Access Guide Elizabeth Peyton
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Elizabeth Peyton: Aire and Angels Access Guide We hope this guide supports your visit. Please speak to any member of staff for more information. Introduction Elizabeth Joy Peyton (b.1965) is one of the most prominent artists working today. She paints still lifes and landscapes, but above all, portraits: of friends, of lovers, heroes, admirations, inspirations and fascinations. Her subjects include artists, activists, actors, athletes, dancers, musicians, queens, princes, politicians and poets. Captured from life, memory, literature and imagination, through found images and photographs, amongst many things her art explores love, individuality, beauty and the passing of time This exhibition surveys Peyton’s work, with a particular focus on the last ten years. Created in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition is accompanied by a series of displays within the Collection, positioning Peyton’s art within the context of historic portraiture. Having occupied a central place within visual art since coming to prominence in New York in the early 1990s, her work demonstrates an intensely personal and increasingly expansive understanding of the genre. The displays can be found in room 2 with the Tudor Collection, in room 6 with the seventeenth- century collection, and in rooms 21 and 24 with the Victorian collection. Room 39 Dan Kjær Nielsen By Elizabeth Peyton 2016 Oil on board Private Collection Room 35 Practice (Yuzuru Hanyu) 2018 Oil on board Courtesy of Green Family Collection Napoleon 1991 Charcoal on paper Collection Sadie Coles Julian 2004 Oil on board Courtesy the Artist John Donne By an unknown English artist Oil on panel, c.1595 This portrait depicts the Elizabethan poet and cleric John Donne (1572–1631). Recognised by his contemporaries as wholly original, as ‘Copernicus in Poetrie’, Donne is celebrated for the love poems he wrote as a young man including ‘Aire and Angels’. Described in his will as ‘that Picture of myne wch is taken in shaddowes’, this portrait presents the youthful poet in the guise of a melancholic lover. The Latin inscription may be read as ‘Lighten my/our darkness O Lady’, an apparently deliberate reworking of Psalm 17, ‘O Lord lighten my darkness’. On his death, Donne bequeathed the portrait to a friend with whose family it remained until it was rediscovered, mislabelled as a portrait of the medieval poet ‘Duns Scotus’ in 1959, and acquired for the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery in 2006. Of the painting, Peyton has said ‘there is some captured human beauty or humanity in it that I would like to always be near.’ National Portrait Gallery, London. Purchased with help from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund, Lord Harris of Peckham, L.L. Brownrigg, the Portrait Fund, Sir Harry Djanogly, the Headley Trust, the Eva & Hans K. Rausing Trust, The Pidem Fund, Mr O. Damgaard- Nielsen, Sir David and Lady Scholey and numerous Gallery visitors and supporters, 2006 (NPG 6790) Room 37 Flaubert in Egypt (After Delacroix) 2009–2010 Oil on board Müller-Spreer Collection Clockwise from left Love (I) (Jonas Kaufmann and Kristine Opolais; Manon Lescaut) #2 2015 Monotype on Twinrocker handmade paper Private Collection, Switzerland Parsifal (Jonas Kaufmann and Katrina Dalayman), NYC 2013 Oil on panel Private Collection What Wondrous Thing Do I See… (Lohengrin, Jonas Kauffman) 2011–2012 Oil on panel Collection of Barbara Gladstone, New York From left to right Flowers and Diaghilev 2008 Oil on linen Private Collection Eugene Delacroix, 1842 Oil on board Collection of Doug Inglish Jeanne Moreau and Francois Truffaut (The Bride Wore Black) 2005 Oil on board Roman Family Collection Jonathan (Jonathan Horowitz) 2007–2009 Oil on linen on board Roman Family Collection The Age of Innocence 2007 Oil on board Courtesy The Brant Foundation, Grenwich, C.T. USA Nick (La Luncheonette December 2002) 2003 Oil on board Collection of Karen and Andy Stillpass (Self-Portrait), Berlin 2011 Oil on board Private Collection Room 37a Flowers, Berlin 2010 Oil on board Müller-Spreer Collection After Giorgione 2011 Oil on board Private Collection, Fort Worth Irises and Klara Commerce St. 2012 Oil on panel Roman Family Collection Room 38 David, March 2017 2017 Watercolour on paper Private Collection Knights Dreaming (K) after EBJ 2016 Oil on board Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London David 2016 Oil on board Private Collection Elio, Oliver (Call me by Your Name) 2018 Oil on board Private Collection, Germany Rosenborg, (Elias) 2018 Oil on board Collection Allison Rubler Garden of Preserving Harmony (Kristian) 2016 Oil on board Private Collection Angela 2017 Oil on board Roman Family Collection Raphael, (Nick Reading) 2018 Oil on board Collection Thaddaeus Ropac, London, Paris Salzburg Vår 2013 Oil on board Courtesy the Artist Room 