Face to Face AUTUMN 2006 David Hockney Portraits Pet Shop Boys in the Bookshop Gallery John Gay Portraits in Print Dryden Goodwin in conversation with Sandy Nairne From the Director RIGHT The 150th Anniversary celebrations have continued over the summer with the Royal Royal Mail Commemorative Mail’s issue of a special set of commemorative postage stamps. Selecting just ten Postage Stamps celebrating the Gallery’s 150th subjects from the riches of the Collection was a difficult task, but I am pleased that Anniversary: the span should range from our very first portrait, the Chandos painting of William Virginia Woolf Shakespeare, to the recently commissioned painted portrait of Dame Cicely Saunders by by George Charles Beresford, former BP Portrait Award winner Catherine Goodman. The latter offers an especially 1902 poignant study of a great health-care pioneer, painted in the months before she died. Sir Winston Churchill Two new commissions will be unveiled in the early autumn. One is the delightful portrait by Walter Richard Sickert, 1927 © Estate of Walter R. Sickert of the arts benefactor Dame Vivien Duffield by another BP Portrait Award winner, 2006. All rights reserved, Charlotte Harris. The second is the complex study of the exceptional Olympic oarsman DACS/National Portrait Gallery, Sir Steven Redgrave, the only person to have won a gold medal in an aerobic London sport in five successive Olympic Games. Dryden Goodwin has created twenty-five COVER small, meticulously rendered drawings of Redgrave at close quarters, all of them then Celia in a Black Dress with combined into an animated film displayed on a plasma screen next to the drawings, White Flowers (detail) giving extraordinary life to the portrait image. The portrait is made possible by by David Hockney, 1972 JPMorgan through the Fund for New Commissions. Collection of Victor Constantiner © David Hockney The climax of the year’s exhibition programme is the presentation of David Hockney Portraits, co-organised with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and sponsored in London by Burberry, also celebrating its 150th anniversary. Visitors in Boston and Los Angeles have already voiced their appreciation of this fine exhibition, curated by Sarah Howgate, the Gallery’s Contemporary Curator. Paintings, drawings and photographic collages give insight into the artist’s friends, family and lovers, often returning to the same subjects across many years and locations. Several key working places have emerged for David Hockney, most particularly East Yorkshire, London and Los Angeles. Some of the outstanding double portraits of the early 1970s are included, as well as many affectionate studies of his mother and father. Portrait projects include the ‘visitors to the studio’ and the Gallery Warders from the National Gallery. The exhibition demonstrates Hockney’s magnificent achievements across fifty years, with the artist giving a nod here and there to his particular mentors, Picasso and Ingres. It is an artistic and intellectual tour de force not to be missed, accompanied by a beautiful catalogue and a set of fascinating talks and activities. From 16 September a display of recent commissions and acquisitions, Exploring the Contemporary, can be seen on the First Floor Landing. Other portraits temporarily removed from the ground floor to accommodate David Hockney Portraits (12 October 2006–21 January 2007) can be seen on the Portrait Explorer touch-screens in the IT Gallery or on the Gallery website at www.npg.org.uk Sandy Nairne DIRECTOR THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY is a place to which MY FAVOURITE I go for many things, and one of them is to find peace PORTRAIT during a time of reflection. Recently I faced some difficult decisions with tricky moral implications, and, LEONIE FRIEDA feeling adrift, I headed for the Gallery. The escalator is my ‘Tardis’, and as I set foot in the Tudor rooms I am back in the 1500s. The Glories, so well loved and known the world over, never fail to lift my mood, but this time I saw a portrait I hadn’t noticed before. The compelling picture that drew me is of John Donne, poet and polemicist. His handsome face emerges from the shadows of a dark background, his Leonie Frieda was born in Sweden gypsy dark eyes that look away from the painter are and lives in London with her two children. She is the author of the arresting; a dramatic hat is just discernible from which recent biography of Catherine de his long hair falls on to the collar of an unlaced Medici and is currently working shirt. The image suggests a man distracted. The Latin on her next book Renaissance inscription beseeches ‘Our Lady’ to illuminate our Women, a dynastic epic charting darkness, though it is only partly legible. the struggles and camaraderie between the most significant The