Patrick Caulfield’s use of bright blocks of flat colour and thick black outlines became a hallmark of his style and has gone on to influence other artists such as Michael Craig-Martin and Julian Opie.
Caulfield was a slow worker with his paintings taking months to finish. In works such as After Lunch he inserted highly detailed photorealist sections into his characteristically stylized images, playing with the viewers definitions of reality and artifice.
He was born in London in 1936, and spent part of his childhood in Bolton Lancashire before moving back to London after WWII. He worked in the design department of Crosse & Blackwell, (where one of his tasks was varnishing the chocolates on display) and spent three years national service with the Royal Air Force.
In 1956 he attended Chelsea School of Art and in 1960 undertook postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art. Here Caulfield was identified, along with the previous year's intake (David Hockney, Ron Kitaj, Allen Jones and Derek Boshier) as one of the 'Pop' artists.
Some works by Caulfield held in the Saatchi collection were destroyed in the now infamous fire in a storage warehouse on 24 May 2004.
Patrick Caulfield passed away in 2005, and is buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery.