The Mysterious Suspicion: After Magritte (Primary Title)

Patrick Caulfield, English, 1936 - 2005 (Artist)

October 1974
English
acrylic on canvas
Overall: 108 × 60 in. (274.32 × 152.4 cm)
85.369

I find man-made things always intriguing, from sophisticated design to cruder street or shop signs. . . . I’ve always liked urban imagery as opposed to landscape or “nature.” —Patrick Caulfield

Caulfield emerged as part of a second wave of British Pop Art in the 1960s. Though he resisted American Pop Art’s embrace of popular culture and mass consumerism, he applied that style’s bold colors, flat shapes, and crisp lines to all kinds of subjects, including ordinary rooms that he transformed into disorienting spaces.

The Mysterious Suspicion is based on Surrealist artist René Magritte’s 1928 painting of the same title. Magritte had depicted his brother looking at his hand; Caulfield shows an updated figure in a ‘70s setting. While compositionally complex—with deep pictorial space and an active pattern of flat, solid-colors— Caulfield’s version retains the simple and enigmatic subject matter he admired in the original.

Gift of Sydney and Frances Lewis
Patrick Caulfield, Hayward Gallery, London, February 4 – April 11, 1999; Musee National d'Histoire et d'Art, Luxembourg, April 23 – June 13, 1999; Fundaco Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, July 2 – September 29, 1999; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, October 27, 1999 – January 9, 2000

20th Century Art, Bedford Gallery, Longwood College, Farmville, VA, January 17 – February 19, 1988

Faces/Figures, Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, November 19 – December 20, 1987.

Patrick Caulfield: Paintings 1963-81, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, August 22 - October 4, 1981; The Tate Gallery, London, October 27, 1981 – January 3, 1982

Contemporary Art from the Collection of Sydney and Francis Lewis, Lewis Hall, Washington & Lewis University, Lexington, VA, May 1977

Patrick Caulfield, F&M Gallery, Richmond, VA, July 1976

O.K. Harris, New York, NY, 1974
Livingstone, Marco. “Some Light on Neglected Corners.” In Patrick Caulfield. London: Waddington Galleries, 2013. Exhibition Catalogue. (Np).

Patrick Caulfield: Paintings. London: Waddington Galleries, 2007. Exhibition catalogue. (No. 28 and 29, np).

Livingstone, Marco. Patrick Caulfield: Paintings. Hampshire, UK: Lund Humphries, 2005. (P. 76, color ill. p. 81).

Whitfield, Sarah. Magritte. London: The South Bank Centre, 1992. (B/w ill. p. 14; p. 17; p. 19).

Brandt, Frederick R. Late 20th Century Art. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1985. No. 13, p. 30-1).

Livingstone, Marco. Patrick Caulfield: Paintings 1963-81. London: The Tate Gallery, 1981. (P. 65).
(O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York) by 1974; Purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Sydney and Frances Lewis, Virginia, 1974; Gift to Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA), Richmond, Virginia in 1985.
©artist or artist’s estate

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