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Face to Face SPRING 2012

Lucian Freud Portraits My Favourite Portrait by Anna Chancellor Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People Richard Hamilton: Portraits of the Artist F2F_Issue 38_FINAL_Layout 1 31/01/2012 13:21 Page 2

COVER AND BELOW Self-portrait by Lucian Freud, 1963 National Portrait Gallery, © The Lucian Freud Archive

This portrait will feature in the exhibition Lucian Freud Portraits from 9 February until 27 May 2012 in the Wolfson and Ground Floor Lerner Galleries

Face to Face Issue 38 Deputy Director & Director of Communications and Development Pim Baxter Communications Officer Helen Corcoran Editor Elisabeth Ingles Designer Annabel Dalziel

All images National Portrait Gallery, London and © National Portrait Gallery, London, unless stated www.npg.org.uk Recorded Information Line 020 7312 2463 F2F_Issue 38_FINAL_Layout 1 31/01/2012 13:21 Page 3

FROM THE DIRECTOR

THIS SPRING the Gallery presents Lucian Freud Beyond the Gallery, the innovative display Portraits, the first exhibition to focus on Freud’s Natural Arts: Great Landscape Designers of portraiture. Spanning seven decades, from the the 18th Century is on show from 11 February early 1940s to the artist’s death in July 2011, 2012 at the National Trust property Lucian Freud Portraits includes iconic and Beningbrough Hall, . Curator Clare rarely seen portraits of his lovers, friends and Barlow describes this display, which presents family. Exhibition curator Sarah Howgate historical portraits of gardeners from the explores Freud’s work on pages 6 to 11. Gallery’s Collection alongside contemporary photographs of the National Trust gardens Alongside this major exhibition, a number they created, on page 13. of free displays are on show throughout the Gallery. On page 3, display curator Ruth On page 17 you can read about the events Brimacombe writes about Dickens: Life & that led to my book, and the Case Legacy, a collection of prints, drawings and of the Stolen Turners, published earlier this photographs marking the bicentenary of year. This is not an adventure I would wish the author’s birth, and on page 12 curator to repeat! Paul Moorhouse looks back over the life and career of Richard Hamilton, to whom Richard Lastly, as the Taylor Wessing Photographic Hamilton: Portraits of the Artist pays tribute. Portrait Prize 2011 exhibition comes to a Beatrice Behlen, co-curator of Gertie Millar, close, Clare Ferguson, Consultant at Taylor Countess of Dudley: Stage to Society, Wessing, shares her experience of sitting recounts her experience of rediscovering on the judging panel, and on pages 4 and 5 photographs of a forgotten musical comedy considers some of her favourite portraits star on page 16. in the exhibition.

On display at the Gallery until July 2012, Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People presents a remarkable set of portraits of Sandy Nairne unknown sitters painted between 1520 and DIRECTOR 1650. The pictures are accompanied by fictional biographies written by such acclaimed authors as Julian Fellowes and Alexander McCall Smith, which feature in a new Gallery publication. Author Tracy Chevalier describes writing two short stories for Imagined Lives on pages 14 and 15.

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MY FAVOURITE PORTRAIT BELOW Laura Knight; Ella Louise by Anna Chancellor Naper (née Champion) Actress by Dame Laura Knight, 1913 © Reproduced with permission of The Estate of Dame Laura Knight DBE RA, 2012. All Rights Reserved. On display in Room 30 Image courtesy Anna Chancellor Image courtesy

IADMIREthe painterliness of this work, but There’s an ambivalence about this portrait: I also like not knowing too much about the art is it a painting of a woman loving another of painting: when I look at this portrait I’m an woman, or a statement by an artist at a time amateur observer, I only have a pure reaction. of great political upheaval – a skilled woman It’s completely different from how I approach saying, ‘I have as much right as a man to a play, although I think of acting as a form of paint a nude’? portraiture: portraying a character, making it come to life. Whatever the artist’s intention, it’s an example of what womanly creativity does best. It’s a This painting is an object of great beauty. great painting. I adore it – I wish I had it. Physically, I love the contrast between the rich orange-reds and the pale skin of the model. Anna Chancellor has performed for theatre, television I like the texture of the thick paint, and the and film for over twenty years. Famously starring as the inimitable ‘Duckface’ in Four Weddings And A Funeral, complex composition: the three figures in a she has also appeared in Kavanagh QC, Spooks, Tipping triangle, the painter at her easel on the left the Velvet and Pride and Prejudice. Anna recently starred working on a half-finished picture, and the in The Last of the Duchess at the Hampstead Theatre, nude posing in front of her on the right. One and is currently filming the second series of The Hour for the BBC. Forthcoming roles include performances wonders if the painting goes on and on: is in a West End run of a much-anticipated double bill: the artist painting herself in the picture too? Terence Rattigan’s ever-popular The Browning Version and South Downs by David Hare. I see this painting as a great homage to a naked woman. The woman’s body is so beautiful, so sensual – the tones of the flesh, the pink bottom. Yet the scene is relaxed; the carpet the nude stands on has a comfortable, familiar quality, like a beach towel.

