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Lot Essay
A virtuosic meditation on vision and memory, Target is an atmospheric work dating from a pivotal moment in Peter Doig’s oeuvre. Glimpsed through a veil of luminous red branches, a lone figure stands upon a frozen lake. The tall evergreens along the horizon dwarf his sentinel form; a snow-capped pontoon suggests a summer long since passed. Painted in 2000, the year that marked the beginnings of Doig’s move to Trinidad, the work offers a poignant retrospective glance at the Canadian-inspired imagery that defined his practice during the 1990s. The viewer’s elevated vantage point, concealed by a lattice of trees, evokes early masterworks such as The Architect’s Home in the Ravine (1991) and the seminal Concrete Cabins. Below, the scene feels uncannily familiar, riddled with déjà vu. Is this the same solitary figure who stares at his icy reflection in Blotter (1993, Walker Art Centre Liverpool)? Are those the shores of Echo Lake (1998, Tate, London) or the wooden boards of Jetty (1994), now covered in snow? Suspended between figurative and abstract realms, it offers a vivid incursion into Doig’s interior world, dramatizing the dreamlike sensation of looking back at ourselves.
Target was originally owned by the celebrated shoe designer Ernesto Esposito, who acquired it shortly after its creation. Subsequently held in the same private collection for almost two decades, it captures the enigmatic slippage between painterly illusion and half-remembered reality that has come to characterize Doig’s practice. Like much of his early oeuvre, it has its origins in a photographic source. While the artist’s work is nearly always tethered to lived experiences, his paintings inhabit an elusive, twilit realm. The slippery nature of paint itself becomes a cipher for the fleeting, intangible properties of recollection and reverie. “People often say that my paintings remind them of particular scenes from films or certain passages from books, but I think it's a different thing altogether,” he has said. “… They are totally non-linguistic. There is no textual support to what you are seeing. Often, I am trying to create a ‘numbness.’ I am trying to create something that is questionable, something that is difficult, if not impossible, to put into words” (P. Doig, quoted in A. Searle, K. Scott and C. Grenier, Peter Doig, London 2007, p. 125).
image.png image.png Peter Doig, Blotter, 1993. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. © Peter Doig. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2026.
This interplay between reality and fantasy extends to Target’s formal properties. Doig frequently arranges his paintings around rigorous, near-abstract structures to which more nebulous forms and associations can anchor. The clear, geometric lattice of the red branches in the present work provides an armature that accentuates the hazy softness of the snowy landscape beyond—a contrast emphasized by Doig’s varied brushwork, which oscillates between looser, expressive swathes of texture and precise, crisp lines. The complex dialogue between foreground and background was honed throughout his early oeuvre, much of which depicted Modernist buildings submerged within thickets of trees. “I didn’t paint the façade and then put the trees over them,” explained Doig, “I actually painted them through the trees, so it was more about looking and picking out bits with the eyes. It’s a much slower process … It was a way of seeing into that world” (P. Doig, quoted in R. Enright, “The Eye of the Painting: An Interview with Peter Doig,” Border Crossings Magazine, June 2006, online).
In Target, the act of looking through serves to approximate the sensation of looking back on the past. Doig’s early depictions of snow and frozen lakes also operated in a similar manner. Born in Scotland, the artist had lived in Canada from the age of seven, leaving as a teenager to attend art school in London. As he recalled its vast landscapes—a wilderness both foreign and familiar—the distortive effects of ice and frost became metaphors for memory itself. As well as Blotter, the present work also has its origins in paintings such as Rosedale (1991), Pond Life (1993) and Cobourg 3 + 1 More (1994). Its voyeuristic tension, meanwhile, shares much in common with the various lakeside vistas inspired by the film Friday the 13th, the standing figure taking the place of the lone floating canoe. The work also relates closely to the painting Almost Grown, completed the same year. The recycling of imagery through different angles and stances is part and parcel of Doig’s oeuvre: Target confronts the viewer like a flash from an ongoing daydream.
