Broad Line Etchings
5 works
Ian Davenport Midday For Sale
Ian Davenport
Midday, 2019
Etching
24 3/8 x 24 3/8 in 62 x 62 cm
Edition
Edition of 30
About this work
Within Ian Davenport's Diagonals series, Midday represents the moment of maximum light and vertical solar intensity — the hour at which shadows are shortest, light is most direct, and the visual world most fully illuminated. The challenge Davenport sets himself is to capture this quality of saturation and directness through the oblique vocabulary of the diagonal line, in an abstract format that makes no reference to the observable world. Midday, produced in 2019 as an etching measuring 62 × 62 cm and offered in a limited edition of 30, achieves this through the particular density and confidence of its line work. Where Evening and Twilight carry a sense of tonal diminishment and Morning the clarity of new beginnings, Midday presents a composition of full-bodied tonal weight — the lines asserting themselves with maximum certainty across the square surface. The square format, used consistently across the Diagonals series, reinforces this sense of equipoise, containing the angular energy of the diagonals within a self-consistent geometric field. The etching process brings a material precision to the work that is particularly suited to Davenport's formal intentions: intaglio marks carry an inherent authority, their depth in the plate determining the density of ink deposited on the paper. Midday demonstrates Davenport's mastery of this relationship between plate depth and tonal value, orchestrating a composition that reads as confident, illuminated, and formally complete. It provides the essential counterpoint of fullness to the more transitional qualities of the surrounding works in the series.
Price on Application
Auction History
Untitled woodash I · Ian Davenport · · · $NaN
· Ian Davenport · · · $NaN
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More from this series
More series by Ian Davenport
About the Diagonals Series
Ian Davenport's Diagonals series represents a significant body of work exploring colour, movement, and perception through dynamic diagonal compositions. Created during a pivotal period in the artist's practice, these works demonstrate his sophisticated understanding of colour relationships and optical effects.
The series comprises four key pieces—Midday, Morning, Twilight, and Evening—each responding to distinct atmospheric conditions and times of day. Through his distinctive poured and dripped technique, Davenport creates luminous surfaces where colour appears to vibrate and shift, inviting viewers into an immersive visual experience.
These works exemplify the artist's commitment to abstract inquiry while remaining accessible to collectors seeking contemporary art with depth and contemplative power. The Diagonals series has established itself as essential to understanding Davenport's evolution as a colourist, with pieces from this body of work commanding significant collector interest.
Whether building a contemporary collection or seeking a major statement work, the Diagonals series offers enduring aesthetic and investment value. Enquire for availability and pricing of individual works.
About Ian Davenport
Ian Davenport (b. 1965, Sidcup, Kent) is one of the most immediately recognisable and formally inventive painters to emerge from the YBA generation, an artist who in the early 1990s committed himself to a systematic investigation of paint, gravity, and the painted surface that has deepened and diversified over three decades without losing its initial radicalism. Davenport studied at Goldsmiths College, graduating in 1988 into the same extraordinary cohort that included Damien Hirst, Michael Landy, Sarah Lucas, and Gary Hume. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1991, one of the earliest nominations in the prize's history to go to a painter working in this rigorously non-representational mode.
Davenport's signature technique involves pouring liquid paint from the top of a canvas or support, allowing gravity to dictate the resulting vertical lines, or controlling poured arcs and horizontal stripes that pool and blend at the base. The process is simultaneously systematic and contingent: Davenport plans his colour sequences and dilutions with great care, but the exact behaviour of the paint as it flows and interacts remains partly outside his control. The results are works of extraordinary chromatic vibrancy and optical complexity — neighbouring colours bleed into one another at the edges, creating secondary hues and atmospheric effects that shift with viewing distance and light conditions. His series include Poured Lines, Colourfall, Puddle Paintings, Circular, and Arc works, each exploring a different configuration of his central method.
Working in industrial household paints — Davenport has long used the durability, pigment density, and workable viscosity of commercial paints rather than artist-grade materials — he produces surfaces that are both physically robust and visually luminous. The work carries its technical intelligence lightly: standing in front of a Colourfall or a major Poured Lines canvas, the formal decisions dissolve into pure perceptual pleasure. At auction, his paintings have achieved significant results: Poured Painting: Green, Magenta, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Red (1999) achieved £100,000 at Phillips London in July 2020, and Poured Lines: Cerise (2007) reached £126,000 at Christie's London in October 2021. His print editions — produced in accessible formats with strong chromatic fidelity to the painted originals — range from thousands to tens of thousands of pounds and represent excellent entry points for collectors new to his work.
Davenport's work is held in permanent collections at Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Sprengel Museum Hanover, Borusan Contemporary Istanbul, the Arts Council Collection, and the National Museum Cardiff, among other institutions.
Guy Hepner brings deep expertise to Ian Davenport's editions and original paintings. Our gallery at 177 Tenth Avenue, New York is well placed to assist collectors in acquiring his work or in selling and valuing existing holdings. We offer free, confidential valuations and access to a global network of collectors engaged with contemporary British painting.