Patrick George, Portraits

Patrick George

Patrick George (1923 – 2016)

Portraits 17 March – 20 April 2022 Monday – Friday 10 - 5.30 Saturday by appointment Kindly supported by

Browse & Darby 19 Cork Street London W1S 3LP Tel: 020 7734 7984 Fax: 020 7851 6650 email: art@browseanddarby.co.uk www.browseanddarby.co.uk

Introduction It is sometimes asserted that the concern with precise measurement that underlay many of Patrick George’s major works restricted his paintings’ capacity to communicate the reality of a given motif in all its fullness, whether visually or psychologically. The portraits in this exhibition show, however, that the opposite is the case. Patrick’s method was a means of releasing the subject and of giving the presence of each individual an unusual intensity.

Patrick is justly celebrated for his pictures of landscape, painted outdoors from observation. For an artist intent on recording accurately what he saw, the vagaries of a motif in terms of weather, light and the growth of trees, leaves and crops posed multiple challenges. The registering of time also became a live issue. When his subject was a person, observed in interior space, challenges of different kinds were automatically introduced. At the same time the concentration of the situation brought into more explicit focus the demands of Patrick’s kind of painting, for the artist. For the viewer, however, a painting seems to represent not only the visual facts the painter discovered but also Patrick’s search itself, and these two phenomena are experienced as a single thing. Each portrait is the record of a process, but as much as a pinning down this is experienced as an opening up. It reveals to the viewer not only the unique appearance and presence of the sitter but also the unique sensibility of the artist. In Patrick’s case, the artist is revealed to be not so much a control freak (dedicated though he was to his task) as a wide-eyed explorer.

Patrick was not trying to ‘express’ the sitter’s character, but to record what he saw. He wanted the process of doing so to be as far as possible independent of preconceptions. His attitude, however, was not detached, for his art, controlled though it is, declares the undying wonder at the appearance of things, in all their improbability yet actuality, that runs through all his work. His portraits celebrate the uniqueness of each sitter, as his landscapes do each tree, but with the added electricity of the human subject and encounter.

The recording of one person as seen by one painter in a limited time and place is a workmanlike task. The beauty or the strangeness of each detail seen are captured not by delectation, alchemy or sleight of hand, but by directness and fidelity.

From a portrait’s inception, its central subject was in a set position in a defined space. For the likeness to be true, the sitter’s exact location in relation at once to the whole of the depicted space and to the painter’s own eye had to be firmly established. The marks made on a flat surface are therefore the record not only, vitally, of a unique living being but also of an occupied space, of the

relations between everything seen within it, of the light that made all this possible, of the decisions the painter made and of the painter’s presence. In fact, they are the record not only of the painter being there, but also, in a sense, of the painter’s actual being. This is why each portrait by Patrick George is in some sense a portrait of him, as well as of the sitter. In part this is because the way he painted, far from being a dry procedure, was so open and exposed. The viewer not only sees the marks he made, but observes and somehow even feels him making them. They register the sizing up of every mark, the decision, the action, and also the multiple value of paint for the artist - as beautiful material, as the means of making marks and also, in its infinite hues, as the agent of unity across the whole picture surface.

These portraits declare their period strongly, in the various details of the fashions of their day and also in their strange conjunction of a severe fidelity to observation with the greater painterly freedom of the postwar years. But each is also timeless.

Although Patrick gives the viewer the whole of the observed space and a living sense of the distances within that space and the relation of one element within it to another, he does not give equal attention to every detail seen. For he is painting a portrait and the fundamental component of such a work, the sitter’s very essence, is the head. Not only, therefore, does he make everything lead to the head but the placing of the head within the observed space is crucial.

Though always key, the head in Patrick’s portraits took on increased concentration, as time passed, in relation to its surroundings. He located it within ever wider space and by thus in a sense isolating it he accentuated a stillness that transcends both the accidents of a given era’s ‘look’ and what might be described as the ‘dance’ of the incidents, marks and even gestures that takes place around it. That is so, even though every one of these particulars is crucial both in itself and in its contribution to the whole. Every incident and every interval is charged.

The finality Patrick gave his portrait heads makes them almost like sculptures, so fixed and palpable are they. Yet they always direct attention to the painting process, to such a degree that they give the viewer the feeling of being present as these images are painted, and also of being, themselves, in a particular space. Indeed, each portrait is also a portrait of a space. But it is a portrait above all of an encounter, of someone observed, who is so very individual, and who in occupying the space is doing something. Both artist and sitter are active, the two of them working together in an intense set-up that is a concentrated situation located in a period of time.

Within this place, stringent exactitude is fused with freedom of touch and gesture. The image achieved is at once strikingly severe and strikingly sensuous. Patrick’s approach was at once dispassionate and deeply psychological. And in every portrait there is unexpectedly much going on. These are master lessons not only in control, unification and resolution but also in using structure to catch life live. Indeed, ‘despite’ the pronounced objectivity of his procedure Patrick gave us portraits that are not only beautifully observed but also inward. This is quite a feat, and one not always associated with the work of painters to whom measurement is of more than normal importance.

