Leaders In Profile Pietro Annigoni Scorns Art Critics

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28793, 14 January 1959, Page 13

Leaders In Profile Pietro Annigoni Scorns Art Critics

[By SIMON KAVANAUGH!

LONDON. Pietro Annigoni is the most criticised artist of his age. He is accused of hiding poor draughtsmanship beneath a glossy surface. His work has been described as being "in the decadent manner of a third-rate painter of the 15th Century.” The portraitist Graham Sutherland thinks "he is out of touch with the whole stream of art.”

Others dismiss him as "fashionable.” And yet—ls,ooo people flocked to see bis portrait of Princess Margaret in 16 days. He has been acclaimed by Sir Alfred Munnings, a former president of the Royal Academy, as “The greatest painter of our time.” He gets more rich commissions than he can handle. What distinguishes Annigoni’s work is its faithful reproduction of the 'Subject—almost as if seen through the eye of a camera—an image at once oddly expressionless, yet disturbingly life-like. To ■ get this effect, Annigoni works for weeks over his canvases until they become masterpieces of detail and finish. The 48-year-old Annigoni is too astute a businessman not to live up to what his public expect a famous painter to be. He dresses extravagantly, twirls a silver-topped cane, cultivates deep, curly side-whiskers, and scatters compliments like bright confetti He “dreams forever” of a Duchess’s profile. A film star’s beauty "fills my mind every waking moment” His artistic eye is entranced—“Oh, how I would love to paint her portrait!” AU this, of course, is very remunerative. Royalty, aristocracy, VJ.P.’s of all descriptions, film and stage stars, ballerinas and moneyed nonentities rush to pose tor him —at upwards of £2OOO a time. Blank Cheque—And Refusal One American millionairess sent him a written order—and a blank cheque. And Annigoni, with 300 would-be subjects queueing anxiously, could afford to smile as he refused her. In the nine years since he became the world’s most famous portraitist, Annigoni has had such lucrative commissions as the painting of the Queen, Prince Philip, Princess Margaret, the Maharanee of Jaipur, the Duchess of Devonshire, and prima balerina Margot Fonteyn. His works have stirred up heated controversy. Painter Ruskin Spear said Annigoni’s portrait of Princess Margaret made her into “a kind of dummy.” Portraitist Philip Kaufman said: "The picture is dead. His even more controversial portrait of Prince Philip, which showed the Prince as stern, forbidding and cold, brought shocked comments from other artists. Says Annigoni himself: "People say they don’t like the way I painted Prince Philip. I can only say I am honest" Annigoni is and always has been contemptuous of his critics. They worry him not one jot Controversy, he knows, brings him more fame. This is all part of his air of splendid isolation —a "master” in a field of artistic muddlers, a straight-dealer in the smooth tempera medium such as the world of art has not seen since the Renaissance. Annigoni dismisses modern painters as unimportant. “They have gone back to the stage of Australian aborigines who painted for decoration alone.” And in this he includes Pablo Picasso—“He was quite a good artist 'in his early period.” In looks, Pietro Annigoni is something between a Spanish pirate and a Latin Quarter guitarist. He has a gold-toothed grin, black eyes and a long nose; he chain-smokes Itauan cigarettes, and tugs at his Teddy Boy sidewhiskers with square hands. He firmly believes there is no God—- “ That is the great tragedy”—but spends most of his time painting religious frescoes on the walls of churches. If he had Faith, he says, he could paint much better. Painstaking In Work Annigoni is nearly as painstaking in his work as the Renaissance masters whose style he has adopted. Where Augustus John, for instance, may spend as little as an hour for a portrait, Annigoni often takes over 50 hourly sittings, occasionally more than a hundred. He has been known to spend four weeks on the painting of a hand. At work in his studios, he wears a battle-jacket once owned by U.S. General Mark Clark, a scarf and corduroy slacks. He is a neat worker, mixing his tempera (a mixture of oil, eggs, garnish, wine and colour-

powders) carefully and applying it with infinite patience to the canvas.

Success has not spoiled Annigoni. He still has no car; prefers a bicycle. He eats in the same restaurants, and mixes with the same people he knew before fame found him.

But Annigoni’s is no rags-to-riches story. Born in Milan in 1910, the son of an engineer, he enrolled as,a student at the Academia in Florence, and studied there' for 10 years, rapidly making a name for himself as a “rebel”—he was constantly at war with his teachers—and an accomplished sketch-artist Throughout the war, Annigoni painted in his Florence studio. By war’s end his name was becoming well known. One who heard it mentioned was General Mark Clark, Commander of the _ United States armies in Italy, and he commissioned Annigoni to paint his portrait

Clark refused during the 15 sittings to see how the work was going. But when it was finished and Clark saw it for the first time he said angrily: Til have you know I never lost a battle.*’

Instead of painting a victorious hero, Annigoni had painted a soldier with hard lines round his mouth and eyes, a face heavy with war-weariness. Earlier, with two friends, Annigoni had toured Europe on foot, sketching and painting busily nearly every mile of the way. All his sketches were fijed away, but some formed the basis of a later famous painting, “The Way to the Sermon on the Mount,” which shows over 100 people on their way to hear Christ “The Way to the Sermon,” which took seven years to complete now covers a whole wall in the home of Annigoni’s patron, wealthy Milan industrialist Luigi BressanL First Visit to London

Disapponted wth the post-war Florence, and anxous to show his work to a larger public, Annigoni visited London in the cold March of 1949 and hawked his drawings round the art galleries of Bond Street. They all turned him down. After three months, baffled and despondent he returned to Florence, forgetting in his downcast mood that he had submitted a self-portait to the Royal Academy. • He had been back in Florence only one week when a cable arrived, telling him that not only had his self-portrait been accepted, but also that London’s art circles were wildly excited about it.

One critic called Annigoni the “20th Century Rembrandt.” Munnings called him the "greatest painter of our time.” Now his works were in demand.! Today, Annigoni paints only ini Florence, signs his portraits with I thumb-nail pictures of himself somewhere in the background, talks incessantly about beautyl (though once he said only three things in life were beautiful—"birds, trees, and cold chicken”), and illustrates children’s books in his spare time. He is separated from his 42-year-old wife, Anna Maggini (she was his first model 20 years ago), but dotes on his two children, Benedetto and Maria Ricciarda.

Annigoni’s Renaissance-style realism, his painstaking attention to detail and finish, lift him clear of the “isms” of art and place him in the select category of painters whose works do not need to be "understood.” His is a style which enables the public as a whole to exclaim wisely: “This is a true work of art. It is just like an old master.” This is the secret of Annigoni’s success. And. conscious of this, he scorns the “new” schools of painters.

"Italy swarms with young men who paint prettily coloured triangles,” he once said. “There is no doubt that they are keen on their work—but most of them are only abstract painters because they find it easier to master than other forms at ort.”