Patrick Caulfield, one of Britain’s most significant artists of the past century.
Patrick Caulfield was born in January 1936, and during the course of his career, he carved out a reputation for himself as a unique and innovative artist. This reputation has remained firm since his death in September 2005, aged 69, and his work will undoubtedly continue to influence and inspire people in the years to come.
Indeed, the market in Patrick Caulfield’s art is also still thriving, especially in the United Kingdom. He was a prolific artist, and his prints account for over 90% of his work sold at auction, usually fetching between £500 and £1,000, though many attain higher prices.
Caulfield was a very private man, and fairly little is known about his personal life. Despite that, there are some facts which are interesting to consider when viewing his art. Below are five things you might not have known about Patrick Caulfield.
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He Joined The RAF At 17
Patrick Caulfield was born in London, but he and his family moved to his parents’ home town of Bolton shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He left school at 15 and began working, eventually securing a job in the advertising department of the food brand Crosse & Blackwell. At 17, he joined the Royal Air Force for his national service, and he was stationed in north London. During his free time, he attended evening classes at Harrow Art School, which may have given him the confidence to carry on his artistic training after he left the RAF.
His Most Expensive Print Sold For £45,000
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon Vues de Derrière is a Caulfield print from 1999, and it currently accounts for 11 out of his 20 most expensive prints sold at auction, with the most expensive of those being sold by Sotheby’s in September 2020 for £45,000 – more than double its estimate.
The print is based on Picasso’s 1907 painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which caused significant shock and controversy when it was first displayed due to its subjects: five prostitutes staring boldly and provocatively out of the canvas. Caulfield’s print is a reversal of Picasso’s painting so that the women have their backs to the viewer, meaning the title of the print is both a verbal and a visual pun on the word ‘derrière’, which translates as ‘behind’.
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon Vues de Derrière sold by Sotheby’s in 2020
He Was Had Formal Artistic Training
Upon leaving the RAF, Caulfield was accepted to the Chelsea School of Art in 1956, initially studying graphic design before switching to fine art. In 1960, he joined the Royal College of Art, where he was one year below R.B. Kitaj and David Hockney. From 1963 to 1971, Caulfield joined the Chelsea School of Art again, but this time as a teacher.
It was during his studies that Caulfield first encountered the poetry of Jules Laforgue, the 19th century French Symbolist writer who developed and pioneered the technique of vers libre, or free verse. Caulfield later created Some Poems of Jules Laforgue, a series of prints based on Laforgue poems which were published by Petersburg Press, and which now account for five out of 12 of the artist’s most expensive prints sold at auction.
He Was Inspired By European Postcards
Before embarking on a new term at the Royal Academy of Art, Caulfield travelled to Greece by train with some of his fellow students, returning by hitchhiking his way through Italy and France. The young artist was struck by the hard, vibrant colours he encountered in Greece, and he was particularly enamoured by the Minoan frescoes he saw on the island of Crete. But he was also interested in the way the images had been reproduced on postcards, with the shapes often delineated by black lines. Caulfield said he didn’t realise at first the black lines had been added by the printer, “but these cards struck me as being very amusing and quite strong imagery. So I thought about using lines in my own work.”
The bold, black lines, bright colours, and “the simplicity and directness” of the postcards Caulfield picked up as a student influenced much of his later work, including prints such as Café Sign (which was sold in December 2014 for £8,500) and Still Life (1966), which reached £12,000 in April 2014.
He Didn’t Like The Label ‘Pop Artist’
Much of Patrick Caulfield’s art – especially his earlier work – is associated with Pop Art, though it was a label he bridled at and rejected throughout his career. Caulfield always said he saw himself as a ‘formal artist’ in the tradition of European still life and landscape painters, and whilst his bold, black lines and flat, saturated planes of hard vibrant colour undoubtedly owe many things to Pop Art, his art never fit neatly within the category.
For instance, Caulfield didn’t tend to borrow from commercial images or mass media like many of his contemporaries, such as Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol. He tended to eschew the modern (and, for that matter, the American) in favour of European artistic traditions, especially still life centred around cafés, restaurants, and other scenes involving eating and drinking, as demonstrated in prints like Picnic Set, Still Life (1966), and Café Sign.
