I was thinking earlier today about the question of portraiture, on which I touched in yesterday’s posting. What brought it to mind again was a portrait of my father, painted many years ago by one of his neighbours. My responses to it keep changing, and it is interesting to reflect on why this might be the case.
As we face the (so far, distant) prospect of moving house I have started the process of sorting out things I would not wish to keep. Looking through one of my picture racks the other day I dug out this portrait, and it has been perched on top of the fling cabinet in the studio ever since. I really do find it hard to make up my mind about it.
When my father died I met his neighbour in the street, who told me that some time before he had painted Dad’s portrait (he was a fairly successful artist, I gather). It came as a surprise to me that such a thing existed, I had never heard before if its existence; but he insisted on giving it to me. The rest of the family were deeply divided about its merits. I could see that he had managed to capture a thoughtful and reflective, even gentle, side of my father that was not normally on view, concealed normally behind a very extroverted air of bonhomie. This hidden persona I had glimpsed in his later years, particularly when we had discussed the break-up of my first marriage. Others who saw the picture usually thought that it had just failed to capture the sitter’s essential character. I have never had it on display in the house until now, and it has been interesting to have the chance to consider it more carefully.
I some respects I have to say that it is not good, although its defects have to do with the artist’s technique rather than its representative success. It took me some time to work out why. The problem has to do with the inconsistency between the planes of the upper and lower parts of the face. Also, I think that the figure does tend to disappear too readily into the background.* Even so, it is noteworthy that a portrait can somehow “work” as such, and communicate a truth about the sitter, despite some deficiencies as a “likeness”.
What will be its eventual fate, in the process of preparing to move, is hard to say.
*It is interesting to compare it with the portrait I did of him, which is included in the series of images based on T.S.Eliot’s Four Quartets, that I did. Check it out in one of the “galleries” included in the web-site.