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The Anthony Rudolf Collection
Works given to him by Paula Rego; her close companion and principal male model for the final 26 years of her life.
For private study only – not for print or reproduction
This free exhibition guide is for educational, research, private study and critique purposes only. It must not be reproduced in any format and is not for resale or to be used for any commercial or other purpose.
Ben Uri is particularly grateful to Anthony Rudolf for his constant support, his essay and his writing of the explanatory notes about the works given to him and his family by his close companion for over a quarter of a century, the late Paula Rego.
While the works exhibited have been lent by individuals closely associated with the late Paula Rego, at the time of print they still have not yet been authenticated by the Rego estate. Ben Uri therefore cannot make any representation or warranty as to the authorship of the artworks included in this exhibition.
Exhibitions are live, complex animals and require a great deal of planning and coordination to present to the public as the public expects. This exhibition is no different and our thanks go to the Ben Uri team as a whole, to fine art photographer Justin Piperger, Anthony’s sister Annie Saunders for the loan of her works, and to literary advisors Elte Rauch and Sophie Lewis whose advice we all regularly sought.
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Introduction
Ben Uri is the country’s leading art museum and research centre on the Jewish, Refugee and wide immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900. Our distinctive cultural and academic assets include a collection of over 900 works by artists from over 40 countries and over 3,300 researched profiles published (buru.org. uk & diaspora-artists.net) with another 1,800 candidates under study from over 120 countries of birth.
Museums tell stories but we focus as much on the creators as we do on their creations. This exhibition is about two internationally recognised and accomplished creators and storytellers, Anthony Rudolf and Paula Rego, and their 26 year long relationship which endured until Paula’s death in 2022. We tell their story through the art Paula gave to Anthony and his family, as her close companion and principal male model juxtaposed with Rudolf family photographs. Exhibiting the collection, never seen before in public, is a rare opportunity to glimpse sensitive and loving asides inscribed on a great many of the works.
Paula Rego; an immigrant artist, was fearless, thought provoking and taboo-breaking in the stories she told through her art. Born in Portugal in 1935 she first moved to England in 1951. She married the artist Victor Willing in 1959 and together they had three children. They moved back to Portugal in 1966 on the death of her father but relocated back to London in 1974. Her individuality, talent and sense of purpose were soon widely recognised. In 2009 a museum in Cascais, outside Lisbon, opened in her honour. In 2010 she was appointed a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 2022.
Anthony Rudolf; whose grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, was born in war-torn London in 1942 . He read Modern Languages and Social Anthropology at Cambridge. He founded The Menard Press in 1969 and published the first English translation of Primo Levi’s poetry. A writer, poet, autobiographer, translator and literary critic, his own translations include works by Yves Bonnefoy, Claude Vigée, Edmond Jabès and Yevgeny Vinokourov. He was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Ben Uri is grateful to Anthony Rudolf for his writing of the texts accompanying the images and honoured to have been selected to present this exhibition.
David Glasser,
Executive Chair and, on this occasion, Curator.
PAULA
by Anthony Rudolf
This show of my private collection of works given to me by Paula Rego (and a few pieces that Paula gifted to my sister Annie) is well suited to the Ben Uri gallery, whose proposal it was. The Ben Uri, under the inspired, indeed visionary, leadership of David Glasser, has morphed from a gallery concerned with Jewish artists into a museum and research centre, both online and bricksand-mortar, which has broadened its focus to all refugee and immigrant artists in the UK. My family (hailing from what is now West Ukraine and Poland and arriving here at the start of the twentieth century) has been associated with the Ben Uri for three quarters of a century, and Paula was indubitably an immigrant, from Catholic Portugal, who arrived here in 1951 aged sixteen. ‘I am a monarchist in England, a republican in Portugal,’ she once said. On another occasion she said that her patriotic allegiance was to London. Between her and me, we cover the historical and post-historical bases of the gallery.
This is largely a documentary show. Rightly, regular posthumous shows of Paula’s major work are being held around the world. The present show lays no claim to presenting Paula’s finest and/or grandest work, but all are precious to me. The whole is more important than the sum of the parts. It is a collection with a unique raison d’être and all previously unseen, apart from some of the prints and the painting ‘Perch’. All the works were gifts from Paula to me over more than a quarter of a century plus the few to my sister. The crown jewel of the group, ‘Perch’, has been bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
I am not the main reason why the show should be of interest to the many people who are fascinated by Paula Rego, a great artist and glorious personality. The collection’s intellectual interest and organic coherence derive from the peculiar and yet normal circumstances of its ownership: the works were gifts from Paula to me in my privileged capacity as close companion and principal male model for the last twentysix years of her life, almost to the day. About three weeks before she died, she made her last sketch of me, as Branwell Brontë, a character of great interest to both of us. Perhaps not an outstanding work but precious to me. I was in my own clothes, and the only prop was a bottle.
