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Lot Essay
'I felt that Ronald understood what I was trying to do in the eighties, trying to move beyond the work of the Abstract Expressionists in my own way, and getting into these heavily built-up surfaces' Sir Frank Bowling
Gifted to Ronald Alley in 1986 and held in the same family collection for nearly 40 years, Untitled (Cathedral Painting) exemplifies Bowling’s dynamic experimentation with material and form during the 1980s; a prolific and highly celebrated period for the artist. The present work is one of the most vibrant and eye-catching examples of his important ‘Cathedral Painting’ series, a group of relief paintings referencing Evelyn Waugh’s satirical novel, A Handful of Dust. Published in Bowling’s birthyear and set in what was then British Guiana, the novel includes a scene in which the protagonist meets a prophet who has built his own Cathedral in the Guyanese bush. The religious themes of the text resonated with Bowling, who had converted to Catholicism in his early teenage years. However, it was primarily Waugh’s description of Guyana as ‘the most remote place on Earth’ that prompted him to create a series of works inspired by his vibrant birthplace.
Alley, who was the Keeper of the Modern Collection at the Tate Gallery for over 21 years until his retirement in 1986, had a profound impact on the development of a number of British collections. Having joined Tate in 1951, he noticed Britain’s galleries didn’t have one painting or sculpture that occupied a key position within the development of 20th century art, and it was during his tenure that the Tate’s buying policy became far more broad-based. A champion of then obscure British artists and upcoming American artists, Alley recommended the purchase of works by a myriad of figures who have since become household names. Having curated key retrospectives for some of Britain’s best-known artists, including Barbara Hepworth and Francis Bacon, his passion and expertise on modern art was legendary. It was through his keen eyes, and tireless campaigning for a more adventurous and varied approach to acquisition, that the Tate collection developed into the one we see today. Untitled (Cathedral Painting) was to remain with Alley for the rest of his life, a testament not only to the personal importance of the work, but also his recognition of the historical significance of Bowling’s output in the mid-1980s. This dynamic and striking painting is the first example of a work from the ‘Cathedral Painting’ series to be offered at auction.
Standing at almost 2 metres high, the thickly encrusted canvas of Untitled (Cathedral Painting) epitomises Bowling’s immersive practice at this time. It was during the 1980s that Bowling began to experiment more fully with the sculptural potential of his canvases, using layers of acrylic gel, strips of foam, and everyday objects to build up the surface of his works. There was a sense of performance to the ritual with which he applied layer on layer of material in a process which he refers to as ‘cooking’. Here, colour ripples across the densely packed surface, as Bowling coats the canvas in thick daubs of pink, yellow and green pigment. The gel that Bowling began to incorporate at this time gives the surface a semi-translucent effect, which when interspersed with gleaming metallic pigment makes the work appear ever-changing in the light. Sometimes flat and smooth, sometimes congealed, sometimes seeming to almost crack open from the sheer weight of the coagulated paint, the surface of Untitled (Cathedral Painting) courses with activity and abstraction, as Bowling’s distinctive heavy impasto brings the surface to life.
Buried just under the surface of the paint, we see plastic ribbing cut and applied in narrow strips, giving the painting a formal structure and incorporating a sense of geometry. For the artist, the foam strips he used in the 1980s were ‘the ribs of the geometry from which [he] worked’ (Frank Bowling interviewed by Mel Gooding, ‘National Life Stories: Artists’ Lives) and laid the foundation for Bowling’s heavily laden canvases. Several of Bowling’s paintings of this time were inspired by Franz Sales Meyer’s A Handbook of Ornament (1888), a collection of Classical art motifs compiled to illustrate the vast potential of decorative design. Bowling’s ‘Cathedral Painting’ series takes its compositional structure from a chapter entitled Enclosed Ornament, in which Meyer demonstrates Gothic cathedral window tracery. In Untitled (Cathedral Painting) however, the acrylic foam used to define the geometric space becomes obscured in a pool of shimmering paint, as if overwhelmed by the sheer materiality of it. For Bowling, Meyer’s decorative designs demonstrated an eloquent fusion of the geometric and the organic, a delicate balance Bowling strived to achieve in his own work. As Bowling wrote over 10 years earlier in 1972, ‘the greatest tension, hence the maximum emotional force through looking, can be attained by inserting an organic within a geometric shape’ (Frank Bowling, ‘Revisions: Color and Recent Painting’, Arts Magazine, February 1972).
