Dinner at West Hill

Notes: Hodgkin has written: ‘ “Dinner at West Hill” is perhaps the most complicated and delicately balanced picture I have so far allowed myself. It commemorates a dinner party given by Bernard and Jeanie Cohen (the painter Bernard Cohen and his wife) on March 15 1964… Most of the forms in the painting which are not part of my normal language derive of course from Bernard’s pictures. In some cases these even overlap (his and my forms). This painting was very difficult to conclude and I had to contend with a nervous and glittering evening in a green and white room full of small B. Cohens on the wall and Tony and Jasia R[eichardt] (to the L in the picture, Tony at Far L) and also Bernard’s pictures which are particularly undisciplined and Dionysiac at that moment and of course finally and most difficult to contain all these things inside an object as formally and physically solid as a table or chair’ (quoted from Simon Wilson, Tate Gallery: An Illustrated Companion, London, Tate Gallery Publications, 1991, p.223, ill. colour). The two figure of the Reichardts (collectors and writers on art) can de discerned on the left and other figures are perhaps represented by the round, head-like forms on the right. The arch-like form may be a chair back, but also refers to similar forms typical of Bernard Cohen’s paintings in the early sixties. The white line represents the edge of the table. See also Sitting Room at West Hill (PA59), a related painting. Inscribed on masking tape attached to canvas verso, ‘Dinner at West Hill 1963-6 Howard Hodgkin’.