As was usual in the final phase of Paula’s life, we were in her sitting room and Lila, her chief female model and studio assistant, was there too. Lila and I always departed at the same time and walked down East Heath Road to South Hampstead Station, where she left me to take the Overground while I walked on to Belsize Park Tube. The last visit was on 7th June 2022. That evening, as I had done for more than two years, I read poetry to Paula over the phone when she rang. Twice more that night she had the carers call me, and we read more poems, with her joining in as usual. This was the final manifestation of one of the modalities of our love: the expressiveness of the human voice. Next morning, her children called me early: she had died in the night. A few weeks later I read Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ at her funeral.
It was in the autumn of 1996, a few months after we got together in June that year, that I began trying to think of a reason to go to the studio during working hours and spend more time with her. Then I had a brainwave, almost an epiphany: the way, perhaps the only way, to see my girlfriend more regularly was to become her model. Given that Paula worked regular ‘office hours’, what other reason could I find to interrupt her rigorous creative routine? I tentatively and nervously put it to her that I would be pleased to model for her if this would be of use to her work and at the same time give her pleasure.
Our collaboration began in the autumn of 1996 – Paula liked to say complicity – which lasted twenty-six years. I’m not sure how many pastels, sketches and prints she did with me cast as a character in different stories. Surely several hundred; and of Lila, no doubt several thousand. I am proud to have been her principal male model for all those years. Having a male model always available, and knowing me inside and outside the studio, enabled her to centre her work more on the male figure than previously. We both believed that our meeting in 1996 led to a major turning point in our lives that developed and stood the test of time.
It is a revealing fact that her best likenesses of me were when I was playing a role, not when she was making a straight portrait. However, more than once she would get a brilliant likeness when I was dressed up in a character’s role and then ‘spoil’ it in the interests of the story and the pictorial design: when
the pictorial and the narrational become one, the picture is finished.
I have provided captions for the pictures, giving background detail or commentary. I cannot provide an exact chronology of the collection because sometimes Paula would give me a print done many years before she met me, as a thank you for sitting for her.
Sometimes a gift, for example a homemade birthday card or other image, was not dated.
I extend my thanks to my sister Annie for jogging my memory about her small but vital collection of Rego pictures and documents. Much thanks to David Glasser, Merlin James. Elte Rauch and Sophie Lewis for expert support and to Ethan Frieze, Sivan Moaz, Masoom Pincha, and others at Ben Uri for their technical help in making this exhibition happen. Finally, my thanks to the late Tom Rosenthal, to Deryn ReesJones and John McEwen whose excellent books I consulted while preparing these notes, and to Paul Coldwell for telephone consultations about printmaking.
Anthony Rudolf
June 2025
On vacation in the Azores. 1998
Twenty Years later; New Year’s Eve. 2018
‘Kneeling
Chair’. 1996. Pencil on paper.
‘Sketch
Inscription: For Tony Signed: Paula Rego
41 x 29 cm.
Early drawing of me on a “kneeling chair”. Late 1996. Pencil on paper. Signed and dedicated “For Tony, Paula Rego”. This is the first formal drawing of me, and it antedates by a few weeks the earliest works in the series of pastel paintings with me in, namely ‘The Crime of Father Amaro’.
at Assembly House pub in Kentish Town’. 2001. Pencil on paper.
Inscription: Dearest Tony
Doing the editing of this interview for Abbot Hall 23 April 2001 11pm!!! No dinner yet! Paula love you
41.7 x 29.1 cm.
I had no idea that Paula was sketching me. I must have been very absorbed in the kind of editorial task which I did regularly for many years on her behalf. When I looked up, she showed me the drawing. Each of us was well pleased by what the other had done. The Abbot Hall show (at Kendal in the Lake District) took place later in 2001 and went on to the Yale Centre for British Art in 2002.
‘Seated Figure’. 1998. Pastel and charcoal on paper laid on aluminium. 82 x 58cm.
A diary entry of 4th November 1998 is suggestive, with a later gloss: “Sat for Paula, two more drawings for the abortion series”. [My entry shows that Paula was considering including a male, presumably the responsible i.e. irresponsible father, but she must have decided that male presence would be more deeply felt in absentia… A good decision, given the power of the finished series, which does not contain a male figure.]
