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Lot Essay
For the past three decades, Hurvin Anderson has cultivated a way of seeing from ‘slightly outside of things’ (in conversation with M. Higgs, in Hurvin Anderson: Subtitles, exh. cat., Michael Werner Gallery, New York, 2011, n.p.). Born in Birmingham in 1965 after his family emigrated from Jamaica, he grew up imagining the Caribbean, which he wouldn’t see for the first time until his teens. By the time he graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1997, Anderson was exploring his experiences of displacement and belonging in vivid, evanescent paintings. Typically beginning with photographs, his works are finely observed and quietly complex. They use fluid layers of form and colour to convey slippages of memory, space and time.
Recent years have seen mounting recognition of Anderson’s importance. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2017, he became a Royal Academician in 2023—the same year a survey of his barbershop paintings was held at the Hepworth Wakefield—and in 2026 was the subject of an acclaimed career retrospective at Tate Britain in London. The exhibition opened in March as the same venue’s Turner and Constable drew to a close. Anderson can justly be placed in the lineage of these two artists, both of whom—alongside others including Michael Andrews and Euan Uglow—have been significant influences on his own practice. Between the Gulf of Paria and the Atlantic: Maracas (2003), Hope Gardens (2005) and Last House (2013) capture Anderson’s achievement as a master of a new kind of British landscape painting.
In the summer of 2002, Anderson spent eight weeks on an artist’s residency in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad. It was to prove a pivotal visit, deepening his understanding of Caribbean history and contemporary life. Rather than working in the studio he spent his days exploring the island, taking down ideas in photographs, writing and drawings. Between the Gulf of Paria and the Atlantic: Maracas (2003) belongs to the first body of paintings he produced on his return to London. It is based on a photograph of Maracas Beach, a popular destination on Trinidad’s north coast. Anderson showed two large Maracas paintings in his debut solo exhibition The Lime, organised by Thomas Dane at David Risley Gallery, which opened in December 2003. One of these, Maracas II (2003) was acquired by the British Council Collection, becoming the first of his works to enter a public institution. Maracas IV (Study) (2003), a related work on paper, is owned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Between the Gulf of Paria and the Atlantic: Maracas is dominated by a group of tall palm trees. Their trunks occlude the foreground and dwarf the ephemeral beachgoers below. A dense screen of vegetation in green, ochre and khaki tones fills the backdrop, and the sky and sand are almost white. The image is seductive: it shimmers with bright heat, with notes of colour in the figures’ clothing and deckchairs, and a sparkling play of light and shadow on the tree-trunks. But it also presents nature as sublime and mysterious, complicating the cliché of the beach as an earthly paradise. Anderson has explained that ‘in an odd way, nature in my work is about understanding where I came from. It’s also about playing with this perception of the Caribbean being a place of lush greenery and challenging the idea that nature is always beautiful; we want to be in it, yes we do, but it is also something that can be aggressive and ominous’ (quoted in D. Trigg, ‘Seven questions with Hurvin Anderson’, 2 November 2021, Art UK, online).
Anderson’s vision of nature builds on the tradition of the Romantic landscape painters who came before him. Artists including Constable and Turner conveyed a sense of awe in their work, often picturing manmade structures ruined or overwhelmed by the power of the natural world. Anderson develops this motif in the emblematic painting Hope Gardens (2005). The work depicts trees and foliage in a dazzling profusion of techniques—dark darting strokes, broad blurs of olive green, bright emerald washes—behind a crenelated red brick wall emblazoned with the title in white lettering. Patches of green erupt over the geometric brickwork. Cascades of pale blue drip down from the sky, adding to the sense of dissolution. The subject is the entrance to Hope Botanical Gardens on the edge of Kingston, Jamaica, which Anderson visited in 2003.
These gardens are rich in history. They were originally part of a vast estate granted by the Crown to Richard Hope, a British army commander who helped to capture Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655, and went on to establish a major sugar and indigo plantation on the land. In the late 19th century the colonial government acquired over 200 acres for public botanical gardens and experiments in agriculture. The gardens were briefly renamed the Royal Botanical Gardens, Hope, following a visit from Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and were popular among foreign tourists during Kingston’s 1960s boom as a cruise destination. They began falling into disrepair the following decade, and fitful restoration initiatives have been ongoing since the 1990s.
