Last outing with CityLit - Intro' to The National Portrait Gallery

Five weeks really isn't enough when you're having fun - but as they say all good things to come to an end and Course Leader Leslie Primo pretty much brought us up to date.


So the last day of my course at the Portrait Gallery -and  again our leader had to make some changes as work was going on in the gallery.

We included after looking at the span of time  reflected in portraiture development  (see further below) a viewing of a bold modern portrait of Dame Eileen Younghusband by Sir Kyffin Williams  - this was both formal and intimate in a 20th century sort of way.

A nice display at NPG shows evolution from Ingres  via Sickert 

 I enjoyed spending time looking at and discussing the Sickert - he is one of my favourites, but not sure how successful this Self portrait example is. The thoughts were that the effect of press photography is a big influence on him here.

Walter Sickert used the press 

 For me I thought I'd begun to understand something of portraiture but modern practice and expectations are confusing me - I'm not so excited by works like Bomberg and Auerbach - in fact I prefer the effect of the older works like that of Ingres.

A historic spread across the Years (to Auerbach)

 The last pictures we looked at were a painting of Anna Wintour by Alex Katz an early self portrait by the modern British/Nigerian artist Ofili (1991) - (First heard about Chris from Nick Pearson nearly 5 years ago) not sure that these really represent progress!

A Self Portrait -Chris  Ofili 

Fashion Guru Anna Wintour - something about Clebrity?

Oh yes and here’s a rather good picture of the late Sir Ken by David Cobley which I noticed and I do like the trick used here (not uniquely) where a mirror gives us the chance to see more than one side of the subject.

The recently departed Sir Ken Dodd by David Cobley