One of Hoyland’s true masterpieces with impeccable provenance having been bought from Waddington Galleries by the owner in the mid-1960s. These large canvases are filled with an extraordinary light and energy and represent the pinnacle of his achievement. Great blocks of colour float as if in space.

“God! Your’re painting real paintings!!” said Frankenthaler in 1965 on a visit to his Primrose Hill studio. (Quoted in Mel Gooding, John Hoyland, Thames and Hudson, 2006).

“These [stain paintings] use colour and abstract shape in the purest way to assert the reality of the paint itself as a visual event …vibrantly assertive of its own existence. During these years he was engaged up on an extraordinary body of work, an achievement in scale and energy, sharpness and definition of expressive power unmatched by any of his contemporaries and unparalleled in modern British painting” Mel Gooding.