Waddington Galleries, London, where acquired by the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation in 1965

London, Waddington Galleries, Four Painters, 1st - 26th June 1965, cat. no.11;
Leeds, City Art Gallery, 1966-1967, temporary loan (details untraced);
London, Tate, Recent British Painting. Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Collection, 15th November - 22nd December 1967, no.33, illustrated;
Oxford, Museum of Modern Art, Patrick Heron, A Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings 1957-66, 21st May - 15th June 1968, no.39, where lent by the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation as Big Purple with Red and Blue: March 1965.

E. William Doty, 'The Colour of Colour', The E. William Doty Lectures in Fine Arts, Third Series, 1978, The University of Texas, Austin, 1979, p.56, illustrated.

The following condition report has been prepared by Philip Young Conservation, Studio 3, Nutbrook Studtions, 33 Nutbrook Street, London, SE15 4JU. The painting has clearly been subject to extensive restoration work. Unusually for a work by this artist, the canvas is lined, and any examination must address this and determine why a lining was carried out. In the condition report supplied there is no reference to any significant damage that would account for this course of action. The general condition can be described as poor; the thin and delicate paint surface is extensively market, scratched and scuffed with broad areas of abrasion and disturbance. Of most concern is an area in the lower left corner which is consistent with beinga heavily restord tear and canvas disturbance of around 36cm. length, running vertically, with a smaller break running out from it. The area is broadly filled over and retouched, the retouching passing into unaffected areas of paint. The retouching is poorly matched and easily visible. As there is no other comparable damage, it is assumed this damage was the reason the painting was lined. Small tests were made in the retouched areas where it was found the fills cover wide areas of paint loss, repaired torn or disrupted canvas, and it would seem, bands across the tear damage where the paint has been rubbed away to flatten the overall distortion. TREATMENT: Despite the poor condition, it is possible with a great amount of work to improve the surface appearance to some degree in relation to surface marking and scratching. However, the fact the painting is lined (with a modern BEVA adhesive onto linen), and there is what appears to be a major damage in the corner as described, means that even with removal of all the additions in this area, along with reversal of the lining (if found to be possible), means that any future restoration would involve the major undertaking of dealing with this damage and the restoration it has been subject to. It is unlikely that given the extent of what appears to be major loss and tearing that a satisfactory result could ever be obtained even with extensive intervention, and the tear will always remain easily apparent. The treatment as indicated above would include: 1. Removal of all fills and retouching from the face of the painting to expose the damaged areas. Removal of all added layers of consolidant and varnish. 2. Assess the removability of the lining. The value of a work is compromised by the presence of a lining and in this case it may conceal the artist's inscription at the back of the canvas, although this may be in charcoal and may have been erased by the past treatment. 3. The painting is then taken off the stretcher. 4. If the lining can be removed, and does not leave a heavy adhesive residue on the back, it should be. This is done using heat and appropriate tools in small areas. 5. Removal of any adhesive residue. 6. Restretching of the canvas to the precise original alignment and orientation on the original stretcher. 7. Flattening and consolidation of the damaged areas of canvas. 8. Filling and inpainting of the above. 9. Inpainting of all abrasions and surface marks to a consistent appearance. This is a lengthy and heavily involved process and the risk that the main damage remains apparent remains; it is unclear until the cleaning stage whether the main damage can be suitably treated as it is concealed by the heavy retouching. The cost for the entire process, if after further testing it is found to be possible, is likely to be £18-25,000 excluding VAT and transport costs.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Heron's paintings of the mid 1960s and early 1970s are probably his most instantly recognisable works, the 'wobbly hard-edge' manner he had perfected allowing him to fully experiment with space and colour, the twin concepts that had occupied him since the earliest part of his career.

The paintings he produced in this period are mostly of substantial size and were produced in a very specific way, with the forms drawn in very quickly and spontaneously onto the prepared canvas, often in a matter of seconds, and then each area of pure unmixed colour painted in with small soft brushes. Each colour had to be painted in a single session to ensure that the colours remained uniform, and each is just a single layer of paint with no overlapping. Heron's intention was that the viewer would thus be presented with pure colours in juxtaposition, the forms and their boundaries affecting the perceived spatial relationships.

The scale of these paintings, and thus the visual impact of the meeting points of these large areas of vivid colour, is a key element in their success.

'If I stand only eighteen inches away from a fifteen-foot canvas that is uniformly covered in a single shade of red, say, my vision being entirely monopolised by red I shall cease within a matter of seconds to be fully conscious of that red: the redness of that red will not be restored until a fragment of another colour is allowed to intrude, setting up a reaction. It is in this interaction between differing colours that our full awareness of any of them lies. So the meeting-lines between areas of colour are utterly crucial to our apprehension of the actual hue of those areas: the linear character of these frontiers cannot avoid changing our sensation of the colour in those areas...The line changes the colour of the colours on either side of it.' (Patrick Heron, 'Colour in my Painting', Studio International, December 1969, pp.204-5).

As the artist was to observe, the final brushstroke which covered the last trace of the white ground marked the moment at which all the elements came together in balance and the colours began to function with and against each other. The sheer involvement of painting these pictures is clear from a close inspection of the surface, with their network of fine fluid brushstrokes declaring the joy of painting. This immediacy allows the paintings to carry huge impact and vigour. When seen in the broader context of painting of the period, the vivacity of Heron's art is immediately clear and still looks remarkable at the space of over four decades.

The Patrick Heron Estate is preparing the forthing coming ca🐷talogue raisonné of the Artist's work and would like to hear🧔 from owners of any work by Patrick Heron so that these can be included in this comprehensive catalogue.  Please write to Susanna Heron, c/o Sotheby's Modern & Post-War British Art, 34-35 New Bond Street, London, W1A 2AA.