Gallery that mirrors a nation’s history

Press, 22 June 1984, Page 18

Gallery that mirrors a nation’s history

London’s National Portrait Gallery was set up in 1856 to house likenesses of “the most eminent persons in British history.” It has since acquired more than 8000 paintings, drawings, and sculptures of noted figures from the sixteenth century to the present day, many by outstanding artists. For many years it was thought inappropriate to exhibit a portrait until the sitter had been dead a decade. But such a restriction no longer applies and the gallery now abounds with contemporary paintings and photographs of leading personalities from many walks of life. A current exhibition, for instance, to mark the opening of new galleries for twentieth century portraits, features a study of the former Beatle, Paul McCartney.

By

MARINA VAIZEY,

“Sunday Times,” London

art critic,

Few countries possess art galleries devoted soley to portraits of a nation’s most prominent and respected citizens, both historical and contemporary. Britain is fortunate in having two such institutions — the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

The establishment of the London gallery in 1856 came about because of the passion Victorians had for history and because of the preeminence they gave not only to the study of the past, but to the idea of a hero. This owed a lot, in its turn, to the study of ancient Greece and Rome — at that time such a feature of British education.

Thomas Carlyle, spiritual and practical father of the National Portrait Gallery, argued: “Whoever has attempted the serious study of Biography, the first want he feels is that of a faithful Portrait of his hero’s physiognomy and outward figure.” Carlyle found that of all images “excellent Portraits of Historical Men” were “unspeakably the usefullest and most interesting to ingenuous souls.” The National Gallery, a monument to the best of Western art, is sited in Trafalgar Square, itself, with Nelson’s column and the great bronze lions by Landseer, a tribute to nineteenth century maritime victory, imperial reality — and imperial dreams. The National Portrait Gallery is next door, its collections of thousands of portraits in all media making a fascinating combination of gossip, anecdote, and fact.

Recently, the National Portrait Gallery opened new rooms devoted to the twentieth century — which it defined as starting from the period after the First World War. The years 1914 to 1918 are perhaps rightly seen as marking the beginning of a drastically new role for Britain in the world.

The gallery must always choose what it possesses as much for the interest of the subject as the quality of the art. It has only recently begun to commission portraits, partly as the result of the newly instituted John Player Portrait Awards, an annual open exhibition for young artists, which carries with its first prize a commission award. Until the late 1960 s it was felt that eminence was guaranteed by ensuring that portraits could enter the gallery only after the sitter had been dead for at least a decade. In one way, this has resulted in a stimulating mixture of kinds of imagery: from the formal oil portrait in a heavy gold frame to cartoons, caricatures, and news photographs. . Politicians, academics, stars of stage, screen and pop music, writers, scientists, explorers, sportsmen, press magnates, composers, lawyers, priests, and #ciety beauties are all oft show —

more than 500 portraits, hung high and low, some on revolving panels, the whole giving an astonishing effect of a multitude of personalities. Brief biographies form part of each label.

Particularly refreshing is the mixture of techniques and media. The gallery, alone among Britain’s museums, has regularly exhibited photographs with paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Indeed, it has argued that the existence of photography has diminished the art of portraiture in paint. Certainly, many of the most

arresting images to be found there are among the photograhs. Angus Mcßean’s double profile portraitphotograph of Vivien Leigh is a case in point: her beauty is both artificial and vulnerable, theatrical and human, and he has caught something of the tensions between her artifice as an actress and her complexity as a human being with brilliant visual economy. A whole section is devoted to Edith Sitwell, poet and performer, in which her chiselled face is caught by photographers (Cecil Beaton, Bill Brandt, and Howard-

Coster among them), drawings and paintings (Wyndham Lewis and Tchelitchew), and on the small screen, John Freeman’s absorbing television interview with Dame Edith, from the series “Face to Face” (1959). On a recent visit to the gallery I witnessed a spectator drawing, not from the photographs, drawings, and paintings on view, but from the moving television images. Perhaps most outstanding in artistic terms, however, are the portraits by artists of other artists — Duncan Grant’s two glowing studies of a fellow painter, Vanessa Bell; Christopher Wood’s radiant study of the rumpled young composer, Constant Lambert, all awkwardness and grace; and a scintillating series of self-portraits (David Bomberg, Lucian Freud, John Minton, Matthew Smith, among them). Politicians and public figures fare less well. There is no study as yet of the Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, and many official portraits are a little dreary. But there are exceptions: Ruskin Spear, a fluid, fluent painter, studies Lord RedcliffeMaud as a streak of tall elegance, and Sir Harold Wilson, the former Labour Prime Minister, is wreathed in pipe smoke. Suzi Malin shows Lord Home, relaxed, in fishing gear. The Prince of Wales looks serious and concerned, as do James Callaghan and Lord Denning, all by the same portraitist, Bryan Organ. But this very variety is refreshing. It includes Ben Nicholson’s elegant, spare double portrait as outlined profiles of himself and his sculptor wife, Barbara Hepworth; Alfred Wolmark’s exceptionally vivid self-portrait; an Alvin Langdon Coburn photograph, peculiarly hypnotic, of the imaginative illustrator Edmund Dulac; Dame Laura Knight’s marvellous self-portrait in a wonderful red hat looking at the nude model from which she is working; Sickert’s study of Churchill; and Graham Sutherland’s self-portrait.

The first special exhibition in the new galleries has been devoted to a portrait by Humphrey Ocean, a painter who won the John Player Award in 1982, of Paul McCartney, looking melancholy, thin, and a trifle careworn. It is accompanied by an absorbing series of sketches made by Ocean of the Wings’ tour of the United States in 1976. They show the hard work involved in a pop tour; the stars, Paul and Linda, exhausted; and all the people, from technicians to the wardrobe mistress, hard at work.

Slowly, the National Portrait Gallery is evolving into a museum not only of the outward appearances of those who have contributed to British life, but to something that shows how those lives have been lived.