Portraits

Can you really tell character from a portrait? I suspect not, any more than you can tell much from a person’s bookshelves. So much depends on the skill of the artist, the circumstances of the work – were they rushed to finish or did they have enough time to do a good job? Were they feeling well during the sittings or were they liverish? Did they like the sitter, was there any doubt as to whether they were going to get paid? Surely all these factors play a part. 

And so often I think the character traits the experts say they get out of a portrait are really things they have heard elsewhere about the sitter and graft back onto it instead. It’s easy to see what you want to see when you know what to expect. Velazquez, for instance, was objectively, without doubt, one of the greatest painters there has ever been. Now look at his famous 1650 portrait of Pope Innocent X, the one Bacon based his ‘Screaming Pope’ sequence on. Wikipedia uses the epithets which have most commonly accrued to the sitter: “highly intelligent, shrewd and ageing”. I see a tetchy and impatient individual with a face of ageless evil, a person who is no more capable of a truly Christian act than the piece of paper he’s holding in his hand – probably an order for the excommunication of someone who owed him money. Nobody made finer portraits than Hans Holbein and Thomas Lawrence and John Singer Sargent, but the viewer who ascribes specific moral or ethical or intellectual qualities to their subjects surely does so at their peril.

For me, it’s all about the likeness, first and last, or the thing is a failure, no matter what prodigies of sensitivity or feeling or texture the artist may bring to bear. Here are a few I did where at least the sitter is recognisable. Of course they are. I was working from photographs most of the time, just like most of those ultra-talented competitors in Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year, who do that even when they’ve got the real live subject sitting ten feet in front of them…

---

Dad

The earliest here is Dad, which I did as art homework around 1972. My German teacher when he saw it suggested he looked very stern, but that must have been from the pipe smoke getting in his eyes. My father was the sweetest man I’ve ever known. My art teacher Mr Hicks wrote that it was ‘almost very good’, which outraged my mother. “What does he mean?” But I knew what he meant. It was my usual failing: I hadn’t balanced the tones properly. The shadows weren’t dark enough compared to the highlights. I should have used a softer pencil. I should have done better, because my dad only ever deserved the best.

K

K and Rog pastel

K and Rog crayon

This little portrait of my wife Katherine was the very first portrait from life I ever attempted with pastels. I love the medium, messy though it be, and here I see my perennial problem was already fully present from the start and destined never to be fully resolved. Too garish. I think I’d calmed down a bit by the time I came to paint her again with our ginger cat Roger on her lap, and I was stunned at how well the purple top came out. And the neck, I did that whole section in about three minutes. But as usual, anything good was more a case of luck rather than any judgement or skill on my part. This one just worked. Number three, the brown crayon version dated 1990, is obviously copied from the same photograph.

Pat

Brian

Auntie Joyce

Katherine’s parents and her Auntie Joyce, which I hope capture some of their Northern bonhomie.

Bridget

My neighbour Bridget kindly sat for this one to give me practice. I think this was drawn freehand from life and that scarf came out a lot better than I expected. The background is, I suppose, what you might call burnt orange, my favourite.

Pete and Jules

Jules 2002

Pete 2002

I didn’t have a hope in hell of doing these two justice. The one doing the strangling went on to gain a doctorate in organic chemistry while his happy smiling victim survived to become a university administrator. Who’d have thought? The individual crayon portraits sort of work, but I probably pressed too hard. Their skins were always softer than that, but I lacked the technique to convey it. They look sweet though. Because they were then and are still.

RAS 2002

RAS as Egon

RAS in 4H

RAS in crayon

Rembrandt painted himself so many times out of a kind of compulsion, to keep his hand in, for lack of any other model, to document his fortunes, because he was bold enough to face the truth, for all these reasons and others. I just thought I’d give it a go. The first shows the incipient jowling and double chin that have since become permanent features in the bathroom mirror, alas. The next, unbelievably, is dated the same month, so I don’t know who the fuck I thought I was fooling there. I seem to have lost about thirty pounds overnight. (Egon because I’ve inadvertently made myself look like the Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele, whose work, Wikipedia reminds us, ‘is noted for its intensity and its raw sexuality’.) He also produced a lot of nude self-portraits. Whatever, Egon. You do you, mate. (Come to think of it, I might have meant Strindberg. Oh it doesn’t matter. No one’s looking anyway.) The pencil drawing is another demonstration of tentative tonal values and the great cheat that every self-portraitist stumbles across eventually – rest your cheek in your hand and you only have to draw half your face. The last, believe it or not, is dated the very same month as the previous three. Unbelievable that I thought I could get away with this. Obviously should have kept my glasses on. Even if it isn’t me, it’s how I felt I should come across. And the hair is good. Only wish I still had so much to play with now.

Eric

My big brother. He looks like he’s just walked off a Thunderbirds set doesn’t he, but that’s just down to me and my lack of skill. Now here’s a portrait you can trust. He really is as nice and jolly as this makes him look. It’s certainly a lot more recognisable than his driving licence photo which he showed me the other day. And note my daring, actually using green on his face to mark in some of the shadows! Maybe there’s hope for me after all…

---