On the face of it there are two Patrick Georges - the painter of the grand, economical, controlled major portraits and the artist who painted freely, sensuously, sometimes even humorously, when he recorded his delight in everyday things that people might normally disregard. But somehow the two are really one, for a quality that marks his work, whatever the motif, and including his landscapes, his pictures of buildings, his still lifes and even his unoccupied rooms, is a sympathetic and distinctly individual humanity. It should therefore be no surprise that this quality lies at the heart of his work as a painter of portraits.

This exhibition surveys more than four decades of portrait painting. The distance travelled can be seen at a glance by comparing the 1949 portrait of Jo Higson with At Arm’s Length, which was completed forty-six years later. In brief, over these years Patrick steadily opened the space in a picture, severely reduced the number of things depicted and increased the concentration of both looking and feeling. This is saying much, considering that Patrick’s empathy with his sitters was strong from the first. Moreover, ‘cluttered’ though the early portraits appear by comparison with those of his pared-down maturity, they already combine the vivid representation of an actual person with evidence of Patrick’s instinct to establish in each picture a ‘landscape’ of formal markers. Individually specific though these are, they were a means, paradoxically, of giving the viewer as thorough a sense as possible of full human encounter. Studying these portraits in detail is a revelation, therefore, both because of the likenesses achieved and because of the rich variety and the sheer living presence of the marks made.

Patrick loved upward progressions. In theory, one might equally say downward, were it not that in his portraits the progressions serve the pre-eminence of the head, towards which they lead. For example, in Hilary Lane, Night Portrait the eye moves up a seeming stack, from the pale lavender of her garment to the pale-putty neck (and its base) to the rosy face to the object-like helmet of hair, ‘on’ which, created by the light directly overhead, appears at the top a tattered white chevron.

Further elements of this sequence are the pale-yellow triangle that defines the end of the sitter’s nose and the small circular form of the ‘marble’ on which the chevron balances. June with Red Belt (a construction within a defined, enclosing space) displays an articulated terrain through which the viewer is able in imagination to make their way, from one point to the next. At the heart of this ‘landscape’ is what one experiences as a firm, fixed, rising progression from the point of junction between finger and thumb, to the giant pin-like fastening of the belt, to the brooch, to one nostril and finally to the line of division between the dark and light areas of the sitter’s hair.

Though in no way flaunted, this sequence attracts attention in abstract terms, even though its elements are part of an image that is insistently naturalistic. Many things are going on at once.

The extraordinary belt and the shirt are not only shown but Patrick somehow emphasizes that they are fabricated things, the latter with its stitched sleeves and distinctly constructed collar and front panel. At the same time, the shirt’s transparency is beautifully conveyed, sensitively revealing the undergarment. Patrick’s paintings famously sharpen our sense of lateral distances within the scene depicted, but they also heighten awareness of the progression in depth from whatever is closest to the painter to the farthest point observed. He also exposes just what has been laid down physically, highlighting the even narrower but still significant distance that lies between surface and support.

Each of Patrick’s portraits creates its own world. Obviously he engaged, every time, with a new sitter and/or a different situation, but his portraits give the feeling that in each work afresh he not only sought a likeness but also set himself a distinct and particular conceptual task. At Arm’s Length is an extreme example. It is an object-lesson in representing distance within close space. It is also a most arresting portrait and an unusually clear demonstration that in Patrick’s portraits the sitter is working, as well as the artist. The sitter’s fingertips seem to enter our own space. They are, as the title indicates, seen at arm’s length from the painter, but the eye then moves in lucid intervals from fingertips to table-edge (in fact a thin, suspended bar of wood) to thumb tips to the sitter’s right wrist, to the tip of her nose, to her face, to the crown of her head and finally to the wall beyond.

Though only an arm’s length behind her, its texture is so amorphous as to be more like infinite space.

Insistently frontal, this image so distinguishes degrees of depth as to give the viewer the sense of inhabiting the narrow space shown. It also heightens the sense of time, combining very immediate revelation of the sitter’s presence with a feeling of permanence. The timeless quality is accentuated by the isolation of the head, which stands out clear and defined against a fluid ground. It is the culmination not of an upward progression but of the inward movement, in stages, that is part of the picture’s theme. As in some other portraits, one iris is highly focused and the other a blur, but this does not matter as the realisation of the motif is absolute.

‘Motif’, though literally accurate, seems an inappropriate term for so intensely human an image (and one that speaks so eloquently of connection between artist and sitter). At Arm’s Length is one of those images in which a powerful stillness is conveyed along with the sense that the sitter could leap into movement in a trice. These opposite properties are pushed to extremes, making it the more remarkable that each work is so resolved.

Susan Engledow 1966-70, an earlier and also distance-obsessed portrait of the same sitter, already communicates an intense sense of purpose in the sitter. Its effectiveness is enhanced by the severe reduction of both colour and surrounding incident that is a hallmark of Patrick’s portraits. It is a beautiful study of off-white, grey, mushroom, pink, brown and black, each of these hues distinct, yet all participating in one another. As in so many of the portraits, the figure’s presence is enhanced by being framed, within the picture, while the active play of elements is enlivened by slender linear ‘intrusions’ at extreme right and lower left. Here, as elsewhere, evenness of tone has the effect of opening up subtleties in colour relations. Paradoxically, however, Patrick’s delight in close tonal rapport, which is usually predominant, is often underscored by his introduction of one block of brighter colour, the crisp contrast energizing the action as a whole.