38a Two women (after Courbet) 2016 Oil on board Private Collection David Fray (Playing Ravel) 2016 Oil on board Collection of Beth Swofford Dark Incandescence (Kristian) 2014 Oil on board Private Collection First Floor Room 21 Elizabeth Joy Peyton (b.1965) is one of the most prominent artists working today. She paints still lifes and landscapes, but above all, portraits: of friends, of lovers, heroes, admirations, inspirations and fascinations. Her subjects include artists, activists, actors, athletes, dancers, musicians, queens, princes, politicians and poets. Captured from life, memory, literature and imagination, through found images and photographs, amongst many things her art explores love, individuality, beauty and the passing of time. In rooms 21 and 24 Peyton’s work is displayed within the context of the Victorian era. These displays accompany he exhibition Elizabeth Peyton: Aire and Angels on the ground floor. In recent years, still lifes and pictures inspired by the opera have increasingly entered Peyton’s repertoire. As she has said, these subjects ‘offer a way to make something that has all of the intense emotions I feel without literally revealing them. Usually they are about a person or love in some way’. Peyton’s outlook recalls a romantic, idealist view of art, characteristic of early nineteenth-century theorists such as the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. Hegel argued that the point of art is not simply to be realistic, or to imitate the contingencies of everyday life, but to give sensuous expression to our environment and to show us what spiritual freedom looks like. Peyton’s figurative language is one suffused with emotion, the feeling of a situation, expressed through the portrayal of beauty she perceives in her surroundings. Left to right Sergei, London By Elizabeth Peyton Coloured pencil and pastel pencil on paper, 2017 Private Collection, New York Tyler, the Creator By Elizabeth Peyton Pastel on Paper, 2019 Courtesy the Artist Pierre Casiraghi, August 2019 By Elizabeth Peyton Pastel on paper, 2019 Courtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles HQ , London Cy By Elizabeth Peyton Pastel on paper, 2018 Collection of J & M Donnelly After Michelangelo, (1532) By Elizabeth Peyton Coloured pencil on paper, 2017 Ringier Collection, Switzerland Phoebe By Elizabeth Peyton Coloured pencil and pastel on paper, 2015 Collection of Rebecca Marks E (Elias) By Elizabeth Peyton Coloured pencil and pastel on paper, 2013 Courtesy the Artist Princess Elizabeth’s First Radio Address By Elizabeth Peyton Charcoal on paper, 1993 Collection of Karen and Andy Stillpass Queen Elizabeth II b.1926 Left to right Lovers (Kiss) By Elizabeth Peyton Pastel on paper, 2019 Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels Choosing Ellen Terry (1847–1928) By George Frederic Watts Oil on strawboard mounted on Gatorfoam, 1864 National Portrait Gallery (NPG 5048) Tim (Profile) By Elizabeth Peyton Pastel on paper, 2013 Private Collection Sieglinde + Siegmund, DIE WALKÜRE (Eva-Maria Westbroek + Jonas Kaufmann) By Elizabeth Peyton Pastel and coloured pencil on paper, 2011–2012 Collection of Steven F. Roth, Los Angeles, CA Room 24 Twilight By Elizabeth Peyton Oil on board, 2009 Private Collection. Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin Frida (Frida Kahlo) By Elizabeth Peyton Oil on board, 2005 Tiago Ltd ‘The Tiqui Atencio Collection’ Frida Kahlo 1907–54 Matthew By Elizabeth Peyton Oil on board, 2008 Courtesy of Charlotte Feng Ford Matthew Barney b. 1967 Second Floor Room 2 Elizabeth Joy Peyton (b.1965) is one of the most prominent artists working today. She paints still lifes and landscapes, but above all, portraits: of friends, of lovers, heroes, admirations, inspirations and fascinations. Her subjects include artists, activists, actors, athletes, dancers, musicians, queens, princes, politicians and poets. Captured from life, memory, literature and imagination, through found images and photographs, amongst many things her art explores love, individuality, beauty and the passing of time. This display positions Peyton’s art alongside Tudor portraiture, reflecting on the commonality of self-iconization of the subjects depicted. The display accompanies the exhibition Elizabeth Peyton: Aire and Angels on the ground floor. Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. 'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 55, 1609 Alizarin Kurt By Elizabeth Peyton Oil on canvas, 1995 Private Collection. Courtesy The Brant Foundation Greenwich CT. USA Kurt Cobain 1967–94 Blue Liam By Elizabeth Peyton Oil on board, 1996 Private Collection Liam Gallagher b.1972 David Hockney, Powis Terrace Bedroom By Elizabeth Peyton Oil on board, 1998 Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg David Hockney b.1937 Prince Eagle (Fontainebleau) By Elizabeth Peyton Oil on board, 1999 Laura & Stafford Broumand Collection Tony Just b.