WORK OF THE WEEK: John Hubbard, Black & White Double Landscape, 1964

John Hubbard
Black & White Double Landscape, 1964
Oil on canvas
139.5 x 177.5 cm / 4ft 6 ⅞ x 5ft 9 ⅞ in.
Signed and dated

John Hubbard (1931-2017) was interested in volume, density and movement; capturing the Dorset landscape to the Moroccan Atlas Mountains within his paintings. For an artist renowned as a supreme colourist, the works in Hubbard's monochrome series are bold, dramatic and revelatory. The paintings are predominantly inspired by the textures of the landscape; of sky, rocks and earth, and feature the vigorous brushstrokes and the striking compositions we most associate with Hubbard’s portrayal of natural phenomena. Posted to Japan to complete military service, Hubbard remained in the country until 1956. At Harvard, he had studied Japanese and Chinese painting, gardens and architecture and, as Bryan Robertson recounted in his 1981 text published for Hubbard’s exhibition at the Warwick Arts Trust, noted that he liked the “Chinese idea of allowing a subject to absorb you… and then be assayed in a spontaneous, animated way, so as to preserve a sense of life.” With his characteristic spontaneity and energy, Hubbard’s black and white paintings certainly do that.

John Hubbard was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut (USA) and educated at Harvard University. Having completed military service in Japan, from 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.

Essence, installed in the gallery at Roche Court Sculpture Park.