Paula in front of painting of Anthony in costume; Father Amaro series. 1997/1998
‘Tarantella’.
2012. Pastel on paper on aluminium 99 x 79cm.
When Paula gave this picture to my sister, Annie, as a wedding present, she rang her to check that it had arrived safely. She said it was called ‘Tarantella’ and recited the eponymous Belloc poem which inspired it. ‘Come into the Inn, Miranda’, the first line of the poem, is the title of another picture in the Goats Foot series. Paula eventually decided that the Goats Foot series was complete without ‘Tarantella’.
Esther with monkey prop, with Paula in front of her portrait.
Esther, Paula and Anthony deep in conversation.
‘Portrait of Esther Rudolf’. Pastel on paper laid on aluminium. 2005.
56 x 50 cm.
Inscription below is the date of my mother’s, Esther Rudolf’s birth 27th March 1915.
Inscription: 27.3.15
Signed: Paula Rego
Paula inscribed this portrait of my mother with her actual birthdate (27 March 1915) rather than with the occasion of the portrait, her 90th birthday (27 March 2005). She completed the work in one session, out of generosity for the sitter. Esther looks very serious and determined, putting on a portrait face from her repertoire.
Paula and Anthony at his brother-in-law, Jack’s 50th birthday party
‘Writing Yes, Reading No’. c.2005. Pen and ink and water colour on paper.
Inscription: Writing Yes Reading No Happy Days! Paula
29.7 x 24.2cm
This is an allusion to our late friend the philosopher Zbigniew Kotowicz who told me a home truth: “More writing less reading”. The drawing of me in my chaotic office is a great curiosity, perhaps the only worked-up image she made at my place. Clad only in a towel, perhaps I had just got out of the bath and dashed to the computer with a great idea.
Note, however, on the computer screen she has drawn a young woman. Paula was having fun. Happy days indeed. Above the computer screen on the left is what looks like a self-portrait of Paula.
13. Anthony at his desk (perhaps the inspiration for painting above)
‘Ferryman’. Pencil on paper.
Signed and dated: Paula Rego 6 September 2008
73.5 x 52.5 cm.
Preparatory drawing to one of the twelve etchings in Paula’s suite inspired by Yves Bonnefoy’s ‘Curved Planks’. Created and gifted to me on my birthday 6 September 2008. The etchings were made at Paupers Press in Hoxton, one of several etchers Paula collaborated with after she and Paul Coldwell mutually agreed to stop working together. The texts were printed in Paris on February 23, 2009, and published by François Bénichou Editions with six of the twelve etchings. I introduced Paula to Yves in 1996. This collaboration between Paula and the author of the text, Yves Bonnefoy, finally fulfilled an ambition of mine, namely that the most important writer in my life and the most important artist in my life should come face to face in a common endeavour. And I was doubly present, as chief model and as translator in the bilingual text. In fact, there are three texts: the first had been previously published and the publisher asked Bonnefoy for a second one, which is a very beautiful letter directly addressed to Paula. A few years later, I asked the poet for a post-script which I published in a collection of texts by friends as an 80th birthday homage to Paula. Free copies are available at the exhibition.
‘Anthony Wearing a Hat’. c.2008. Pastel on paper, laid on aluminium. 50 x 39.5cm
Possibly unfinished. The title suggests a portrait rather than a character for an abandoned story.
‘Head of Anthony’. Water-soluble oil on canvas. 2013. 49.5 x 49.5cm
Here is an entry from my diary of Saturday 21st December 2013:
“Lila [Paula’s long standing female model] is in Portugal for Christmas. Without a story on the go, Paula will embark on a small portrait of me. I am eager to work with her for the first time in a while and collected her from Hampstead at 10.30. She was having a late breakfast. We arrived at the studio at 11.30 and I negotiated the complicated alarm successfully. I fixed decaf and herb tea and put music on: Rigoletto. From 12 till 2.30 Paula started making a Christmas card for a studio neighbour. I read the Guardian and scribbled a few notes on Yves Bonnefoy. At 2.30 we had lunch: Paula ate rice crackers and ham salad brought from home; I ate -- Raymond Mason-style -- a tin of sardines and pitta bread I found in the studio “kitchen”. We shared a packet of crisps. Paula slept from 3 to 4 and I read Proust. From 4 till 7 I sat for my portrait made in a new kind of paint on the market, water mixable oil with added linseed. She was not satisfied. On Monday she may do it again in pastel.”
