Conversations between British post-war painters

London-based Haunch of Venison presents an exhibition of ten of Britain’s most important post-war painters, entitled 'The Mystery of Appearance', revealing the story behind their art. It’s an appraisal of artists like Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Patrick Caulfield etc.

The aim, as an accompanying note states, is also to examine the influence of the personal relationships between these artists - William Coldstream, Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Leon Kossoff and Euan Uglow through a display of over forty paintings and drawings. The exhibition includes major works by each of them, several borrowed from public collections, many not seen in public for many years.

Supported by a catalog essay in which the curator Catherine Lampert discusses their habits and methods and introduces previously unseen writing by the artists, it looks at the way their conversations impacted on the development of their work, demonstrating that despite their wide-ranging styles they are each linked by a desire to catch what Bacon describes as ‘the mystery of appearance within the mystery of making’, and in doing so broke new ground in contemporary painting

'The Mystery of Appearance' is displayed across the four galleries in Haunch of Venison’s newly renovated space. The first gallery shows a selection of nudes by Auerbach, Coldstream, Freud, Hamilton and Uglow. They range from the heavily worked and abstracted to the finely calibrated and delicate and offer varied approaches to the observation and description of nudity.

The second gallery presents landscapes and portraits demonstrating how the group experimented with the materiality of paint. This is followed by a room that focuses on the special significance of the Old Masters to these artists, most of whom selected one of the ‘Artist’s Eye’ exhibitions at the National Gallery.

In the mid-20th century these artists revived portrait and landscape painting at a time when abstract painting dominated. Their continued influence on a younger generation of artists is demonstrated by the powerful hold figurative art has today. Given only three of these artists are still alive the exhibition is timely and poignant, setting out to re-evaluate a group of ten connected and hugely influential painters, exploring the motives, conversations and stories behind their art.