Bowling’s mid-1980s paintings have gained increased recognition over recent years. A number were featured in Bowling’s key retrospective at Tate Britain in 2019, and prior to this, they formed an important section of Okwui Enwezor’s touring exhibition, Mappa Mundi. The 1980s proved a difficult climate for modern painters in Britain, Bowling included, and he initially struggled to find traction with this body of work. However, following the success of his seminal 1986 exhibition at the Serpentine in London, the significance of this part of his oeuvre could not be overlooked. It was in the wake of this key show that in 1987, Tate purchased Spreadout Ron Kitaj (1984–86), the first painting of a black living artist purchased by a British institution. Mr Ronald Alley, the Keeper of Modern Art at Tate and former owner of Untitled (Cathedral Painting), was undoubtedly instrumental in this purchase. Alley had been a loyal supporter of Bowling’s throughout the 1970s and 80s, championing his heavily impastoed abstract canvases throughout. It was Alley, writing in the Serpentine exhibition catalogue, who concluded that Bowling’s ‘beautiful abstract paintings are still not as widely known as they are in the United States, and they deserve to be’ (Ronald Alley in Frank Bowling: Paintings 1983-86, Serpentine Gallery, March 1986).
'Some works are considered early and the others we label late, Frank Bowling’s paintings from the 1980s are right on time' Zoe Whitely
Fondly recalling his close friendship with Alley, and the gift of the present work to him, Bowling comments, ‘Ronald Alley came to visit me from time to time in the studio during the 1970s and 80s just to see what I was up to. I was very fond of him and remember him as a modest man, a deep thinker and extremely knowledgeable about modern art, especially the work of American painters, Rothko for instance, long before they were famous in England. I felt that Ronald understood what I was trying to do in the eighties, trying to move beyond the work of the abstract expressionists in my own way, and getting into these heavily built-up surfaces. Ronald was supportive to me at a time when things were difficult because so few people in England seemed interested in my paintings’ (private correspondence with the artist, January 2023).
Gifted to Ronald Alley in 1986 and held in the same family collection for nearly 40 years, Untitled (Cathedral Painting) exemplifies Bowling’s dynamic experimentation with material and form during the 1980s; a prolific and highly celebrated period for the artist. The present work is one of the most vibrant and eye-catching examples of his important ‘Cathedral Painting’ series, a group of relief paintings referencing Evelyn Waugh’s satirical novel, A Handful of Dust. Published in Bowling’s birthyear and set in what was then British Guiana, the novel includes a scene in which the protagonist meets a prophet who has built his own Cathedral in the Guyanese bush. The religious themes of the text resonated with Bowling, who had converted to Catholicism in his early teenage years. However, it was primarily Waugh’s description of Guyana as ‘the most remote place on Earth’ that prompted him to create a series of works inspired by his vibrant birthplace.
Alley, who was the Keeper of the Modern Collection at the Tate Gallery for over 21 years until his retirement in 1986, had a profound impact on the development of a number of British collections. Having joined Tate in 1951, he noticed Britain’s galleries didn’t have one painting or sculpture that occupied a key position within the development of 20th century art, and it was during his tenure that the Tate’s buying policy became far more broad-based. A champion of then obscure British artists and upcoming American artists, Alley recommended the purchase of works by a myriad of figures who have since become household names. Having curated key retrospectives for some of Britain’s best-known artists, including Barbara Hepworth and Francis Bacon, his passion and expertise on modern art was legendary. It was through his keen eyes, and tireless campaigning for a more adventurous and varied approach to acquisition, that the Tate collection developed into the one we see today. Untitled (Cathedral Painting) was to remain with Alley for the rest of his life, a testament not only to the personal importance of the work, but also his recognition of the historical significance of Bowling’s output in the mid-1980s. This dynamic and striking painting is the first example of a work from the ‘Cathedral Painting’ series to be offered at auction.
