Gillian Ayres was an artist who came of age in a post-war British art world that was dominated by men. She remained entirely faithful to painting as it went in and out of fashion and the huge vibrant works she produced are a testament to her fearless and unwavering commitment.

Painted in 1988, after leaving a teaching role and moving to the North Devon coast in 1987, Hydaspes is a monumental example of Gillian Ayres’s exuberant and highly physical approach to abstraction. At more than three metres wide, the canvas is filled with a dense composition of vigorous brushstrokes, saturated colour and heavily worked passages of impasto. Deep blues dominate the work, punctuated by vivid reds, oranges, greens, pinks and whites, producing an atmosphere of extraordinary energy and movement.

1980s was transformative period in which Ayres' increasingly dynamic and gestural language was becoming firmly established. Following her discovery of Hans Hofmann’s work in 1976, she increasingly turned to oil paint, developing the thick, complex impasto and rich chromatic palette that became characteristic of her mature work. Rather than using colour to describe a recognisable subject, Ayres treated pigment itself as the principal means of constructing the painting. As the artist explained, painting was for her "a visual experience not a literary one. It’s about what can be done with paint”. Ayres often worked on her large canvases over extended periods, building up layers of colour and substantial brush strokes until distinct but never fully representational forms emerged. In Hydaspes, this process is particularly evident in the variation of surface, where some areas are densely packed with short, gestural strokes, while others open into larger passages, resulting in tension between accumulation and openness which creates rhythm and depth.

Often inspired by literary, mythological and historical sources, Ayres' titles provide an evocative and experiential point of entry but do not prescribe a fixed reading of the picture. Hydaspes is the ancient Greek name for the modern Jhelum River that flows through Pakistan and India. It is the site of The Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BCE, fought by Alexander the Great during his Asian campaign where Alexander’s army defeated the forces of the Indian king Porus (Paurav).

In 1989, a year after this work ws comleted, Ayres was shortlisted for the prestigious Turner Prize, and elected a Royal Academician in 1991.