And then there’s the self-portrait of the artist, who chooses to paint herself from behind. There’s a complete lack of vanity (compared to the figure on the right she’s rather broad in the beam), but she’s so alert, she has such an intelligent face. There’s no self-aggrandisement, no false humility. She’s the quiet woman working her way to the front. There’s nothing brash about her.

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CHARLES DICKENS: Charles Dickens: BELOW Life & Legacy Charles Dickens (detail) LIFE & LEGACY until 22 April 2012 by Daniel Maclise, 1839 by Ruth Brimacombe Room 24 case display © 2012, on loan to the National Portrait Gallery, London Assistant Curator Admission free

PART OF A GLOBAL celebration to mark the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’s birth in February 1812, this biographical display explores the lasting significance of the legendary nineteenth-century writer, celebrated as ‘the most English of storytellers’. Shown alongside the portrait by Dickens’s close friend Daniel Maclise of the brilliant young author on the crest of rising fame, the display presents a variety of images of him, as well as portraits of his family, friends and contemporaries, during the mature phase of his career when his reputation was at its peak. Capturing a sense of the man, whose eyes reportedly ‘had as much life and animation in them as twenty ordinary eyes’, the display also considers Dickens’s American tours in 1842 and 1867.

Drawing on contextual works from the Gallery’s Archive, Charles Dickens: Life & Legacy includes a range of prints, drawings and photographs that together demonstrate the continuing effects of his ‘mighty creative imagination’. A popular theme associated with the author was the notion that the rich characters he invented took on a life of their the vengeful, jilted bride Miss Havisham in own, and the strong visual quality of his David Lean’s award-winning production. narratives meant that they were quickly transferred to the stage. Coinciding with the When Dickens died suddenly in June 1870 the film remake of Great Expectations directed by standard portrait motif took on a darker edge. Mike Newell, the display looks at some of the The display ends with a series of memorial actors who have embodied Dickens’s many images, created posthumously, playing characters since 1836. One particular highlight with the idea of the exhausted writer fatally of this display is Cecil Beaton’s image, from drained by the vibrant array of characters 1945, of Martita Hunt playing the role of that drew life from his imagination.

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TAYLOR WESSING PHOTOGRAPHIC BELOW FROM TOP OPPOSITE PAGE FROM LEFT Abenther, Ari Boy The Embrace PORTRAIT PRIZE 2011: A JUDGE’S with Toy Car by Jonathan May PERSPECTIVE by Harry Hook © Jonathan May © Harry Hook by Clare Ferguson Grace Consultant, Taylor Wessing, and Taylor Wessing Malega, Surma Boy by Carol Allen Storey by Mario Marino © Carol Allen Storey Photographic Portrait Prize 2011 Judge © Mario Marino

YEARS AGO I was lucky enough to help catalogue some original photographs taken by iconic early photographers such as Henry Fox Talbot, and Alfred Stieglitz. My interest in photography was ignited, so I was thrilled when Taylor Wessing started its relationship with the National Portrait Gallery, and delighted to be on the judging panel for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011.

The wonderfully diverse, challenging, funny, tender, shocking images that we were shown each told a story but what that story was we did not know. We knew nothing about the photographer, or what lay behind the image. So our imagination filled the gap. Several of the final sixty turned out to depict something quite other than the judges had thought. One of a mother and child proved to be of a mother and doll. One of imagined combat loss depicted parental grief at their child having left home. We all wondered at the fate of the guinea pig in Jooney Woodward’s winning photograph. So stark was the background, so direct the girl’s gaze that I assumed, wrongly, that the guinea pig was not long for this world.