Paula decided in the end not to do it again and thus it was completed in one sitting. I think it is the only picture she ever did in this new medium. A year or two later we looked at it and she liked it enough to have it framed and gave it to me. I remember the day of that portrait as being particularly enjoyable, though typical: work, lunch, work, champagne towards evening, then later out for dinner and a movie or back to her flat, after picking up fish and chips on Fleet Road, to watch one of our favourite films, Top Hat or Singin’ in the Rain, before rest.
Esther’s 90th birthday with
Anthony in pose, dressed as Mr Rochester
Paula and Anthony enjoying Venice. 2001
Paula
Anthony and Paula at the opening of her exhibition at the MK (Milton Keynes) Gallery. 2019
‘Shipwreck’
(‘After Hogarth III’). Etching and aquatint. 1999
Printed by Paul Coldwell.
Inscription: Unique proof
Tony, A very happy millennium with lots of love
Signed: Paula Rego
30 x 34.5 cm.
‘After Hogarth’ was the pastel triptych Paula made for Richard Morphet’s wonderful Encounters exhibition at the National Gallery in 2000. The rule of the game was that the painters had to choose a painting in the National Gallery and do something “after” it. Paula chose ‘Mariage à la Mode’, Hogarth’s famous satire which she knew well and created three paintings followed by prints – Hogarth himself made six paintings followed by engravings. The present work, the third, shows the errant, supposedly repentant, husband. Here I am centre stage in a classic pieta pose, with a third figure in attendance, who is not present in the corresponding painting. I am in a similar pieta pose in the middle picture of another triptych from the same year, ‘Martha, Mary and Magdalene’. That picture nods to Rogier van der Weyden’s ‘Magdalene Reading’, in the National Gallery.
‘Shipwreck’ (After Hogarth III). 2000. Etching and aquatint. Printed by Paul Coldwell. Black and white proof. This is part of the artistic process to reach the final state exhibited adjacently.
Inscription: Proof
Much Love
Signed: Paula Rego
30 x 35 cm.
‘Prince
Pig gets Married to the Third Sister’. 2006. One of six coloured lithographs from the sequence ‘Prince Pig’. Printed by Curwen Press.
Inscription: A/P 10/15
Signed: Paula Rego
48 x 45 cm.
The original fairytale, ‘From Swine to Man’ was by the 16th century Italian writer, Giovanni Francesco Straparola. The full sequence of stories is reminiscent, according to Tom Rosenthal, of The Canterbury Tales, and is a reworking of Boccaccio. The best known of the stories is the immortal ‘Puss in Boots’. Paula was a voracious reader of folk stories and fairytales. Stories and models always triggered her imagination. In return, many writers have used Paula’s pictures for book jackets or illustrations. I plan to publish my own group of short stories for which she made illustrations including ‘The Little Mermaid’ from 2018 which is in this show.
‘Girl with Two Mothers’. Screenprint. 2000.
Inscription: For Tony xxx Paula Rego
72.5 x 55 cm.
This was printed by Kip Gresham and published by the Women’s Therapy Centre in a folio of five artists: Susan Hiller, Nicola Hicks, Sonia Lawson, Jo Self and Paula.
‘Dressing him up as Bluebeard’. Lithograph on Somerset velvet. 2002.
Inscription: Proof
For Tony (as Bluebeard) much love
Signed: Paula Rego
67.2 x 46.5 cm.
Paula is having fun here, dressing me (Mr Rochester) up as Bluebeard, who was surely only a marginal influence on Jane Eyre’s Rochester. Paula is saying this is what we do in the studio: we dress the model up. It’s “fancy dress”. And then we copy it.
‘Anthony, writer’. 2000. Pencil on lithography transfer paper. 74.9 x 54cm.
This portrait was made on transfer paper for an intended lithograph, but three earlier and related lithographs on transfer paper had gone wrong during the transfer process. Paula did not want to risk losing this one, so it remained as a drawing, one that she really liked. I preferred it to item 15. As with item 15, the title is suggestive of a portrait rather than a character for a story sequence. But it might have once been intended for a narrative series, which I infer from the fact that three went wrong. But there is no way of finding out, since the lithographer himself, who presumably knew the theme of the series, has died. Nor do I know how or why the earlier ones went wrong. Paul Coldwell, sculptor and Paula’s former etcher and a great authority on all forms of print making, tells me things going wrong are a common occurrence if you use transfer paper rather than draw directly onto the plate or stone.
