We were commissioned to shoot an artist’s studio virtual tour for the late John Hoyland’s studio, as it was when he was alive.
About John Hoyland
John Hoyland was born in Sheffield in 1934 to a working-class family. He was educated at Sheffield School of Art and Crafts within the junior art department before progressing to Sheffield College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, London. There, Sir Charles Wheeler (then President of the Royal Academy) famously ordered that Hoyland’s paintings – all abstracts – be removed from the walls of the Diploma Galleries. It was only the intervention of Peter Greenham, Acting Keeper of the Schools, that saved the day when he reminded Sir Charles Wheeler that Hoyland had painted admired landscapes and figurative paintings, the required evidence that he could ‘paint properly’.
In 1953 Hoyland went abroad for the first time, and hitch-hiked down to the South of France. After the bleakness of post-war Sheffield it was a revelation: “To me it was like landing in Tahiti. There was still rationing here. Down there were all these brown girls, swimming and diving, and all these grapes.” Hoyland visited again in 1957 with David Smith when he was at the Royal Academy and got what he referred to as ‘The Gauguin syndrome’, a lifelong romance with travel and the south.
The Artist’s Studio Virtual Tour
This artist’s studio virtual tour shows John Hoyland’s studio as it was when he worked here, with paintings and materials all in situ. The studio is a shrine to Hoyland, with the colours of the beautiful paint-spattered floor continuing onto a pair of his painting shoes, a poignant detail visible in the corner.
Virtual tours are a wonderfully immersive way of documenting a space, and in this case, is able to give a flavour of the man who worked here. If you’d like to discuss anything about virtual tours, please do get in touch with us.