The process of judging is managed scrupulously fairly by the Gallery’s Director, Sandy Nairne, and it was enlightening to listen to the other panel members expressing their views from a much more expert platform than mine as to why this or that photograph was worthy of progressing through the

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Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011 Taylor Wessing Photographic until 12 February 2012 Portrait Prize 2011 Porter Gallery with an essay by Michael Admission £2 Bracewell and interviews Free for Gallery Supporters by Richard McClure Sponsored by Taylor Wessing £15 (paperback), or £13 when exhibition ticket is shown Available from Gallery Shops and online at www.npg.org.uk/shop

selection process. Selecting involves several hours of debate and several hundred images were visited and revisited. This methodical review produced surprising results: an early candidate could fade away, while another might creep up on the inside track to gain Storey. Each of these four seems to say considerable support. something about survival in this tumultuous world. If I could add two more I would My personal favourites are those which are choose, first, Berlo Bevilacqua’s extraordinary enigmatic and defy snap judgment. Whilst the image of Gianni Hermit For Love, where, technical craftsmanship is always important, naturally, the dogs are a great deal more the images which gripped me were those curious than the hermit, and secondly the with a sense of intrigue. What caused the bleak depiction of The King’s Palace Kabul by mutilation to Bibi Aisha’s face (JodiBieber)? Jeremy Rata where the skeletal remains, dust How could Leo Gormley (Mark Johnson) smile and rubble seem palpable – and shocking. so tenderly after his atrocious burns? What was going on with Anna (Paolo Patrizi) lying It was such a privilege to be one of the judges on the mattress in the reeds? this year. Taylor Wessing’s relationship with the National Portrait Gallery has grown from My four personal favourite images are shown strength to strength and long may it continue in this article: Harry Hook’s Abenther, Ari Boy to do so. It enriches our lives, those of our with Toy Car; Jonathan May’s The Embrace; clients and other charity partners and, we Mario Marino’s Malega, Surma Boy, and the hope, helps the winning candidates to gain glorious luminescent Grace by Carol Allen international recognition.

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LUCIAN FREUD PORTRAITS Lucian Freud Portraits from 9 February until 27 May 2012 by Sarah Howgate Wolfson and Ground Floor Lerner Galleries Contemporary Curator Admission £14 Concessions £13/£12 Free for Gallery Supporters Sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch Spring Season sponsor Herbert Smith

‘Nobody is representing anything. Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait, even if it’s a chair.’ Lucian Freud

THE IDEA of the National Portrait Gallery hosting a survey exhibition of Lucian Freud’s portraits was developed in 2006. The time felt right to embark on an ambitious exhibition which would investigate seven decades of the artist’s portrait work and explore his influence and legacy as a modern master of figuration. This had never been undertaken before and it seemed fitting that it should take place in 2012, our Olympic year, and the year that Freud would turn ninety. When the Director Sandy Nairne approached the artist with the proposal, Freud was excited about his work being shown in the context of 500 years of portraiture and amused at the idea of being hailed as an elderly Olympian. With his support, work began on the exhibition in earnest. The selection was made in close collaboration with the artist and his assistant, the painter David Dawson, who worked with him for the last twenty years. Sadly, with a small number of drawings and etchings. Freud’s death last summer he will not be Arranged over ten rooms, the exhibition here to see the exhibition come to fruition. extends throughout the Lerner Galleries, However, it is our intention to make Lucian where the Contemporary Collection usually Freud Portraits a celebration rather than hangs, and into the Wolfson Gallery space. a memorial. Hung broadly chronologically, it charts Freud’s technical virtuosity and stylistic development. The selection of works focuses on portrait heads and figure paintings – although Freud’s Lucian Freud Portraits is a profoundly personal beloved whippet, Pluto, and David Dawson’s exhibition; rather than being a biographical whippet, Eli, also make appearances. There retrospective, it charts a life in paint. Each are over 130 works, mainly paintings but also portrait is the realisation of a relationship

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OPPOSITE PAGE BELOW Girl with Roses, 1947–8 Hotel Bedroom, 1954 British Council Collection Gift of The Beaverbrook © The Lucian Freud Archive. Foundation © The Lucian Freud Photo: Courtesy Lucian Freud Archive. Photo: Courtesy Lucian Archive Freud Archive

between artist and model that has slowly Two years later the double portrait Hotel developed over time behind the closed door Bedroom (1954) paints a different picture of the studio. Freud’s friends, family and of their relationship. The two figures appear acquaintances have always been an eclectic to be entirely separate in the composition – group, and this is reflected in the variety of Freud’s detached, shadowy figure looks out at individual faces and bodies that occupy his the viewer, while Caroline, anxiously biting her paintings. Although many of his subjects have fingernail, appears absent. In 1993 Caroline led complex lives, with the exception of some reflected on sitting for the artist, an experience public figures, most of them prefer to remain she had never relished: ‘I myself was anonymous. dismayed, others were mystified as to why

