John Hubbard

John Hubbard was born in Connecticut in 1931 and read English at Harvard before going to Japan, where he served in counter-intelligence in the United States army and developed his interest in Chinese and Japanese art. Between 1956 and ’58 he studied at the Art Students League, New York and at Provincetown, Massachusetts with Hans Hofman. He then spent two years in Rome before moving to England. He lived in Dorset since his marriage in 1961.

John Hubbard visited England for the first time in 1958 and, with the abstract expressionism current in New York fresh in his mind, went to St Ives and met the painter Peter Lanyon. From 1960 onwards he has concentrated on a kind of landscape painting which goes beyond the depiction of appearance, alluding to natural forms, to the rhythms of growing things and recreating the experience of being in a particular place. In Dorset his interest in oriental painting and thought and the early influence of artists such as De Kooning, Mark Rothko and Mark Tobey became linked in his mind with the contemplation of the natural world. He has felt a particular affinity with the visionary art of Samuel Palmer, in 1969 exhibiting charcoal drawings after late Palmer watercolours. He has tended to work in series – in Greece, Morocco, France, in his own garden in Dorset, in the gardens at Abbotsbury and Tresco and the Alhambra, Spain. He makes sketches and charcoal drawings in the open and works in the studio on larger charcoal drawings and the paintings, with their extraordinary sense of the dramatic and subtle effects of light and colour. The image of the garden has been a consistent theme in his work.

The etchings shown here are from a small edition suite made as a portrait of New Harmony, Indiana. The town was established circa 1824 as a model community by the Welsh utopian thinker and social reformer Robert Owen. They were commissioned by Jane Blaffer Owen, New Harmony resident and the wife of Robert Owen's third great grandson.

John painted on an easel that his wife bought for him at The Rowley Gallery in the 1960s, back in the days when we also sold artists' materials.

John Hubbard died on 6th January, 2017. For John Hubbard

Solo Exhibitions

2013
Littoral, Luther W Brady Art Gallery, Washington DC
2012
The Art Room, Topsham
The New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury
2011
Nocturnes, Marlborough Fine Art, London
2008, 2004, 2001, 2000
Marlborough Fine Art, London
2007, 1983, 1972
Dorset County Museum, Dorchester
2007
Peter Scott Gallery, University of Lancaster
2006
Spirit Of Trees, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
2003
Six Chapel Row Gallery, Bath
2002
Roche Court, Salisbury
2000
Art In The Garden, Rothschild Collection, Waddesdon Manor
1998
Eight Variations On A Drawing By Rubens, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
The Luminous Coasts Of The Sea, Bridport Arts Centre
1996
Maclaurin Art Gallery, Ayr
Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh
1996, 1994
Purdy Hicks Gallery, London
1995
Charleston Farmhouse, Firle
1991, 1988, 1984, 1979
Fischer Fine Art, London
1990
Portrait Of New Harmony, Curwen Gallery, London
1989
Portrait Of New Harmony, USA tour
1988
Poole Arts Centre
1987
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, New York
Armstrong Gallery, New York
1986
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut
Madeleine Carter Gallery, Boston
1985
Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
1984
Salisbury Festival
1981
Warwick Arts Trust, London
1978
Newlyn Gallery
1976
Plymouth Arts Centre
1975
Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield
Aberdeen Art Gallery
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
1972
The Leas Gallery, Folkstone
1968
University of Keele
1966
St Catherine's College, Oxford
1965
University of Birmingham
1964
University of Leicester
1961-1975
Nine exhibitions at the New Art Centre, London