This sensation is also amplified by Doig’s palette, intensifying familiar hues until they attain an other-worldly strangeness. In Target, the artist has set cool, fresh greens and blues against the red-pink branches, an age-old device used since the Renaissance to create the illusion of a landscape retreating into the distance. The foreground, by contrast, feels vividly close. Amidst it all, the gold-tinged snow appears to glow, as if bathed in evening light. ‘‘I often use heightened colors to create a sense of the experience or mood or feeling of being there, but it’s not a scientific process,” Doig explains. “I think the paintings always refer back to a reality that we all have experience of. We have all seen incredible sunsets. We’ve all experienced the sensation of light dropping and producing strange natural effects, and I think in a way I am using these natural phenomena and amplifying them through the materiality of paint and the activity of painting ... I was looking a lot at Monet, where there is this incredibly extreme, apparently exaggerated use of color” (P. Doig, quoted in A. Searle, K. Scott and C. Grenier, op. cit., p. 132).
image.png image.png Paul Cézanne, Annecy Lake, 1896. Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
It was during this period that Doig’s approach to color, in particular, would undergo a profound shift. In 2000, he was offered the opportunity to travel to Trinidad to undertake a month-long artist’s residency. It was more of a return than a new discovery; prior to his move to Canada, Doig had lived on the island with his family between the ages of two and seven. Two years after the residency, the artist decided to move back, remaining there for the next two decades. Inspired by memories of his childhood and the new environment around him, his work gradually began to embrace the colors of the tropics, as well as local scenes, motifs and imagery. The present work sits adjacent to the series 100 Years Ago, in which the frozen lakes of Canada began to melt into sun-kissed Caribbean oceans. The transition is already latent in Target: loose washes of color imbue the landscape with a sense of liquid translucence, as if about to slip from our grasp forever.
Created at a moment when painting’s relevance seemed threatened by the subversive conceptualism of the Young British Artists (YBAs), the work demonstrates Doig’s deep engagement with the medium’s history. The intricate tangle of branches—both real and reflected—calls to mind the all-over surfaces of Jackson Pollock. The work’s emotive use of color conjures the landscapes of Vincent van Gogh, tinged with melancholy and yearning. Its subtle psychological drama reflects his fascination with Francis Bacon and Edvard Munch, while its complex interlocking visual planes demonstrate his admiration for the paintings of Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse. Speaking of these two artists in particular, Doig explains that “they use shifts in focus as a way to actually hold the thing together and just as much to hold you as a viewer. It makes the viewer physically a part of the work” (P. Doig, quoted in conversation with A. Cook in Peter Doig No Foreign Lands, exh. cat., Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, 2013, p. 189). In Target, indeed, we are aware of our position both outside and inside the picture. The figure, ultimately, becomes a projection of ourselves, suspended amid the fractured landscapes of our own memories.
Target was originally owned by the celebrated shoe designer Ernesto Esposito, who acquired it shortly after its creation. Subsequently held in the same private collection for almost two decades, it captures the enigmatic slippage between painterly illusion and half-remembered reality that has come to characterize Doig’s practice. Like much of his early oeuvre, it has its origins in a photographic source. While the artist’s work is nearly always tethered to lived experiences, his paintings inhabit an elusive, twilit realm. The slippery nature of paint itself becomes a cipher for the fleeting, intangible properties of recollection and reverie. “People often say that my paintings remind them of particular scenes from films or certain passages from books, but I think it's a different thing altogether,” he has said. “… They are totally non-linguistic. There is no textual support to what you are seeing. Often, I am trying to create a ‘numbness.’ I am trying to create something that is questionable, something that is difficult, if not impossible, to put into words” (P. Doig, quoted in A. Searle, K. Scott and C. Grenier, Peter Doig, London 2007, p. 125).
image.png image.png Peter Doig, Blotter, 1993. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. © Peter Doig. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2026.
This interplay between reality and fantasy extends to Target’s formal properties. Doig frequently arranges his paintings around rigorous, near-abstract structures to which more nebulous forms and associations can anchor. The clear, geometric lattice of the red branches in the present work provides an armature that accentuates the hazy softness of the snowy landscape beyond—a contrast emphasized by Doig’s varied brushwork, which oscillates between looser, expressive swathes of texture and precise, crisp lines. The complex dialogue between foreground and background was honed throughout his early oeuvre, much of which depicted Modernist buildings submerged within thickets of trees. “I didn’t paint the façade and then put the trees over them,” explained Doig, “I actually painted them through the trees, so it was more about looking and picking out bits with the eyes. It’s a much slower process … It was a way of seeing into that world” (P. Doig, quoted in R. Enright, “The Eye of the Painting: An Interview with Peter Doig,” Border Crossings Magazine, June 2006, online).