From an early age, Freud’s work was dominated by the portrait and the exhibition opens with a self-portrait from 1943, Man with a Feather, alongside portraits of his friend, the patron and collector Peter Watson, and his tutor at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, , whose work Freud admired. Freud’s first wife, , the daughter of the sculptor , is represented in four psychologically charged paintings. These early works are characterised by a distinctive, unsparing vision and linear approach, which led the art historian Herbert Read to describe Freud as ‘the Ingres of Existentialism’. Girl with Roses (1947–8), a portrait of a pregnant Kitty, suggests that their relationship at the time was based on a tender, almost courtly love. Freud pays forensic attention to every detail, from the subtle tonalities of her waxen skin to each individual lock of hair.

Girl in Bed (1952) is an achingly beautiful portrait of Caroline Blackwood, Freud’s second wife, in all her wide-eyed innocence.

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BELOW Woman Smiling, 1958–9 Private Collection © The Lucian Freud Archive. Photo: Courtesy Lucian Freud Archive

he needed to paint a girl, who at that point still looked childish, as so distressingly old.’

Hotel Bedroom was the last painting Freud made sitting down. Rejecting the praise of those who admired his linear approach, by the mid-1950s he had moved away from this objective style. He abandoned his soft sable brushes in favour of coarser hog’s-hair bristles and began to paint standing up. The result is a more vigorous and liberated approach. Woman Smiling (1958–9), a portrait of the artist Suzy Boyt, marks a transitional moment in Freud’s work. For the first time the viewer is made aware of the landscape of the face, the mottled skin and the bone structure beneath the flesh. It is also an unusual painting for Freud in that his subject is smiling. Boyt was a pupil of Freud’s at the Slade School of Art and later became his lover and the mother of four of his children. Their friendship continued, and nearly thirty years later she appears in Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau) (1981–3). a painting so shocking that it wasn’t exhibited until 1988. Perhaps, although painted over In 1966 Freud began to investigate painting forty years ago, Naked Girl still has the power the whole person rather than focusing on to shock, too, in 2012. the head. Unrelenting in their observational intensity, the paintings here begin to show Freud’s portraits of his mother, Lucie, belong very particular bodies and individuals. to a long tradition, from Rembrandt to Between 1966 and 1968 he painted three Whistler, of sons painting their mothers. Four nude studies of the same woman, two of paintings of Lucie have been drawn together which feature in the exhibition. All three were for the exhibition along with a rare drawing painted from the same high viewpoint. Naked of Freud’s father, Ernst, from 1970, the year Girl, the first in the series, is the most startling he died. Freud did not paint his mother in in its directness. Comparisons can be drawn earnest until her old age. Lucian was Lucie’s with Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde (1866), favourite son and she had always taken a

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BELOW Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau), 1981–3 Private Collection © The Lucian Freud Archive. Photo: Courtesy Lucian Freud Archive

great interest in the artist and his work, that drove him on. The five players are Suzy which he found overbearing. When Freud’s Boyt (seen earlier in Woman Smiling) on the father died his mother descended into a deep right, with the central figure, her son Kai, depression and for Freud it was his mother’s who stands in for , seated next to her. loss of interest in life that made her an ideal Freud’s daughter Bella plays the mandolin, model. The Painter’s Mother Resting (1982–4) and the painter sits on the left. is Freud’s last major painting of his mother The child lying on the floor was originally and a moving and sensitive study of old age. going to be one of Freud’s grandchildren Although she did not die until 1989, there is but she was unavailable and was replaced a sense that she is waiting to die here; her with Star, a reluctant alternative. Watteau’s gaze is far away. Her white clothes and the pastoral idyll is replaced with a rehearsal room neutral, sunlit blinds give the painting a atmosphere of rough plasterwork, exposed serene, almost religious quality. pipes and an unruly plant. Freud’s intention is to show people ‘rehearsing themselves In 1977 the artist moved to a more spacious as themselves’. studio in Holland Park. This new space gave him the freedom to paint on a larger scale, A room in the exhibition is devoted to three and a skylight gave him brighter painting grand paintings of the Australian performance conditions. For continuity Freud began artist . Freud met Bowery in dividing his paintings into those done at 1990 at a performance at the Anthony night and those made during the day. The warmth of the flesh in the daylight paintings contrasts with the bluish hue cast by the electric light in the night paintings. He was always careful to separate his models for the day paintings and the night paintings so that they didn’t encounter each other. The ambition of the new works is reflected in Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau), which occupies a central position in the exhibition. The composition, based on Pierrot Content by Watteau, was complex, and the execution of the work was made more challenging because Freud was suffering from a stiff painting arm at the time. But it was his fear that he might never be able to paint on this scale again