The viewer can make out a mask in the background. This may have been the first occurrence in her art of the masks Paula either made with Lila or purchased. It was bought from a mask-maker who also ran a tavern in a small town about half an hour from Zurich/Winterthur. Paula later ordered two or three online or over the phone from London. The trip was made during one of our best annual holidays. We stayed at the Stork Inn in Zurich, a hotel made famous by Paul Celan’s eponymous poem for Nelly Sachs.
‘Perch’,
c.1998, pastel on paper laid on aluminium. 109 x 100 cm
This is one of the pictures in the first series containing me, based on the novel The Crime of Father Amaro by Eça de Queirós, Portugal’s greatest novelist, up there with Zola and Dickens. I play the part of the priest, who is a criminal and a sinner, a liar and a hypocrite. Note the physically impossible position of the priest. This is not a naturalistic or realistic picture. Paula always felt it was a good likeness. At one point there were a pile of books in front of the table legs, but she removed them. I loaned the picture a few times, most recently to the Pera Museum, Istanbul.
‘Moon Eggs’ from ‘Moon Eggs’. 2005. Hand coloured and printed as above.
Inscription - A/P V/XIV
Signed: Paula Rego
34 x 29.5 cm.
‘Fame’ from ‘Moon Eggs’. 2005 Given perhaps in 2006. Hand coloured (by Charlotte Hodes) etchings and aquatint (printed by Paul Coldwell at his Culford Press).
Inscription: A/P II/XIV
Signed: Paula Rego
34 x 29.5 cm.
29, 30 and 31 are three of the series of five Moon Eggs. They mark the last of Paula’s long collaborations with Paul Coldwell, who is a distinguished sculptor as well as printmaker, and the last too with Paul’s wife Charlotte Hodes, a distinguished ceramicist and painter. It was time for all to move on professionally, but their friendship continued. The genesis of the story – a man laying eggs – came from Paula’s imagination not from a book, as we learn from the entertaining discussion about the story with Tom Rosenthal. Paula tells him that men (i.e. me) should learn what it feels like to lay eggs and when Tom asks what I feel about it, Paula replies “He loves it” (“and loves being in pictures”). Tom suggests Paula has created a hermaphrodite and raises the question as to whether the work can be considered feminist or whimsical. The discussion between the two is entertaining and instructive.
Around this time Charlotte created some covers for my Menard Press, following Merlin James as designer. Like the Portuguese poet Alberto de Lacerda, Paul and Charlotte and others were friends of Paula whom coincidentally I already knew.
‘Feeding’ from ‘Moon Eggs’ 2005. Hand coloured and printed as above.
Inscription: A/P VIII/XIV
Signed: Paula Rego
34 x 29.5 cm.
‘The Wolf and Riding Hood’. from Paula’s narrative Little Red Riding Hood
Pen and ink and watercolour.
Inscription: The Wolf and Ridding (sic) Hood
Signed: Paula Rego
58.5 x 40.5 cm.
This is a preparatory drawing for an episode in Little Red Riding Hood. But it does not resemble any of the six completed pastels. Paula’s version of the story has the mother taking revenge on the wolf. I am dressed as an athlete or for the gym in two of the pastels, and also in drag as the grandmother in another. Lila plays the mother and, Gracie, Paula’s grand-daughter, plays Red Riding Hood.
I think this was originally commissioned by Karen Wright at Modern Painters magazine.
Anthony at home surrounded by constant memories of Paula
‘Fairy Tale Three’ 2008. Etching and aquatint.
Inscription: unique proof FOR TONY With Love
Signed: Paula Rego
20 x 16.3 cm.
Tom Rosenthal, author of the excellent book on Paula’s graphic work including a catalogue raisonne, sees the hint of a merman in this strange picture.
‘Fairy Tale Three’ 2008. Etching and aquatint.
Inscription: unique proof
Dear Esther, all good wishes for the New Year fondly.
Signed: Paula Rego
Size: 20.5 x 16.5 cm
Paula, on receipt of her honorary degree at Oxford University. 2005
Water-colour on paper
39 x 33 cm
Paula was always warmly interested and engaging with my family and had a soft spot for my grandchildren. In this picture she encouraged my granddaughter, Leah, aged 6, to fill in the red parts of this work. It is a family treasure.
Sketch of Naomi Rudolf. 1998. Pencil on paper.
Signed: Paula Rego
28.7 x 37.3 cm.
