WORK OF THE WEEK : John Hubbard, ‘Atlas Landscape’, 1972

John Hubbard, Atlas Landscape, 1972
Oil on canvas
190.5 x 182.9 cm
75 x 72 in.

John Hubbard (1931-2017) was deeply inspired by the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco, which he had visited in 1969, producing a series of works painted in rich layered greens, purples and blues. Atlas Landscape, 1972, is one of his most accomplished paintings of this period. Hubbard was interested in volume, density and movement; capturing light, tangled foliage and flowing streams, with a background of soft earth colours and the flash of purple amethysts embedded in the rock. As Hilary Spurling writes in 'John Hubbard: Remaking Landscape', Hubbard's lifelong balance between abstraction and figuration meant "he found a way to give form to the intense response of a landscape artist without making the least concession to traditional representation".

Hubbard engaged with the work of artists including Graham Sutherland, Paul Cézanne, J.M.W Turner and Peter Paul Rubens, whose landscape drawings exhibited at the National Gallery in 1996 were a source of fascination for the artist. John Hubbard was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut (USA) and educated at Harvard University. Having completed military service in Japan, in 1956-58 he studied at the Art Students League in New York and with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Hubbard lived in Rome for two years before settling in Dorset in 1961, the year in which he also had his first exhibition with the New Art Centre.

John Hubbard's work is in major public and private collections around the world including the Art Gallery of Ontario; Philadelphia Museum of Art; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and Yale Center for British Art. In the UK, Hubbard's work is in the collection of the Tate; the Arts Council; the British Council; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. He has had solo exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam Museum; Waddesdon Manor; Modern Art, Oxford; the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and the Luther Brady Gallery at George Washington University, USA.