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Lucian Freud Portraits TOP BELOW by Sarah Howgate. Essay and Benefits Supervisor Leigh Bowery (Seated), interviews by Michael Auping Sleeping, 1995 1990 with a contribution by John Private Collection © The Lucian Private Collection © The Lucian Freud Archive. Photo: Courtesy Freud Archive. Photo: Courtesy Richardson £35 (hardback) and Lucian Freud Archive Lucian Freud Archive £25 (Gallery exclusive paperback) Available from Gallery Shops and online at www.npg.org.uk/shop Publication date 9 February 2012

d’Offay Gallery. Attracted to Bowery’s fearlessness, he invited him to sit. The artist was surprised to find that, although known for his outrageous costumes and body piercings, Bowery chose to pose naked. Despite his size Freud found him physically aware, delicate and ‘perfectly beautiful’ and over the next four years he became Freud’s most consistent model. Freud always shunned working with professional models, but, as a performer, Bowery was able to invent and sustain carnivalesque poses. As a result, Freud’s painting entered its baroque phase. Freud and Bowery developed a close relationship. Although from very different walks of life, they shared a love of danger and performance of very different kinds. Freud was unaware that Bowery was dying of AIDS until shortly before his death. Looking at his huge statuesque proportions, it is hard to believe that he was so ill. In Leigh Bowery (Seated) he sits naked in an armchair, happy in his own skin, his expression inscrutable and puckish.

Leigh Bowery introduced Freud to friends he thought might interest him, including , the Benefits Supervisor, or ‘Big Sue’ as she became known. Although he was initially fascinated by her size, as time passed she became more ordinary to him. Freud was struck by Sue’s femininity and her pose, as she lounges on the overstuffed sofa in Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, is as feminine as a Rokeby Venus, although less idealised. The four major paintings of Big Sue are brought together in one room for this exhibition.

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BELOW RIGHT Lucian Freud: Painting People Eli and David, with an introduction by Martin 2005–6 Gayford and an appreciation by Private Collection © The Lucian David Hockney £10 (paperback) Freud Archive. Photo: Courtesy Lucian Freud Archive Available from Gallery Shops and online at www.npg.org.uk/shop Publication date 9 February 2012

Freud produced many self-portraits throughout another and a love of painting. This was to his career and we include twelve, which we be Freud’s last painting. He had continued encounter throughout the exhibition. In order working on it until he was too frail to carry on, to understand the rigours of sitting the artist and it was left unfinished on the artist’s easel felt an obligation to his sitters to make when he died. By observing intently and portraits of himself. A moment to be naked, painting hard to the last, always with a sense honest and alone, his self-portraits became of risk and danger, Freud has given us, in the increasingly inward-looking as his career words of Bruce Bernard, a ‘deepened sense – progressed. Reflection (Self-portrait) (1985) far beyond the scope of a photograph or any is a particularly introspective work. Freud’s other medium – of how certain human beings gaze is elsewhere, his eyes appearing to be looked and felt in the second half of the looking inward. twentieth century.’

By the early 1990s Freud’s international reputation as a modern master of figuration was firmly established. Despite his new-found fame, he continued to guard his privacy carefully, and the pattern of his life remained the same. His world was the studio and the close circle of people who visited him there to look at or sit for portraits. The final room of the exhibition will include three paintings of David Dawson, Freud’s constant model and companion in recent years. For the last four years Freud had been working on an affectionate double portrait of Dawson and his whippet, Eli, Portrait of the Hound. Nowhere is Freud’s abiding theme of the complicity between the human and the animal more evident than in his paintings of Dawson and Eli. Dawson poses nude, looking up at Freud, while Eli lies beside him. They are equals and their bodies share the same rhythms. Freud said that he knew Dawson better than anyone else. They shared a mutual understanding, a respect for one

