Patrick Caulfield CBE RA

Patrick Caulfield has died in London (29 September 2005). Modest in his disposition and profoundly meticulous in his art, he graduated from the Royal College Of Art a year later than the 'golden' trio of David Hockney, RB Kitaj and Derek Boshier. Caulfield was never just a Pop painter, and became a major influence, portraying ordinariness and the everyday in an extraordinary way. There were seldom figures shown in his work, except perhaps for the odd waiter leaning in the middle ground, as in his famous work 'After Dinner', now in the Tate Gallery. Never would Caulfield have portrayed himself. As Allen Jones, another contemporary said, 'He deployed an intellectual rigour that turned his droll imagery into icons of our time'.