Standing at almost 2 metres high, the thickly encrusted canvas of Untitled (Cathedral Painting) epitomises Bowling’s immersive practice at this time. It was during the 1980s that Bowling began to experiment more fully with the sculptural potential of his canvases, using layers of acrylic gel, strips of foam, and everyday objects to build up the surface of his works. There was a sense of performance to the ritual with which he applied layer on layer of material in a process which he refers to as ‘cooking’. Here, colour ripples across the densely packed surface, as Bowling coats the canvas in thick daubs of pink, yellow and green pigment. The gel that Bowling began to incorporate at this time gives the surface a semi-translucent effect, which when interspersed with gleaming metallic pigment makes the work appear ever-changing in the light. Sometimes flat and smooth, sometimes congealed, sometimes seeming to almost crack open from the sheer weight of the coagulated paint, the surface of Untitled (Cathedral Painting) courses with activity and abstraction, as Bowling’s distinctive heavy impasto brings the surface to life.
Buried just under the surface of the paint, we see plastic ribbing cut and applied in narrow strips, giving the painting a formal structure and incorporating a sense of geometry. For the artist, the foam strips he used in the 1980s were ‘the ribs of the geometry from which [he] worked’ (Frank Bowling interviewed by Mel Gooding, ‘National Life Stories: Artists’ Lives) and laid the foundation for Bowling’s heavily laden canvases. Several of Bowling’s paintings of this time were inspired by Franz Sales Meyer’s A Handbook of Ornament (1888), a collection of Classical art motifs compiled to illustrate the vast potential of decorative design. Bowling’s ‘Cathedral Painting’ series takes its compositional structure from a chapter entitled Enclosed Ornament, in which Meyer demonstrates Gothic cathedral window tracery. In Untitled (Cathedral Painting) however, the acrylic foam used to define the geometric space becomes obscured in a pool of shimmering paint, as if overwhelmed by the sheer materiality of it. For Bowling, Meyer’s decorative designs demonstrated an eloquent fusion of the geometric and the organic, a delicate balance Bowling strived to achieve in his own work. As Bowling wrote over 10 years earlier in 1972, ‘the greatest tension, hence the maximum emotional force through looking, can be attained by inserting an organic within a geometric shape’ (Frank Bowling, ‘Revisions: Color and Recent Painting’, Arts Magazine, February 1972).
Bowling’s mid-1980s paintings have gained increased recognition over recent years. A number were featured in Bowling’s key retrospective at Tate Britain in 2019, and prior to this, they formed an important section of Okwui Enwezor’s touring exhibition, Mappa Mundi. The 1980s proved a difficult climate for modern painters in Britain, Bowling included, and he initially struggled to find traction with this body of work. However, following the success of his seminal 1986 exhibition at the Serpentine in London, the significance of this part of his oeuvre could not be overlooked. It was in the wake of this key show that in 1987, Tate purchased Spreadout Ron Kitaj (1984–86), the first painting of a black living artist purchased by a British institution. Mr Ronald Alley, the Keeper of Modern Art at Tate and former owner of Untitled (Cathedral Painting), was undoubtedly instrumental in this purchase. Alley had been a loyal supporter of Bowling’s throughout the 1970s and 80s, championing his heavily impastoed abstract canvases throughout. It was Alley, writing in the Serpentine exhibition catalogue, who concluded that Bowling’s ‘beautiful abstract paintings are still not as widely known as they are in the United States, and they deserve to be’ (Ronald Alley in Frank Bowling: Paintings 1983-86, Serpentine Gallery, March 1986).
'Some works are considered early and the others we label late, Frank Bowling’s paintings from the 1980s are right on time' Zoe Whitely
Fondly recalling his close friendship with Alley, and the gift of the present work to him, Bowling comments, ‘Ronald Alley came to visit me from time to time in the studio during the 1970s and 80s just to see what I was up to. I was very fond of him and remember him as a modest man, a deep thinker and extremely knowledgeable about modern art, especially the work of American painters, Rothko for instance, long before they were famous in England. I felt that Ronald understood what I was trying to do in the eighties, trying to move beyond the work of the abstract expressionists in my own way, and getting into these heavily built-up surfaces. Ronald was supportive to me at a time when things were difficult because so few people in England seemed interested in my paintings’ (private correspondence with the artist, January 2023).