For Anderson, Hope Gardens offered an ambiguous, in-between image of Jamaica’s problems and potentials, its past and its possible future. The title’s ‘Hope’—originally a name left on the land by the colonial class—now speaks of aspiration and unrealised dreams. Nature and culture have become ever more intricately entangled with the passage of time. ‘Is Anderson depicting Hope Gardens in an earlier state of pronounced dilapidation and abandonment? Or does he show us an optimistic space of fecundity?’ asks Eddie Chambers. ‘Does it seem to be a place resonating with colonial nostalgia, or a once elitist environment, now transformed and open to everyone?’ (‘Double consciousness’, in Hurvin Anderson: reporting back, exh. cat., Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2013, p. 76).
Anderson layers further ambiguity into the lush, vivid painting Last House (2013), which is one of his most celebrated works. Debuted in his third show at Thomas Dane Gallery—which was mounted in parallel with his Ikon survey in 2013—it was later included in Anderson’s 2017 Turner Prize exhibition, and in his Tate retrospective of 2026. It was chosen as the cover image for Michael J. Prokopow’s landmark 2021 monograph on the artist’s work. Over two metres in height, the painting glows with tropical warmth. It depicts clustered palm fronds amid rich, humid washes of deep green and blue. Paint gathers in thickets and bursting clouds and drifts in translucent veils, raining vertically and horizontally over the canvas. Bright pink light flashes from behind the palm leaves, and a star-shaped pattern can be seen in the cobalt blue shadows below.
While it might be assumed that Last House depicts a Caribbean scene, it is in fact based on a view of the famous Palm House in the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in southwest London. The picture is a vibrant mirage, flickering through different dimensions of identity and belonging. ‘In painting domestic palms in the steamy and enormous once-imperial terrarium, Anderson erases national boundaries and geographical distance’, writes Prokopow. ‘For although inviting consideration of the forces of history that made possible the collecting of tropical plants and their cultivation in British greenhouses and middle-class suburbs, Anderson’s paintings make clear that palm trees are deservedly and rightly at home’ (Hurvin Anderson, Lund Humphries, London, 2021, pp. 105-106).
The starburst form at the lower right of Last House echoes the geometric screens that first appeared in Anderson’s ‘Welcome’ and ‘Country Club’ paintings, begun in 2004. Derived from the security grilles and fences he saw at bars and clubs in Trinidad and Jamaica, these overlaid structures define spaces of protection or exclusion, and hold the viewer at a distance. ‘On the one hand they represent a physical barrier, but on the other hand they are a form of decoration’, Anderson said. ‘I like the idea that they somehow disturb the image’ (in conversation with M. Higgs, op. cit., n.p.). In Last House, the star motif is instead subsumed into the painting. While no longer a visual obstacle, it remains a reminder of the cultural lenses that shape the ways we see the world, even from within the deepest parts of ourselves. The painting holds multiple open-ended stories, arriving, as in all of Anderson’s work, at a state of beautiful and poignant uncertainty.
Recent years have seen mounting recognition of Anderson’s importance. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2017, he became a Royal Academician in 2023—the same year a survey of his barbershop paintings was held at the Hepworth Wakefield—and in 2026 was the subject of an acclaimed career retrospective at Tate Britain in London. The exhibition opened in March as the same venue’s Turner and Constable drew to a close. Anderson can justly be placed in the lineage of these two artists, both of whom—alongside others including Michael Andrews and Euan Uglow—have been significant influences on his own practice. Between the Gulf of Paria and the Atlantic: Maracas (2003), Hope Gardens (2005) and Last House (2013) capture Anderson’s achievement as a master of a new kind of British landscape painting.
In the summer of 2002, Anderson spent eight weeks on an artist’s residency in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad. It was to prove a pivotal visit, deepening his understanding of Caribbean history and contemporary life. Rather than working in the studio he spent his days exploring the island, taking down ideas in photographs, writing and drawings. Between the Gulf of Paria and the Atlantic: Maracas (2003) belongs to the first body of paintings he produced on his return to London. It is based on a photograph of Maracas Beach, a popular destination on Trinidad’s north coast. Anderson showed two large Maracas paintings in his debut solo exhibition The Lime, organised by Thomas Dane at David Risley Gallery, which opened in December 2003. One of these, Maracas II (2003) was acquired by the British Council Collection, becoming the first of his works to enter a public institution. Maracas IV (Study) (2003), a related work on paper, is owned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Between the Gulf of Paria and the Atlantic: Maracas is dominated by a group of tall palm trees. Their trunks occlude the foreground and dwarf the ephemeral beachgoers below. A dense screen of vegetation in green, ochre and khaki tones fills the backdrop, and the sky and sand are almost white. The image is seductive: it shimmers with bright heat, with notes of colour in the figures’ clothing and deckchairs, and a sparkling play of light and shadow on the tree-trunks. But it also presents nature as sublime and mysterious, complicating the cliché of the beach as an earthly paradise. Anderson has explained that ‘in an odd way, nature in my work is about understanding where I came from. It’s also about playing with this perception of the Caribbean being a place of lush greenery and challenging the idea that nature is always beautiful; we want to be in it, yes we do, but it is also something that can be aggressive and ominous’ (quoted in D. Trigg, ‘Seven questions with Hurvin Anderson’, 2 November 2021, Art UK, online).
