Eliot Hodgkin | “St. Paul’s and St. Mary Aldermanbury from St. Swithin’s Churchyard”: A Painting in Egg Tempera by Eliot Hodgkin

Article: “St. Paul’s and St. Mary Aldermanbury from St. Swithin’s Churchyard”: A Painting in Egg Tempera by Eliot Hodgkin
Publication: Christian Science Monitor (23/07/1948)

The English-born artist, Eliot Hodgkin, was educated at Harrow and later studied art at the Byam Shaw and the Royal Academy schools, both in London. In 1936, a flower painting of his was exhibited at the Royal Academy and bought for the Tate Gallery. From that time forward, the artist has exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and has pursued “serious” art. Since 1937, all his chief works has been done in egg tempera.
Eliot Hodgkin has more that once been commissioned to paint ruins of the City of London, usually including the wild flowers which have seeded themselves everywhere in the cellar-holes and empty stretches since the bombing of London. As a matter of fact, the subjects most congenial to, and characteristic of, this painter are wild plants and flowers growing in their natural haunts. They usually depicted as they would appear to a person lying on the ground, seen as an insect or a small animal would see them.
In his work, there is no perceptible arrangement or distortion; things are shown in all their detail and then allowed to speak for themselves. Mr. Hodgkin feels he has succeeded when he has made his public perceive the strangeness and the beauty of things which are so familiar to them that they have ceased to notice them. “St. Paul’s and St. Mary Aldermanbury From St. Swithin’s Churchyard,” painted in 1945 in egg tempera, is typical of his work.