Notes

Robert Hodgins was continually in conversation with art history, as is clear in his many paintings of seated figures. In the manner of David Hockney and Francis Bacon, Hodgins toggled between showingmhis figures – grand dames, suited gentlemen, married couples – in frontal or side profile. Only occasionally did he explore some
Cubistic merger of both vantages, as in the left figure of lot 165. Like Bacon and Hockney, Hodgins also gave the chair a status as subject; it was something more than a prop to elevate models. This is particularly true of Hodgins’ late works, of which lot 165 and 166 are strong examples. The luxurious sofas are strong signifiers of the affluent and cosy domesticity of the sitters.

The chair is a defined subject in art history. Degas, Matisse and van Gogh all painted solitary chairs. Chairs interested Hodgins too, albeit never alone. The artist’s final solo exhibition, held in Cape Town in 2008, contained a number of seated figures. Two works rehearsed the compositional form of Bacon’s gripping frontal study, Portrait of George Dyer (1966), but for the details of the central figure, who in Hodgins’ work was a ghostly apparition. The seated figure, noted a reviewer, was ‘not so much seated as entrapped by the chair which seems to have subsumed his body’.¹ The same holds true of the graphically delineated figure in lot 166, who is as much a prosthetic extension of his smart mechanical chair as an occupant.

A tea party, the subject of lot 165, is also enshrined in art history. Genteel privilege and leisure, rather than an interest in domestic furniture design, informs the work of Western painters like Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Josef van Aken, and indeed Bonnie Ntshalintshali, Tommy Motswai and Norman Catherine, who have also portrayed tea parties. Social commentary is unavoidable, but in lot 165 Hodgins is also engaged with how to modulate the blood orange, which dominates his palette. In the end, he settled on green, which he deposits like parachuted provisions at strategic intervals.

^1. Sue Williamson (2009) ‘Robert Hodgins at the Goodman Gallery Cape’, ArtThrob, January: https://artthrob.co.za/09jan/reviews/ goodmanc.html

Provenance

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.

Private Collection.