular with the gallery-going public, and his work branched out into set design, murals, lithographs and book illustration. He is represented in the permanent collections of many of the world’s leading galleries.

In 1999, one of his paintings was used for the 64p millennium stamp. The following year the National Gallery showed his responses to Seurat’s Bathers and in 2002, to mark his 70th birthday, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (painted ultramarine for the occasion) showed a major retrospective of his work since 1984, including Dinner in Palazzo Albrizzi and Snapshot. The first catalogue raisonné of his prints was published.

In 2006, there was a retrospective at the Tate, and he was named one of Britain’s most influential gay people by The Independent. In 2012, he produced a poster for the London Olympics and in 2014 was the first winner of the Swarovski Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Award. The following year, he again collaborated with the Royal Mail on a stamp; Poppies commemorated the centenary of the First World War. The first exhibition of his portraits, dating back to 1949, is due to open shortly at the National Portrait Gallery.

Last year, he told an interviewer: “I don’t consider myself successful. Being well-known or having lots of exhibitions has nothing to do with being an artist.”

ANDREW MCKIE