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RICHARD HAMILTON: LEFT Richard Hamilton PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST by Richard Hamilton, 1970 by Paul Moorhouse © DACS Curator, 20th Century BELOW Richard Hamilton by Jorge Lewinski, 1964 © The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth

he was expelled for failing to respond to instruction in painting – and the Slade School of Art (1948–51). However, it was not until 1956, when Hamilton was in his thirties, that he made the collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing, a seminal work that became one of the icons of Pop Art. By then Hamilton’s membership of Group, which met in the early 1950s at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, had provided a focus for study and appreciation of popular culture, particularly that emanating from America. The visual language of contemporary society – advertisements, consumer products, packaging, magazines, cinema, fashion and design – fascinated Hamilton and in Just what is it he incorporated all these elements within a single, telling image. It was the beginning of a sustained interrogation and celebration of mass culture in the form of art, a mission that he later described as striving ‘for a new RICHARD HAMILTON, who died earlier this year image of art to signify an understanding of aged eighty-nine, was one of the founders man’s changing state…’. of Pop Art in Britain and among this country’s most respected artists. This display of portraits In addition to painting, which was his of Hamilton, which includes photographs by primary medium, Hamilton’s artistic vision Lord Snowdon and Jorge Lewinski as well as encompassed printmaking, sculpture, images by David Hockney and Hamilton photography and, latterly, computer himself, was originally intended to mark the technology. All these processes served an artist’s approaching ninetieth birthday. It now artist whose illuminating engagement with pays tribute to a remarkable life and career. the modern world remains unique.

Hamilton was born in Pimlico, London, in 1922. He studied at St Martin’s School of Art (1936), Richard Hamilton: Portraits of the Artist will be on the Royal Academy (1938–40) – from which display until 14 May 2012 in Room 32. Admission free

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NATURAL ARTS: GREAT Natural Arts: Great BELOW Landscape Designers The Temple of British LANDSCAPE DESIGNERS OF of the 18th Century Worthies, c.1735, with the THE 18TH CENTURY from 11 February 2012 Palladian Bridge beyond. by Clare Barlow until 30 January 2013 Stowe Landscape Gardens, Beningbrough Hall, Assistant Curator North Yorkshire ©NTPL/Jerry Harpur

NATURAL ARTS: GREAT LANDSCAPE DESIGNERS OF THE 18TH CENTURY brings together portraits of eighteenth-century garden designers from the National Portrait Gallery with modern photographs of the National Trust gardens where they made their mark, together with audio commentaries on their living legacy from the National Trust staff who care for the featured sites.

The eighteenth century was the golden age of garden design, as landscape designers such as Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716–1783) reshaped country estates into an idealised vision of rural Britain. Brown tore up terraces, dug basins for lakes and excavated great mounds of earth to create open vistas of gently rolling slopes which he populated with roaming herds of cattle and sheep. He punctuated these views with neo-classical temples – his aptly named ‘eye-catchers’. Natural Arts pairs portraits with contemporary Brown’s triumph confirmed the gardener’s photography selected from the National Trust’s newfound fame. His portrait, by Nathaniel extensive picture library to explore the living Dance, the centrepiece of this display, affirms legacy of the giants of eighteenth-century his status and charisma. But Brown was not landscape design. Gardeners such as Brown, alone in his success. The landscape garden Kent and Repton transformed the aristocratic was a long-standing British phenomenon estate into a place of beauty and leisure. Their and this display includes portraits of Brown’s gardens continue to serve this purpose today, forerunners and successors, such as William as new generations of visitors enjoy their Kent (c.1685–1748), who filled the gardens carefully crafted views of the British landscape at Stowe with coded political messages, garden thanks to the National Trust. and Humphry Repton (1752–1818), who incorporated features from Brown’s This exhibition has been organised by the National Portrait Gallery and the National Trust. Beningbrough landscapes into his design for Sheringham Hall is a long-term Regional Partner of the National Park in Norfolk. Portrait Gallery.

