13th May 2013 Auction – Chelsea and Westminster Health Charity Handcoloured etching by Howard Hodgkin for auction at Christie’s, London, in “Arts for Life” organised by the Chelsea and Westminster Health Charity 26th June, Christie’s, Kings Street, London, in ‘Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Auction’11.35am Summer was a print commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1997. It involved etching and aquatint from two copper plates, with carorundum from two aluminium plates printed in six shades of green, with hand colouring in cadmium orange and cadmium yellow acrylic. Sixteen years later, now in his eighties, Hodgkin has reworked an extra proof of Summer by applying two brushstrokes of transparent black acrylic paint. He calls the resulting, unique work on paper Indian Summer. It displays Hodgkin’s characteristic fascination with the evocative nature of colour but it now also highlights his enduring preoccupation with mortality warm orange and yellow bars slant across a cool green ground and frame, an effect intensified by the slanting black veil, capturing the tension between mellow heat and impinging autumn that the title suggests. Howard Hodgkin (b. 1932) Indian Summer Signed and dated `Howard Hodgkin 2013′ (lower left); signed with the artist’s initials and dated `HH 97′ (lower right) Etching handcoloured with watercolour by the artist 11.3/8 x 14.3/8in. (29 x 36.6cm.) Executed in 1997 and handcoloured in 2013, this work is unique Provenance: Donated directly by the artist. Estimate: £4,000-6,000 Click here to see a larger reproduction of the image