Anderson’s vision of nature builds on the tradition of the Romantic landscape painters who came before him. Artists including Constable and Turner conveyed a sense of awe in their work, often picturing manmade structures ruined or overwhelmed by the power of the natural world. Anderson develops this motif in the emblematic painting Hope Gardens (2005). The work depicts trees and foliage in a dazzling profusion of techniques—dark darting strokes, broad blurs of olive green, bright emerald washes—behind a crenelated red brick wall emblazoned with the title in white lettering. Patches of green erupt over the geometric brickwork. Cascades of pale blue drip down from the sky, adding to the sense of dissolution. The subject is the entrance to Hope Botanical Gardens on the edge of Kingston, Jamaica, which Anderson visited in 2003.
These gardens are rich in history. They were originally part of a vast estate granted by the Crown to Richard Hope, a British army commander who helped to capture Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655, and went on to establish a major sugar and indigo plantation on the land. In the late 19th century the colonial government acquired over 200 acres for public botanical gardens and experiments in agriculture. The gardens were briefly renamed the Royal Botanical Gardens, Hope, following a visit from Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and were popular among foreign tourists during Kingston’s 1960s boom as a cruise destination. They began falling into disrepair the following decade, and fitful restoration initiatives have been ongoing since the 1990s.
For Anderson, Hope Gardens offered an ambiguous, in-between image of Jamaica’s problems and potentials, its past and its possible future. The title’s ‘Hope’—originally a name left on the land by the colonial class—now speaks of aspiration and unrealised dreams. Nature and culture have become ever more intricately entangled with the passage of time. ‘Is Anderson depicting Hope Gardens in an earlier state of pronounced dilapidation and abandonment? Or does he show us an optimistic space of fecundity?’ asks Eddie Chambers. ‘Does it seem to be a place resonating with colonial nostalgia, or a once elitist environment, now transformed and open to everyone?’ (‘Double consciousness’, in Hurvin Anderson: reporting back, exh. cat., Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2013, p. 76).
Anderson layers further ambiguity into the lush, vivid painting Last House (2013), which is one of his most celebrated works. Debuted in his third show at Thomas Dane Gallery—which was mounted in parallel with his Ikon survey in 2013—it was later included in Anderson’s 2017 Turner Prize exhibition, and in his Tate retrospective of 2026. It was chosen as the cover image for Michael J. Prokopow’s landmark 2021 monograph on the artist’s work. Over two metres in height, the painting glows with tropical warmth. It depicts clustered palm fronds amid rich, humid washes of deep green and blue. Paint gathers in thickets and bursting clouds and drifts in translucent veils, raining vertically and horizontally over the canvas. Bright pink light flashes from behind the palm leaves, and a star-shaped pattern can be seen in the cobalt blue shadows below.
While it might be assumed that Last House depicts a Caribbean scene, it is in fact based on a view of the famous Palm House in the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in southwest London. The picture is a vibrant mirage, flickering through different dimensions of identity and belonging. ‘In painting domestic palms in the steamy and enormous once-imperial terrarium, Anderson erases national boundaries and geographical distance’, writes Prokopow. ‘For although inviting consideration of the forces of history that made possible the collecting of tropical plants and their cultivation in British greenhouses and middle-class suburbs, Anderson’s paintings make clear that palm trees are deservedly and rightly at home’ (Hurvin Anderson, Lund Humphries, London, 2021, pp. 105-106).
The starburst form at the lower right of Last House echoes the geometric screens that first appeared in Anderson’s ‘Welcome’ and ‘Country Club’ paintings, begun in 2004. Derived from the security grilles and fences he saw at bars and clubs in Trinidad and Jamaica, these overlaid structures define spaces of protection or exclusion, and hold the viewer at a distance. ‘On the one hand they represent a physical barrier, but on the other hand they are a form of decoration’, Anderson said. ‘I like the idea that they somehow disturb the image’ (in conversation with M. Higgs, op. cit., n.p.). In Last House, the star motif is instead subsumed into the painting. While no longer a visual obstacle, it remains a reminder of the cultural lenses that shape the ways we see the world, even from within the deepest parts of ourselves. The painting holds multiple open-ended stories, arriving, as in all of Anderson’s work, at a state of beautiful and poignant uncertainty.