Naomi is my daughter. She was twenty-two in 1998. Paula also drew my son Nathaniel, and some years later made a pastel of my mother which, like the drawing of my daughter Naomi, is exhibited for the first time in this exhibition. She invited my grandchildren Charlie and Leah to come to the studio and draw. Both were shy and self-conscious at first, but Paula’s highly developed gifts of kindness and humour made them feel at home. It is a sadness that she died before she could extend the same hospitality to my third grandchild Jamie.
Sick
Happy New Year 2004
Inscription: For Esther and all the family a peaceful 2004. Fond wishes
Signed: Paula Rego
29 x 21 cm
Rabbit. 2001. Pen and Ink sketch
Inscription on sketch: “not feeling so good”
On reverse: “Dear Esther, this is my self portrait as a sick rabbit today. I am so sorry I cannot join you at the wedding tomorrow. Very best wishes for a happy time for all. Affectionately Paula
19.5 x 28 cm
This referred to my son’s wedding. It is revealing of Paula’s and Esther’s (my mother) fondness for each other that she gave me this sketch and that she drew her apologies in such a warm fashion.
‘Study for ‘Metamorphosis after Kafka’. Signed and dated 2002. Pastel on paper laid on aluminium. 93 x 117cm.
This is one of two such preliminary studies for the two pictures of Gregor Samsa. Mine is for the second one, and I assume the other is for the first one, but I only saw it once, many years ago. ‘Metamorphosis’ is one of several works for which I posed naked or nude, a formal distinction, discussed by Kenneth Clark and John Berger etc, complicated by my relationship with Paula. The pose was made possible by a system of pulleys enabling my legs to be raised without difficulty. The picture was commissioned by our mutual friend Marina Warner for a show entitled Metamorphosis held at the Science Museum in 2002. There is another version of this picture, locked up in a different way, with fruit, the remains of a meal, beside the figure, who is facing in the opposite direction. This is in the Kistefos Museum, about 50 miles from Oslo. The tiled floor gave Paula a great deal of time and trouble to get right.
Untitled. c.1982. Acrylic on canvas. 40.5 x 50.5cm
Date early 1980s between the Operas and the Dogwomen series. Paula originally lent me this picture when I loaned ‘Perch’ to a major exhibition, as I have more than once (see note to 1 above). When the ‘Perch’ was returned I brought this picture back to the studio, but Paula waved her hand and said keep it. I don’t think it has ever been exhibited before, like many of the pictures in this exhibition.
‘The Little Mermaid’. c.2018. Pen and ink and watercolour.
Inscription:
Tony Happy Birthday
xxx
Paula
21.3 x 18.3 cm.
Paula made this watercolour while on holiday with her daughter in Ventnor. I can’t remember if she posted it to me or gave it to me on return. In later years, after it was no longer possible for us to travel abroad, she would be driven by her daughter and cross on the car ferry to the Isle of Wight. This drawing was made in 2017 or 2018. It doubles as an illustration for a story of mine called ‘The Mermaid from the Azores’ about a Jewish mermaid who gets around on a skateboard.
‘Mother with Big Daughter’. 1997. Screenprint.
Inscription: Proof For Tony
Signed: Paula Rego
74 x 56.3 cm.
Paula had an exhibition at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington DC in 2008. This screenprint was included in a portfolio produced by the Museum to raise funds. Other artists included Elizabeth Blackadder and Kiki Smith. She and Lila (her principal female model and assistant) and I were in New York in 2008 for other shows featuring Paula’s work.
From a NY diary I kept: “Lila and I went by train to Washington for Paula’s big show at the National Women’s Museum. Paula had gone to the opening some months earlier. After the show where we enjoyed the pictures and friendly chats with the guards about being models etc, we proceeded to the Phillips collection, a wonderful small museum, second only to the Frick in NY, and after about an hour realised that if we dashed to the station we could get an earlier train to New York and be back in time to have dinner with Paula. We made it.”
Hand-painted proof on paper for ‘Devotion’ from ‘O Vinho’. 2007.
9.5 x 13.5 cm
Inscription: Dear Annie and Jack, unique proof BOAS FESTAS grande abraço
Signed: Paula Rego
‘Devotion’ from ‘O Vinho’. 2007. Lithograph printed by Robin Smart at the Royal College of Art.
Inscription: For Tony Happy birthday
Signed: Paula Rego
68.5 x 87.5 cm.