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IMAGINED LIVES: PORTRAITS BELOW LEFT FALSE MARY OF UNKNOWN PEOPLE by Alexander McCall Smith by Catherine Daunt Unknown woman, formerly known Imagined Lives Project Curator as Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–87) (detail) by an unknown artist, c.1570

THE PORTRAITS in this display depict people past year, has been incorporated into the whose identities have been lost or become accompanying text. uncertain. Dating from between 1520 and 1650, each painting was purchased by the For the original display, seven internationally Gallery as a known person, including such renowned authors composed fictional illustrious figures as Queen Elizabeth I and biographies and character sketches, giving the poet Sir Thomas Overbury. However, their imaginary identities to the people in the identities have since been disputed and, as a portraits. The stories were available to read result, each has become an ‘unknown sitter’. alongside the paintings and were published in an illustrated book. Exclusively for the display Previously on show at the Gallery’s Regional at the National Portrait Gallery, Alexander Partner Montacute House in Somerset, this McCall Smith has written a brand new story display has been augmented by a remarkable inspired by the additional portrait of the addition: a portrait from c.1570 of a woman mystery woman. The new story has been formerly thought to be Mary, Queen of Scots. published in a beautifully re-designed book Furthermore, new information about some that also includes the original stories by of the portraits, which has emerged in the authors John Banville, Tracy Chevalier, Julian Fellowes, Terry Pratchett, Sarah Singleton, Joanna Trollope and Minette Walters.

Accompanying events include a talk by Joanna Trollope on 23 February 2012 and a lunch-time talk by Minette Walters on 19 April 2012. For more information about the Gallery’s talks and events programme, please visit www.npg.org.uk/whatson or call 0207 306 0055.

Author Tracy Chevalier on writing two short stories for Imagined Lives: ‘A Hand on My Shoulder’ and ‘Rosy’:

I was intrigued to discover that the National Portrait Gallery owns quite a number of ‘orphans’ – portraits wrongly assumed to be certain people, but now

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BELOW TOP BOTTOM Imagined Lives: Portraits of ROSY A HAND ON MY Unknown People by Tracy Chevalier SHOULDER £7.99 (paperback) by Tracy Chevalier Probably Sir Robert Available from Gallery Shops and Dudley (1574–1649), Unknown woman, online at www.npg.org.uk/shop formerly known as Sir formerly known as See back cover for special Gallery Thomas Overbury Queen Elizabeth I Supporters’ Offer (1581–1613) (1533–1603) by an unknown artist by an unknown artist

disconnected from any biography. The subjects in these paintings no longer have names or history attached; it gives them an untethered, floating quality, like a balloon that has escaped into the sky.

I wrote a novel about just such a painting: Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. We know nothing about her – who she is, her relation to Vermeer – and I had to guess at her story just from her clothes, her expression, and Vermeer’s desire to paint her. So I am familiar with looking for the telling details that might give us some indication of a subject’s character. I love having just a little bit to set me off.

‘Rosy’, the young man I wrote about, has flushed cheeks and wears a gorgeous, almost dandyish doublet. The noblewoman in ‘A Hand on My Shoulder’ is gaunt, with feverish eyes. Both are well off – Tudor portraits rarely depict anyone poor. From those few clues I have built moments that reveal quite a lot about the two, their loves, their concerns, their sorrows. It’s surprising how much you can pack into 500 words.

I hope that these brief stories will encourage viewers to think up their own stories about paintings they look at, whether the subject is known or not. A face carries in it a whole world to unlock.

Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People will be on display until 22 July 2012 in Room 33. Admission free

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SEARCHING FOR GERTIE MILLAR Gertie Millar, Countess of BELOW Dudley: Stage to Society Gertie Millar as ‘Jumping by Beatrice Behlen from 16 April Jack’ in Bric-à-Brac Senior Curator, Fashion & Decorative Arts, until 16 December 2012 (detail) by Rita Martin, Museum of London Room 31 1916 Admission Free Courtesy of Museum of London

MY INTEREST in Gertie Millar began a few years ago when I first showed an Edwardian album of photographs from the Museum of London collection to a student researching the dressmaker Lucile. The album contained thirty- seven photographs of a very pretty young woman in a variety of fabulous disguises, including the Lucile dress, who was sometimes accompanied by a dog. I fell in love with it and wanted to know more about the sitter and her photographer.

