Bombay Sunset

Notes: In a 1987 interview with Asmund Thorkildsen, Hodgkin was asked if the forms in this work were ironic references to the stylistic characteristics of artists such as Jasper Johns. He replied: “There was no conscious irony in it. I think the striped ocean and the dotted sky in Bombay Sunset is simply part of the language that I was trying to evolve for myself, using very simplistic means… A sunset in Bombay really does – curiously enough – look like that… It’s the only thing I can think of in any of my pictures which has a specific likeness to an Indian miniature” (English transcript in the artist’s archives).