'Venice, Afternoon' is one of four prints comprising Hodgkin’s Venetian Views series, which grew out of the artist’s unrealised plan to illustrate Thomas Mann's novel Death in Venice (1912). Among the most complex and ambitious prints the artist has produced, each print in the series is based on an imaginary view of the city at a different time of day, printed from the same five printing plates. While certain marks and formats are repeated throughout the series, 'Venice, Afternoon', executed on sixteen separate sheets, is richly coloured and exudes its own distinct mood and emotional tenor. The Venice prints retain the exhilarating immediacy of the artist's paintings in the high drama of their surging, explosive forms.
— The Metropolitan Museum of Art, catalogue entry.
