Booking Hall, Kilburn Underground
- Artist: Leon Kossoff
- Date: 1987
- Medium: Oil paint on board
- Dimensions: support: 1982 x 1827 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is the "Booking Hall, Kilburn Underground" by Leon Kossoff. Painted in 1987, it’s a large oil on board that sits in a series he made of Kilburn Underground station. In the foreground you see two men and three women walking through the booking hall, while shadowy figures drift up the staircase and on the right side. The palette is dominated by cloudy blues, pinks and whites, giving the scene a slightly gloomy, almost melancholic atmosphere that echoes the daily commute.
Kossoff has said that when he paints public scenes the people he knows begin to appear in the crowd, and in this work the figures are believed to be his wife Peggy, his brothers, and his friend Fidelma. He started the painting from charcoal sketches made on site, pinning them in his studio and rearranging them until the final image was rendered in a rush of broad, energetic strokes. The work was acquired by the Tate in 1989 with assistance from the Friends of the Tate and the Mail on Sunday, and it even opened the main room of the British Pavilion at the 1995 Venice Biennale.
See it in person
Booking Hall, Kilburn Underground is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
