Internal affairs | 23 March 2017

Over 20 years ago I wrote about Giambattista Tiepolo in The Spectator. Shortly afterwards I went to visit Howard Hodgkin in his spacious, white, light-filled studio close to the British Museum. It turned out that he had read my column and was pleased that someone had been discussing this 18th-century Venetian, who was just his idea of what a painter should be: a subtle master of colour, poetic, sensual, a bit neglected — in other words, much as he saw himself.

The real subject matter of an artist such as Tiepolo, I suggested that day, is not really the Madonna or the apotheosis of some minor aristocrat. It is something more elusive and personal — such as the painter’s feelings about the charm of dogs, naked bodies or dreams of flying. ‘Yes,’ answered Hodgkin. ‘But who knows? You see, what one is left with is the thing.’ And that, roughly speaking, is how Hodgkin claimed his own pictures functioned.