In the decade before his death in 2011, John Hoyland began to reckon with mortality. Confronting his own demise, he painted elegies to departed artist friends and tributes to illustrious artistic forebears. Imagery of the void looms large, but it is a void faced with defiance and vitality, less a rumination on the end than a celebration of life. This publication explores the paintings Hoyland made in this decade, including his final series, the Mysteries. Essays by Natalie Adamson, David Anfam, Matthew Collings and Mel Gooding offer a rich and multifaceted account of a complex body of work. Hoyland’s veneration of Vincent van Gogh, his connections to J.M.W. Turner, the use of black as a colour, his deployment of risk and attempts to subvert his own taste, and his development of the cosmic visual language of the Abstract Expressionists are all discussed. Richly illustrated, the book extends our understanding of Hoyland’s late work within the story of modern painting as a whole. AUTHOR: Natalie Adamson is Reader in Art History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where she teaches broadly across nineteenth- and twentieth-century modern art and the history of photography. Her research is focused on abstraction, art and politics in France and transnational relationships. She has recently published on the abstract painters Sam Francis and Pierre Soulages. SELLING POINTS: . Lavishly illustrated with over 60 colour plates. . First publication to focus on Hoyland’s output in his last decade, all the images are previously unpublished 120 colour, 2 b/w illustrations