In Target, the act of looking through serves to approximate the sensation of looking back on the past. Doig’s early depictions of snow and frozen lakes also operated in a similar manner. Born in Scotland, the artist had lived in Canada from the age of seven, leaving as a teenager to attend art school in London. As he recalled its vast landscapes—a wilderness both foreign and familiar—the distortive effects of ice and frost became metaphors for memory itself. As well as Blotter, the present work also has its origins in paintings such as Rosedale (1991), Pond Life (1993) and Cobourg 3 + 1 More (1994). Its voyeuristic tension, meanwhile, shares much in common with the various lakeside vistas inspired by the film Friday the 13th, the standing figure taking the place of the lone floating canoe. The work also relates closely to the painting Almost Grown, completed the same year. The recycling of imagery through different angles and stances is part and parcel of Doig’s oeuvre: Target confronts the viewer like a flash from an ongoing daydream.
This sensation is also amplified by Doig’s palette, intensifying familiar hues until they attain an other-worldly strangeness. In Target, the artist has set cool, fresh greens and blues against the red-pink branches, an age-old device used since the Renaissance to create the illusion of a landscape retreating into the distance. The foreground, by contrast, feels vividly close. Amidst it all, the gold-tinged snow appears to glow, as if bathed in evening light. ‘‘I often use heightened colors to create a sense of the experience or mood or feeling of being there, but it’s not a scientific process,” Doig explains. “I think the paintings always refer back to a reality that we all have experience of. We have all seen incredible sunsets. We’ve all experienced the sensation of light dropping and producing strange natural effects, and I think in a way I am using these natural phenomena and amplifying them through the materiality of paint and the activity of painting ... I was looking a lot at Monet, where there is this incredibly extreme, apparently exaggerated use of color” (P. Doig, quoted in A. Searle, K. Scott and C. Grenier, op. cit., p. 132).
image.png image.png Paul Cézanne, Annecy Lake, 1896. Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
It was during this period that Doig’s approach to color, in particular, would undergo a profound shift. In 2000, he was offered the opportunity to travel to Trinidad to undertake a month-long artist’s residency. It was more of a return than a new discovery; prior to his move to Canada, Doig had lived on the island with his family between the ages of two and seven. Two years after the residency, the artist decided to move back, remaining there for the next two decades. Inspired by memories of his childhood and the new environment around him, his work gradually began to embrace the colors of the tropics, as well as local scenes, motifs and imagery. The present work sits adjacent to the series 100 Years Ago, in which the frozen lakes of Canada began to melt into sun-kissed Caribbean oceans. The transition is already latent in Target: loose washes of color imbue the landscape with a sense of liquid translucence, as if about to slip from our grasp forever.
Created at a moment when painting’s relevance seemed threatened by the subversive conceptualism of the Young British Artists (YBAs), the work demonstrates Doig’s deep engagement with the medium’s history. The intricate tangle of branches—both real and reflected—calls to mind the all-over surfaces of Jackson Pollock. The work’s emotive use of color conjures the landscapes of Vincent van Gogh, tinged with melancholy and yearning. Its subtle psychological drama reflects his fascination with Francis Bacon and Edvard Munch, while its complex interlocking visual planes demonstrate his admiration for the paintings of Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse. Speaking of these two artists in particular, Doig explains that “they use shifts in focus as a way to actually hold the thing together and just as much to hold you as a viewer. It makes the viewer physically a part of the work” (P. Doig, quoted in conversation with A. Cook in Peter Doig No Foreign Lands, exh. cat., Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, 2013, p. 189). In Target, indeed, we are aware of our position both outside and inside the picture. The figure, ultimately, becomes a projection of ourselves, suspended amid the fractured landscapes of our own memories.