portrait is of Donne in his mid-twenties, about women of that period. to embark on two military expeditions with the Earl of Essex. Born a Catholic, he later converted to to having ‘a sickly inclination’ to suicide and argued LEFT AND ABOVE Protestantism. His brilliance easily matched that of the that it was morally acceptable in certain situations. John Donne by an unknown English artist, poet Francis Bacon. Donne spent his life much Seeing his beautiful face so preoccupied, I imagined c.1595 admired by women, he married for love, and wrote him to be wrestling with the same kind of problems poetry, polemics and sermons with equal genius. His Leonie Frieda as my own. His companionship gave me comfort by Bolla Deneby ten-year struggle to embrace the Anglican faith has and I left the Gallery, as I always do, succoured in © Bolla Deneby been described as ‘Hamlet-like indecision’. For all the some way. joyousness, fury and passion in his work he confessed Leonie Frieda NEIL TENNANT AND CHRIS LOWE as the Pet Shop Boys with many of the most interesting artists, designers PET SHOP BOYS are the most successful duo in British pop history. and photographers of the last twenty years, including PORTRAITS Since the 1980s their records such as West End Girls, Sam Taylor-Wood, Bruce Weber, Derek Jarman, Martin It’s a Sin and Always on My Mind have topped Parr and Wolfgang Tillmans. The book celebrates all from 30 October 2006 the charts and sold millions. Their arrangement of aspects of their visual output and influence. Bookshop Gallery Go West is now one of the most popular chanted The display particularly focuses on the work of football anthems, and played throughout the 2006 the photographer Eric Watson, who helped define the World Cup in Germany. duo’s early image both as a portraitist and as a This new display celebrates the twentieth anniversary director of some of their videos. Watson, like Neil of their first Number One hit and ties in with Tennant, was born in Newcastle, and moved to the publication of a major new book, Pet Shop London at the end of the 1970s to make his name. Boys Catalogue (published by Thames & Hudson, He studied at Hornsey College of Art from 1977 to for details and offer see back cover). With 1,955 1980 (Adam Ant and a member of Madness were illustrations and text and essays by Philip Hoare and fellow students), and, after assisting Gered Mankowitz Chris Heath, the Catalogue describes the various and Red Saunders, joined the pop magazine Smash phases of the duo’s constantly changing image Hits in 1981. He remained there until 1986 as one through re-invention and through their collaboration of its main photographers, in its golden age, when ABOVE Tennant acted as deputy editor before becoming a Cover for collaboration with pop star. Watson’s iconic work is shown with images Dusty Springfield, What have from other leading pop photographers such as Pennie I done to deserve this? Smith and Andy Earl. by Eric Watson and Val Wilmer, 1987 The release of their ninth studio album this summer, © Eric Watson and Val Wilmer Fundamental, has already produced another top ten LEFT single, while the exhibition coincides with a British and Cover for I don’t know what you American tour. For those unable to attend these dates want but I can’t give it any more this display will reveal part of their intrinsic and by Eric Watson, 1999 fascinating effect on British music and culture. © Eric Watson Terence Pepper CURATOR OF PHOTOGRAPHS DAVID HOCKNEY PORTRAITS 12 October 2006– 21 January 2007 Wolfson and Ground Floor Galleries Sponsored by Burberry Exhibition organised by the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art RIGHT Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, 1970–1 Tate Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery, 1971 © David Hockney Photo: © Tate, London 2006 What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them We are thrilled to have secured some wonderful closer to something, because of course art is about loans from public and private collections. Opening sharing: you wouldn’t be an artist unless you wanted the exhibition will be an early self-portrait which has to share an experience, a thought only recently come to light. The iconic, almost life-size double portraits from the late Sixties and early David Hockney Seventies will be reunited on our gallery walls: American Collectors (Mr and Mrs Weisman), Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott, My Parents and Mr THE FIRST MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE devoted to the and Mrs Clark and Percy. portraits of one of Britain’s most celebrated artists opens in the autumn. The exhibition has already been We are delighted that Hockney has produced new warmly received on the east and west coasts of work especially for the exhibition.