Patrick Joseph Caulfield, (29 January 1936 – 29 September 2005), was an English painter and

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique ...

known for his bold canvases, which often incorporated elements of

photorealism Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can b ...

within a pared-down scene. Examples of his work are ''Pottery'' and ''Still Life Ingredients''.

Early life

Patrick Joseph Caulfield was born on the 29th of January, 1936 at 17 All Saints Road, Acton, west London. During the

second world war World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Caulfield's family returned to Bolton in 1945, where his parents were born, to work at the

De Havilland The de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited (pronounced , ) was a British aviation manufacturer established in late 1920 by Geoffrey de Havilland at Stag Lane Aerodrome Edgware on the outskirts of North London. Operations were later moved to ...

factory. Leaving Acton Secondary Modern at the age of 15, Caulfield secured a position as a filing clerk at

Crosse & Blackwell Crosse & Blackwell is an English food brand. The original company was established in London in 1706, then was acquired by Edmund Crosse and Thomas Blackwell in 1830. It became independent until it was acquired by Swiss Conglomerate (company), con ...

and later transferred to the design studio, working on food display and carrying out menial tasks. At 17, he joined the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

at RAF Northwood, pre-empting requirement for

national service National service is a system of compulsory or voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act ...

. Inspired by the 1952 film ''Moulin Rouge'' about the artist

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Count, ''Comte'' Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901), known as Toulouse-Lautrec (), was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator whose immersion in the colour ...

, he spent his free time attending evening classes at Harrow School of Art (now part of the

University of Westminster The University of Westminster is a public university, public university based in London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1838 as the Royal Polytechnic Institution, it was the first Polytechnic (United Kingdom), polytechnic to open in London. The Po ...

Studies and work

Patrick Caulfield studied at Chelsea School of Art from 1956 to 1960, and during this time he won two prizes which funded a trip he made to

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

and

Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

upon graduation. The visit to the island proved important, with Caulfield finding inspiration in the

Minoan The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age culture which was centered on the island of Crete. Known for its monumental architecture and Minoan art, energetic art, it is often regarded as the first civilization in Europe. The ruins of the Minoan pa ...

frescoes and the bright, hard colours on Crete. One of his greatest friends was the abstract painter John Hoyland, whom he first met at the Young Contemporaries exhibition in 1959. Progressing to the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

from 1960 to 1963,Caulfield 1992, p. 81. his contemporaries included

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English Painting, painter, Drawing, draughtsman, Printmaking, printmaker, Scenic design, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considere ...

and Allen Jones. He taught at Chelsea School of Art from 1963 to 1971. In 1964, he exhibited at the ''New Generation'' show at London's Whitechapel Gallery, which resulted in him being associated with the pop art movement. This was a label Caulfield was opposed to throughout his career, seeing himself rather as "a 'formal' artist". He first exhibited with Leslie Waddington in 1969 and was represented by him for over thirty years, until Caulfield's death in 2005. From the mid-1970s he incorporated more detailed, realistic elements into his work; ''After Lunch'' (1975) is an early example. ''Still-life: Autumn Fashion'' (1978) contains a variety of styles – some objects have heavy black outlines and flat colour, but a bowl of

oyster Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but no ...

s is depicted more realistically and other areas are executed with looser brushwork. Caulfield later returned to his earlier, more stripped-down style of painting. Caulfield's paintings are figurative, often portraying a few simple objects in an interior. Typically, he used flat areas of simple colour surrounded by black outlines. Some of his works are dominated by a single

hue In color theory, hue is one of the properties (called color appearance parameters) of a color, defined in the CIECAM02 model as "the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that are described as ...

. In 1987, Caulfield was nominated for the

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award). ...

for his show ''The Artist's Eye'' at the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...

in London. In 1996 he was made a

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

. On 24 May 2004, a fire in a storage warehouse destroyed many works from the Saatchi collection, including three by Caulfield. In September 2010 Caulfield and five other British artists,

Howard Hodgkin Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin (6 August 1932 – 9 March 2017) was a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction. Early life Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin was born on 6 August 1932 in Hammersmith, Londo ...

, John Walker, Ian Stephenson, John Hoyland, and R.B. Kitaj were included in an exhibition entitled ''The Independent Eye: Contemporary British Art From the Collection of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie,'' at the

Yale Center for British Art The Yale Center for British Art at Yale University in central New Haven, Connecticut, houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. The collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, rare ...

. He died in London in 2005 and is buried in

Highgate Cemetery Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in North London, England, designed by architect Stephen Geary. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West and East sides. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for so ...

