checks

I’m a huge fan of Hockney’s portraits. I particularly like the exquisitely fine and delicate ones of friends and family done in coloured pencils in the 1970s (it’s amazing how cleverly he uses blue in their faces). So I went to NPG exhibition and was delighted to see them all over again, together with a multitude of self-portraits, composite Polaroids, and huge iPad drawings. As well as admiring all these, I was particularly struck - all over again - by Hockney’s personal style and the wonderful outfits he’s put together, mixing candy-coloured cardigans, knitted ties, striped shirts, spotted scarves, two-tone shoes.

And checks. Checks are big in Hockney’s life. He has a great eye for them. On someone else this could look like a clown’s suit, but Hockney wears huge checks like a pro, in his signature combination of blue and yellow, with a brilliant red tie, yellow glasses, and a Dickie Bird style cricket umpire’s cap (both proud Yorkshiremen).

[Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, 2021]

He likes painting them, too. This is my favourite of his recent oil paintings; the checks could overwhelm a lesser sitter, but J-P is more than a match for his.

As are the Sapeurs and Sapeuses, whose dandy style is the epitome of colourful daring with beautiful outfits brilliantly put together. Look at the small buttonhole in the prefect shade of pink - it’s amusing that it’s so small next to the huge patterns, wide lapels, extended collar. You wouldn’t want to overdo it, would you? It’s almost defying you not to laugh at the sheer bravado.

[‘Coffee’ (1915), Pierre Bonnard]

So Hockney has got me thinking about checks, and a painting which was on my pinboard at university when I was dreaming of nicer, cosier interiors. I think I can date my love of red and white check tablecloths from this time, although it might go further back to images of French bistros and cafes with white Pillivuyt tableware, Duralex glasses, starched napkins, wine in carafes, good pâté on fresh baguette, properly salty butter, and always a tarte au citron. I like all the messages given out by red and white tablecloths: clean, fresh, unfussy, affordable.

Bonnard (above, 1910) must have had cupboards full of red checked tablecloths because they appear regularly in his paintings, at breakfast tables, in still lifes, at gatherings, and always the tablecloth is the focal point of family life, social life, conversation, shared meals, enjoyment.

[‘Larkspur’ (1924 Lovis Corinth]

I also like Lovis Corinth's painting which suggests wooden chalets and Swiss cheese and fluffy duvets and hotels like the one in The Lady Vanishes.

[‘Still Life with Checked Tablecloth’ (1915), Juan Gris]

And it’s interesting that Juan Gris’ now very expensive painting uses a classic, ordinary Parisian cafe tablecloth as the background to all the ‘disguised images’, visual puns, and Cubist ideas. (The sale price of £34.8 million would have bought checked tablecloths for an entire country.)

[‘Noilly Rouge, Hotel du Rhin Dieppe’ by Glynn Boyd Harte]

Two large red and white checked cotton tablecloths like this one saw us through family meals for twenty-five years. They came in a Christmas hamper from Simon’s company and were the closest I’ve ever got to a proper table-setting, but they also served for outdoor picnics, indoor picnics, dolls’ picnics, beach picnics, parties, and barbecues. They were a constant of family life until relatively recently, overlaid with good memories, unlike the dreadful gingham dresses we had for our summer school uniform: shapeless sacks, totally unflattering, put me off wearing checks for years.

I’m over the gingham trauma now, and have made tops with some of Merchant & Mills lovely checks. I also wore a royal blue and white checked cotton dress for Zoë and Tom’s wedding on Gotland, joking to everyone beforehand that I’d be wearing a tablecloth. I spoke too soon; when we sat down for dinner later the table was covered with a blue and white checked tablecloth and it was difficult to see where that ended and my dress began.

So the dress could have an afterlife on a table, or provide the perfect template for some smocking.

[‘Bowl of Nasturtiums’ (1913), Félix Vallotton]

Finally, another blue and white checked cloth, here in in one of Vallotton’s many paintings of nasturtiums. The checks and flowers are match made in heaven: visions of a potager outside and the interior of well-scrubbed, neat rural kitchen in a Maigret novel where a pot-au-feu is in the oven, there’s a cool bottle of Beaujolais ready to be opened, and a bottle of Calvados stands on the sideboard. I hope David Hockney’s kitchen table has a Bonnard tablecloth…

[2021]

Of course it does.

Happy Sunday!