Like Paul Coldwell and Charlotte Hodes, Robin Smart and Cathie Pilkington are partners in life and work as artists. I have collaborated with both couples over the years. This lithograph showing me blotto was, unusually, not a challenging pose. The back story is interesting. The Portuguese writer, João de Melo, whom we met when he was cultural counsellor in Madrid, sent Paula his story ‘Wine’ and asked her if she would illustrate it. As it happened, she had several drawings she had done at the request of a Portuguese wine company for bottle labels. The company rejected these on the grounds that one of them could encourage children to drink, so Paula, never one to waste material, offered them to João, who wisely accepted them. This print was included in the deluxe version of ‘O Vinho’ published by Enitharmon Press. The book states correctly that Paula and I jointly translated the story, her only literary venture.
‘Wine’ from ‘O Vinho’. 2007. Lithograph printed by Robin Smart at the Royal College of Art.
Inscription: A/P
Signed: Paula Rego
56.5 x 44 cm.
A picture of inebriation; part of the series illustrated by Paula.
‘Ring-a-Ring
Inscription: A/P
of Roses’ 1989. Etching with aquatint.
Signed: Paula Rego
Image - 21 x 22 cm.
Another popular image from the ‘Nursery Rhymes’ series
‘Unicorn’. Lithograph. 2008
Inscription: Artist Proof
8/10
Signed: Paula Rego
78.5 x 53 cm.
This additional etching accompanied the deluxe edition of The Children’s Crusade
This artist proof was printed by the master lithographer Stanley Jones, at his Curwen Studio near Cambridge. Paula and Stanley were students together at the Slade and she gifted a numbered edition of this lithograph to recognise the studio on its 50th anniversary. It is a kind of parody of lithography. The model, as Tom Rosenthal says, playfully, is riding a “hobby horn”.
‘Baa Baa Blacksheep’. 1989. Etching and aquatint.
Inscription: A/P
Signed: Paula Rego
31 x 21 cm.
Paul Coldwell, who worked with Paula on the ‘Nursery Rhymes’ and many other series, told me this was the fastest selling print in the series. The ‘Nursery Rhymes’ and ‘Peter Pan’ were among her favourites, and both published as Folio Society books.
‘Olga’. 2000. Lithograph.
Inscription: Proof
Signed: Paula Rego
35 x 30 cm.
Printed by Stanley Jones. Paula wanted me to pose as a woman for a picture (Olga) to be juxtaposed with Lila (Paula’s long standing principal female model) as the male torturer in her accompanying pastel ‘The Interrogator’s Garden’ (2000). ‘Olga’ is an artist proof of an un-editioned print which preceded rather than followed the pastel of Olga. Just as Lila is blatantly female in a male outfit, I am obviously male in the little black dress which Tom Rosenthal’s wife Ann had donated to the studio. I only fitted into it by wearing it back to front. I invented a back story for Olga’s past. In the print, the little girl bestowing sexual favours is portrayed in a far less explicit way than she is in the painting. The original back story, as I told it, involved a fascist or Nazi au pair girl who has fled Germany or Poland to work for a reactionary family in Portugal. In a virtuoso critique of the picture, Deryn Rees-Jones recounts the history of the imagined back story as retold by Paula and I refer readers to Deryn’s book. The train smoke on the right of the painting but not in this print is, as I explained to Paula when I suggested she include it, a metonym for the trains heading for Auschwitz. Like ‘The Interrogator’s Garden’ it is a deeply disturbing painting. Paula never flinched from portraying horror.
‘Bait’. 1999. Etching and aquatint. Hand-coloured by Charlotte Hodes.
Inscription: For Tony Bait
Signed and dated: Paula Rego 99
29.2 x 19.2 cm.
This additional etching accompanied the deluxe edition of The Children’s Crusade which reproduces the twelve etchings in the series. The etchings were proofed and editioned by Paul Coldwell. No one can be sure what the story of the picture is and how it relates to the astonishing historical episode of the 13th century Children’s Crusade. Tom Rosenthal explains how unusual the phenomenon of the Children’s Crusade is, virtually unknown in high art, excepting Brecht’s version with paintings made by Sidney Nolan and music by Benjamin Britten. Paula was delighted at the subject matter, which was suggested to her by a friend, according to Blake Morrison (personal communication) who wrote an introduction to the book. There is no text ancient or new accompanying the images. It stands or falls as a visual narrative, leaving space for commentators to fill with their own thoughts. Tom Rosenthal sees the image as being of “abusive sexual play” and that the model, played by me, could be a priest (if so, he has more than his day job in common with the fictional Father Amaro) and the little girl a slave. One can see it too as a kind of religious black humour, a version of kissing the hand of the priest. Tom speculates that the boy top left is the leader of the crusade and that the naked girl beside him is “cheerful”. I would say rather she is defiant. My copy is inscribed “For Tony. Bait”. And signed “Paula Rego”.
