John Hoyland
British abstraction at American scale, from stained colour fields to slabs of paint laid on with a knife.
John Hoyland was born in Sheffield in 1934 and trained at the Royal Academy Schools, where the abstract work he submitted for his diploma nearly cost him it. A visit to New York in 1964 and friendships with Motherwell, Newman and Hofmann set the direction: large canvases, acrylic stained or poured into the weave, blocks of saturated colour floating against a field. From the mid-1970s the surface thickened dramatically, with paint troweled, poured and dragged in slabs, and the later work brought in overt shapes and a much more exotic palette after trips to the Caribbean and Bali. He was elected to the Royal Academy and died in 2011.
The three phases are visually very different and are valued differently, so the date does most of the work in identifying a picture — the 1960s and early 1970s stained canvases are the period the market treats as the core. Titles are typically a date, which is how individual works are distinguished, and the signature, title and date are normally on the reverse. Acrylic on unprimed or thinly primed canvas stains permanently and cannot be cleaned, and the thick later surfaces chip. Prints and works on paper exist in quantity.
If you own a work by John Hoyland
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.