I learned that she was Gertie Millar, born in 1879 in Bradford where she first appeared on the stage aged twelve. By 1899 Gertie was a member of a touring company with several engagements in and around London. Her of the Edwardian age to appeal to the early career coincided with the rise of a new postwar generation. After Monckton’s death form of entertainment: musical comedies with in 1924, Millar married the immensely rich far-fetched, highly improbable storylines that William Humble Ward, 2nd Earl of Dudley. attracted huge audiences, including the new king, Edward VII. Millar’s first major role was Researching Gertie Millar online brought as the bridesmaid Cora in The Toreador, me to the National Portrait Gallery’s website which opened on 17 June 1901 and ran for and a description of Millar as ‘Jumping Jack’ a staggering 675 performances. At the end in the revue Bric-à-Brac. I visited the Gallery’s of 1902 Millar married one of the composers, Photographs Department, where curators the former lawyer and theatre critic Lionel confirmed my suspicion that the portraits were Monckton, who together with Ivan Caryll taken by Rita Martin. I am delighted that the wrote many hit songs for his wife. Among her National Portrait Gallery is commemorating greatest successes were the title roles in Our the sixtieth anniversary of Millar’s death with Miss Gibbs (1909) and The Quaker Girl (1910). a display showcasing photographs by Rita Martin, Bassano and the Lafayette studios. Millar continued to perform during the First By all accounts, not least Noël Coward’s, World War and retired from the stage in 1918. Millar was charming, gracious and absolutely The musical comedy style was becoming unique, qualities that have survived in the outdated and Millar was too much a product many photographs taken of her.

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CHASING THE TURNERS: Art Theft and the Case of the Stolen Turners by Sandy Nairne ART THEFT AND THE CASE £20.00 (hardback) OF THE STOLEN TURNERS Available from Gallery Shops and online at by Sandy Nairne www.npg.org.uk/shop Director and Author

IT WAS A VERY unexpected development ‘payments for information’ needed to be in my work that in 1994 I became the debated, and I wanted to examine how high co-ordinator of the efforts to recover two monetary value – as the principal motivation important late paintings by J.M.W. Turner, for art theft – can be understood when stolen stolen while on loan from the Tate to a public works cannot actually be sold on. I was also gallery in Frankfurt. I was working as one of fascinated with the influence of ideas of art two deputies to Nicholas Serota when he rang theft as they appear in fiction and film – what early on the morning of Friday 30 July 1994 you might call ‘the Thomas Crown effect’. All with the terrible news that two paintings from this and more is included in Art Theft and the the Turner Bequest – Shade and Darkness Case of the Stolen Turners, now published by and Light and Colour – had been taken in the Reaktion Books. night. A complex pursuit followed, with many twists and turns, and an eventual agreement, To purchase an exclusive signed copy of Art Theft and in 2000, with various authorities in Germany the Case of the Stolen Turners by Sandy Nairne for the special Gallery Supporters’ offer price of £18.00 (RRP and Britain, that a ‘fee for information, leading £20.00, hardback) please telephone 020 7321 6624, to recovery’ could be paid to a German lawyer. quoting ‘Face to Face’. Offer subject to availability, cost of UK postage and packing not included (£2.99). The actual thieves had by this time been jailed, Valid from 6 February 2012 until 31 May 2012. but this lawyer was in touch with those who now had control of the paintings – crucially, they were not the criminals who had organised the original theft. One of my greatest worries was that in the intervening period various criminals might have tried to make copies of the paintings. So when I made an inspection of the first painting on 19 July 2000 in Frankfurt, it was with Roy Perry, the Tate’s senior conservator of paintings, at my side. We had to be certain that this actually was the Turner painting.

After spending eight and a half years on the pursuit, I decided that a book which would tell the story and analyse some of the key factors in high-value art theft might be worth while. Difficult ethical questions surrounding

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Spring Offer for Gallery Supporters EXCLUSIVE GALLERY PUBLICATION OFFER

Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People The latest National Portrait Gallery publication, Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People, includes imaginary biographies and character sketches by acclaimed authors John Banville, Tracy Chevalier, Julian Fellowes, Alexander McCall Smith, Terry Pratchett, Sarah Singleton, Joanna Trollope and Minette Walters, based on fourteen unidentified portraits in the Gallery’s Collection. With fictional letters, diaries, mini-biographies and memoirs, Imagined Lives creates vivid stories about these unknown sitters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

To purchase a copy of Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People at the special Gallery Supporters’ price of £6.40 in the Gallery Shops (a 20% discount, RRP £7.99, paperback), please quote ‘Face to Face Imagined Lives Offer’ to Gallery retail staff.

Offer subject to availability. Valid from 6 February 2012 until 31 May 2012.

This offer is only open to National Portrait Gallery Members, Associates and Patrons and is not available in conjunction with any other offer.