Grant helps bring artwork to city

The painting was selected from a variety put forward by the artist

A grant from The Art Fund has helped Victoria Art Gallery in Bath buy a painting by Sir Howard Hodgkin.

Silence is the first painting by the artist to enter the permanent collection at the Victoria Art Gallery.

The gallery is where he publicly exhibited his work for the first time, as part of a group show while he was a student in Bath in 1952.

The Art Fund gave the gallery a grant of £62,500 towards the total £75,000 required to buy Silence.

Silence is a beautiful and lyrical painting Jon Benington

Jon Benington, Manager of the Victoria Art Gallery, said: "The acquisition of Silence fills a very significant gap in the gallery's collection, given the artist's intimate connections with Bath.

"The work was completed four years ago and represents significant changes in his artistic development over the last decade, with the paint applied in thin layers with wide brushstrokes.

"This is in contrast to his earlier paintings which were typically characterised by dots, dashes and scribbles. "

Sir Howard Hodgkin has strong ties to Bath as he attended the Bath Academy of Art from 1950 to 1954, and he also went on to teach at the Academy for more than 10 years between 1955 and 1966.

Today, his studio is based in central London, where the Victoria Art Gallery was able to select the painting directly from a variety of works put forward by the artist.

"Silence is not only a beautiful and lyrical painting in its own right; it also represents the culmination of a development that was nurtured in Bath fifty years earlier," said Mr Benington.