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Lot Essay
The mid-1940s were a turning point for Heron. In 1945 he married Delia Reiss and returned to London, having spent the war in St Ives, working on the land as a conscientious objector. Pre-war Heron had been influenced by Sickert and Cézanne, however, in 1946, Heron came across firsthand another painter whose influence would feed into his work. He had previously bought a book on Braque but the 1946 Tate exhibition enabled him to see a number of pre-war works hung together and Heron was 'bowled over' and wrote a long article for The New English Weekly.
In relation to how much his own work was influenced by Braque, Heron commented, 'My own handling, my own colour sense were infinitely more Matissian and always had been - and at times, Bonnardian. My paintings never looked like Braque; Braque is full of straight lines, ruled lines, and submerged, indeed, not very submerged, cubist geometry, of a very severe nature. There is nothing like that in my paintings. My paintings are always fluid in a Matissian way. But my devotion to Braque registered very much with people because of my being the first person in Britain to write about him really' (quoted in D. Sylvester, (ed.), exhibition catalogue, Patrick Heron, London, Tate, 1998, p. 25).
Painted in 1950, Still life with Jonquils belongs to group of still life paintings that Heron executed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, often depicting objects arranged in front of the cottage window overlooking the sea at No. 3, St Andrew's Street, St Ives, which Heron rented for a few months every year between 1947 and 1954. Heron commented in 1984 that, 'the feeling of a sort of marriage of indoor and outdoor space through the aperture of the window frame, itself roughly rectilinear and parallel to the picture surface, was really the main theme of all of my paintings - or nearly all - between 1945 and 1955' (quoted in V. Knight, exhibition catalogue, Patrick Heron, London, Barbican Art Gallery, 1985, p. 8).
In relation to how much his own work was influenced by Braque, Heron commented, 'My own handling, my own colour sense were infinitely more Matissian and always had been - and at times, Bonnardian. My paintings never looked like Braque; Braque is full of straight lines, ruled lines, and submerged, indeed, not very submerged, cubist geometry, of a very severe nature. There is nothing like that in my paintings. My paintings are always fluid in a Matissian way. But my devotion to Braque registered very much with people because of my being the first person in Britain to write about him really' (quoted in D. Sylvester, (ed.), exhibition catalogue, Patrick Heron, London, Tate, 1998, p. 25).
Painted in 1950, Still life with Jonquils belongs to group of still life paintings that Heron executed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, often depicting objects arranged in front of the cottage window overlooking the sea at No. 3, St Andrew's Street, St Ives, which Heron rented for a few months every year between 1947 and 1954. Heron commented in 1984 that, 'the feeling of a sort of marriage of indoor and outdoor space through the aperture of the window frame, itself roughly rectilinear and parallel to the picture surface, was really the main theme of all of my paintings - or nearly all - between 1945 and 1955' (quoted in V. Knight, exhibition catalogue, Patrick Heron, London, Barbican Art Gallery, 1985, p. 8).