‘Dancing
for Mr Rochester’. Lithograph. 2002.
Inscription: A/P 10/15
Signed: Paula Rego
48 x 45 cm.
I am Mr. Rochester in several of Paula’s Jane Eyre series, which was inspired as much by Jean Rhys’s prequel to Jane Eyre, The Wide Sargasso Sea, as by the Brontë novel itself. My military uniform in one picture had been previously worn on TV by Corin Redgrave, according to the theatre and television outfitters Gosprop, who in those days were a block or two from Paula’s studio which was in the aptly named Rochester Place.
Untitled study for an RCA ‘Secret Postcard’. Pen and ink and gouache. c. 2001
Inscription: Love Paula
15 x 10 cm
Artists donate a painted postcard for the annual fundraiser of the Royal College of Arts. If supporter’s eyes enables them to recognise the work of a famous artist such as Paula they get the chance to own the work at a much lower price than at a gallery. Paula had a show at the RCA and taught there occasionally.
Hand-coloured tile. 2002.
Inscription verso: Tony Kissing! Paula
13.5 x 13.5 cm.
The message on the back is faded but it says “Tony kissing! Paula”. Tony being Mr Rochester in the Jane Eyre lithograph series. This is an affectionate parody of the image of Jane ‘Loving Bewick’ in that series. The Bronte family owned a copy of Bewick’s History of British Birds. Like her author, Jane adores Thomas Bewick’s book and Paula shows the nourishment Jane receives from the pelican. In the tile Paula sexualises the more general statement about nourishment received from reading and from nature.
Inscription verso: HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Signed: Paula Rego
13.5 x 13.5 cm.
On the back only “Ratton”, the company in Lisbon run by Paula’s friend Ana Maria Viegas, whose late husband Julio Moureira was a landscape architect and novelist. Ana Maria commissioned several tiles designed by Paula but not hand painted. The image is classic azulejos blue and white, perhaps a hunter with his prey.
Tile. 2002. Galeria Ratton Cerâmicas.
‘Tasmanian Devil’. Undated. Watercolour on card.
Inscription: In the back room
They had a Tasmanian Devil for a pet
100/9573
14.8 x 10.5 cm
This is on the back of a posed photo of three respectable Portuguese from the Algarve, at a window. On the drawing Paula has inscribed: “In the back room they had a Tasmanian Devil for a pet”. And the mysterious “100/9573” also in her handwriting. Sounds almost like an edition number from an enormous print run. A Tasmanian devil is a carnivorous marsupial. The joke is that the three Portuguese don’t look like the kind of people who would have such a creature as a pet. On the other hand, what would the kind of people who would have such a creature as a pet look like?
‘The Conversion of the Minotaur’. Watercolour on paper. c. 2000
Inscription: The Conversion of the Minotaur
16.5 x 14.5 cm
Paula did a number of Minotaur images but I don’t think this little coloured sketch of a five year old boy is part of a series. The title is written in Paula’s hand and it is on the front of a folded (four sided) sheet. On the fourth side is written “love from Paula”. Paula adored Picasso’s minotaurs and had two of his famous prints on her sitting room mantelpiece. The one with a sleeping girl and the minotaur looming over her elicited a comment by Paula: “She’s going to have a surprise when she wakes up”. Over the twenty six years I was privileged to be alongside Paula, she never deviated from her ranking of the three greatest artists who ever lived: Velázquez, Goya and Picasso. If I add her own name to that list we have the Iberian Quartet. On an impulse I googled Iberian Quartet and it exists; terrific sound on the cusp of modern jazz and classical music: two Spanish and two Portuguese musicians.
‘Aunt’. Sketch on card.
Inscription: my dear aunt is like a dying bird. Her eyes never blink
13 x 10.5 cm
On the back of a postcard with a view of Cascais. This beautiful little sketch has an inscription: “My dear aunt is like a dying bird. Her eyes never blink”.
Two designs for Annie, Anthony’s sister’s 50th birthday party. 2003. Water colour and pen and ink on paper. 28 x 19cm.
One photograph of a series of 20 tee shirts and 5 sweatshirt screen prints of the yellow cat circulated to guests on Annie’s 50th.
Study of woman. 1997. ‘Walking on Air’.
Watercolour on paper
16 x 11.5 cm.
Inscription verso: “Walking on air. Thank you very much indeed. Paula”
Anthony and Paula at Carcanet 50th Anniversary Party, Tate Modern, October 2018.
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