Patrick Heron 1920-1999
Blue Table Red Carpet, 1954
oil on canvas
30 by 24¾ inches
signed and dated

Provenance
New Art Centre, London
National Westminster Bank
Fine Art Society, London

Exhibited
London, New Art Centre, Cornwall 1945-55, 9 November - 3 December 1977, cat no.56

Literature
Patrick Heron, The Colour of Colour: E. William Doty Lectures in Fine Arts, University of Texas, 1979, p53, illus colour, cat no.67



In his E William Doty lecture 'The Colour of Colour', given in 1978, Heron used a slide of 'Blue Table Red Carpet' alongside a carefully chosen selection of seven paintings dating between 1949 and 1954. Heron explained:
'One thing these seven examples of typical works of mine, executed between 1949 and 1954, have in common is their complexity - and it's the sort of complexity which very much allies itself to a very pronounced linear quality. In nearly all of them there is a complex linear grid or net-work - both overt and implied, since in many there are literally lines of drawing weaving themselves over and under, around or behind, blobs or planes or scribbled areas of pure pigment. When I first met my close friend, William Scott he said to me "Your paintings are as full up as mine are empty!" A second remark I remember at this encounter, which marked the beginning of a life-long friendship, was this: William said, "You and I both get the same kind of reviews from the critics: they accuse us both of being madly Francophile!". Which only goes to show you that to be influenced by French painting as late as 1948 in England was to distinguish one unfavourably from the prevailing climate in London - a climate which was dominated not by Ben Nicholson; nor by Mattew Smith... It was a climate in which influences were evenly divided between the Euston Road School and a group who became known as the Neo-Romantics.. So you can see what I mean when I tell you that William Scott and I, when we met in 1948, felt phenomenally isolated: we felt we were just about the only two painters in England who revered the living French masters of the School of Paris as commanding our sole interest'.