. His work is held in the private collections of

Charles Saatchi Charles Saatchi ( ; ; born 9 June 1943) is an Iraqi-British businessman and the co-founder, with his brother Maurice, of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The brothers led the business – the world's largest advertising agency in the 19 ...

and

David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. Regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, pa ...

and the road on which he was born was renamed Caulfield Road after his death when the area was redeveloped. Patrick Caulfield Grave Highgate East Cemetery London 2016

Patrick Caulfield Grave Highgate East Cemetery London 2016

Commissions

Later in his career, Caulfield worked on several commissions in addition to his painting and printmaking. In 1990 he designed a stained glass window for The Ivy restaurant, it is visible from within the restaurant and on its exterior. In 1992 he designed a 12-metre carpet for the

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lang ...

's Manchester headquarters and in 1984 and 1995 set designs for ''Party Game'' and ''Rhapsody'' (respectively) at the

Royal Opera House The Royal Opera House (ROH) is a theatre in Covent Garden, central London. The building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. The ROH is the main home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orch ...

. Caulfield painted the doors of the Great West Organ at

Portsmouth Cathedral The Cathedral Church of St Thomas of Canterbury, commonly known as Portsmouth Cathedral, is an Anglican cathedral church in the centre of Old Portsmouth in Portsmouth, England. Since 1935 the historic church has been the cathedral of the Dioc ...

in 2001.

Selected solo exhibitions

* 2023 ''Pass The Peas,'' Josh Lilley Gallery London UK * 202
Alex Vardaxoglou
London, UK * 2019
Patrick Caulfield: Morning, Noon and Night
', Waddington Custot, London, UK * 2013

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...

, London, UK * 2009 ''Patrick Caulfield: Between the Lines'', Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK * 2009 ''Prints 1964–1999'', Alan Cristea Gallery, London, UK * 2006

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

, London, UK (Special Summer Exhibition Show) * 2006

Tate Liverpool Tate Liverpool is an art gallery in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The gallery was an initiative of the Merseyside Development Corporatio ...

, Liverpool, UK * 1999

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Royal ...

, London, UK * 1996 Claudine Papillon, Paris, France * 1992–93 Retrospective,

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Westminster, Greater London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Galler ...

, London, UK * 1989 Waddington Galleries, London, UK * 1985 Waddington Galleries, London, UK * 1982 Retrospective, Nishimura Gallery, Tokyo, Japan * 1981 ''Patrick Caulfield: Paintings 1963–81'',

Walker Art Gallery The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group. History The Walker Art Gallery's collection dates from 1819 ...

, Liverpool, UK (touring to

, London and Waddington Galleries, London, UK) * 1978

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

, London, UK * 1968 Robert Elkon Gallery, New York, USA * 1965 Robert Fraser Gallery, London, UK

Selected public collections

UK *

Arts Council of Great Britain The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. It was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England (now Arts Council England), the Scottish Arts Council (l ...

, London *

, London & Manchester *

Manchester City Art Gallery Manchester Art Gallery, formerly Manchester City Art Gallery, is a publicly owned art museum on Mosley Street in Manchester city centre, England. The main gallery premises were built for a learned society in 1823 and today its collection occupi ...

, Manchester *

National Museum of Wales National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

, Cardiff * Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh *

, London *

, Liverpool *

Whitworth Art Gallery The Whitworth is an art gallery in Manchester, England, containing over 60,000 items in its collection. The gallery is located in Whitworth Park and is part of the University of Manchester. In 2015, the Whitworth reopened after it was transfor ...

, Manchester *

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

, London USA *

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the A ...

, Texas * Harry N Abrams Collection, New York *

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the supp ...

, Richmond Australia *

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, Canberra *

Art Gallery of Western Australia The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) is a public art gallery that is part of the Perth Cultural Centre, in Perth. It is located near the Western Australian Museum and State Library of Western Australia and is supported and managed by the ...

, Perth

Notes

References

* * Marco Livingstone, ''Patrick Caulfield: Paintings'', published by Lund Humphries and Waddington Galleries, 2005 * Caulfield, P. (1992). ''Patrick Caulfield, Paintings 1963–1992''. London: Art & Design.
Caulfield and Hoyland joint interview. ''The Australian''. 19 Feb 1980

External links

*
Caulfield at the Tate Gallery
(includes images of many of his pieces)
Caulfield works at Cristea Roberts Gallery
(ditto)
Caulfield at Waddington Custot Galleries
(ditto)
Caulfield Exhibit in Seattle
(ditto)
Caulfield biography

BBC News: Pop artist Patrick Caulfield dies

Photograph of his gravestone
{{DEFAULTSORT:Caulfield, Patrick 1936 births 2005 deaths 20th-century English painters English male painters English people of Irish descent 21st-century English painters Royal Academicians Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Alumni of the Royal College of Art Alumni of Chelsea College of Arts British pop artists Burials at Highgate Cemetery Opera designers English contemporary artists 20th-century English printmakers 20th-century English male artists 21st-century English male artists