The two superb portraits of Patrick’s sister Betsy are clear examples of this. In each, we meet a sitter who is powerfully individual, yet the smaller picture in particular, where Betsy wears blue, is an instance of two ideas of a human head existing in a single image. In one conception the head seems obdurate like stone, standing forward from the contrasting fluidity of the starconnected circles behind it, which fade in and out; in the other, soft living pinks confirm the same head’s living reality.

When Patrick’s portraits are seen from a normal distance the head or figure has wonderful clarity and definition. It is surprising, therefore, what animation (and how much activity) is revealed on closer inspection. Natalie Dower in Profile is a harmony of white, black and umber that discloses, at lower centre, a surprise sliver of green. A seemingly inserted blank, off-white plane, butted against the edge of the wall, is juxtaposed excitingly with the window’s glazing bars.

This scheme announces the clean, ordered nature of the set-up of which Dower, though seated well to the right, is the imperturbable focus. Yet her head, on examination, is a battleground of flurries, notches and revisions, while the cascade of free and sometimes looping lines that links her shoulder to her bracelet leads finally to the almost electric buzz of contiguous touches that lies beneath the junction of sleeve with wrist. In the severe but powerful Portrait of Victoria George it is fascinating how a blizzard of slashes, scribbles, meandering lines and superimposed blotches

produces an image that is so firm - the head being like a sculptural object – yet also conveys such human reality. The large portrait of Anne Crosby abounds in bursts of tiny clustered marks, often in syncopated colours that suggest a laboratory or Times Square, yet these notations help generate a figure that is both still and statuesque. Anne’s face and hair present contrasting zones, each with its own type of animated gesture or mark, which are brought into simultaneous opposition and unity. The hair of several sitters, so natural when their portrait is seen as a whole, often constitutes, in detail, a torrent of fluidity and downward motion, always juxtaposed with something motionless and firm.

Both in such varied particulars and in the steady revelation of the grander shape-relations that complement and serve each human image, Patrick’s portraits invite - almost enjoin - slow looking. Each gradually discloses both sitter and artist, a process enriched by the many dualities in which each image abounds – between stillness and animation, emptiness and fullness, constraint and freedom, and between fidelity to a procedure and the living, breathing, enduring presence that is its outcome.

The last two portraits Patrick painted are the tender, simple-yet-subtle Portrait 1994 and the significantly larger Susan Engledow, close to. Portrait 1994 is on the same support as the bright, spontaneous and wonderfully natural Small nude, the two images being painted side by side, a day apart. All three paintings named in this paragraph are of the same sitter. The extraordinary portrait of Susan close-to was completed last. Its composition is severely simple, the blue-andwhite-clad figure culminating in the face (itself diffused by blue and white), of which the features are intensively detailed. Rock-like, the head stands before a contrasting ground that glows with a fiery richness and is again in soft focus. The softness is not, however, so amorphous as to prevent the head being framed, within the picture space, by a subtly-defined linear surround. Though thus so closely located, her immediacy reinforced by a pervasive illumination that culminates in the brilliant light around the hair-parting, the sitter’s character seems both assured and unconfined, her gaze infinitely far-seeing. The portrait is in fact a celebration of sight, the sitter’s and the artist’s, working together. This loving image proclaims how Patrick was anything but a machine. It affirms with unusual strength a truth at the heart of his practice, namely that his painting always shows us not only what he saw but also what he felt.

Richard Morphet, 2022

PATRICK GEORGE 1923 1941-42 1942-46 1946 1949 1959 1960-61 1961

1976 1983 1985-88 2016

Born in Manchester Studied at Edinburgh College of Art (Andrew Grant Scholar) RNVR Camberwell School of Art Joined staff of Slade School of Fine Art (part time) Nigerian College of Art & Technology, Zaria, Head of Department Teaching at various art schools Slade School of Fine Art (part time) Member of art panel to implement Coldstream Report - NCDAD Member of Arts Council Member of Eastern Arts Reader, UCL Professor UCL Slade Professor - Director, Slade School Died, Suffolk.

ONE MAN EXHIBITIONS 1975 Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk 1980 Arts Council Retrospective Exhibition, Serpentine Gallery, London, and tour 1984, 89, 94, 98 Browse & Darby, London 2003, ‘07, ‘10, ‘13, ‘17, ‘21, ‘22 Selected Group Exhibitions 1981 Eight Figurative Painters, Mellon Center for British Art, Yale & LA Louver Gallery, Los Angeles 1984 The Hard Won Image, Tate Gallery, London 1985 A Singular Vision, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter 1994 Five Protagonists, Browse & Darby, London 2010 A Critic’s Choice-selected by Andrew Lambirth, Browse & Darby, London Public Collections Arts Council St Catherine’s College, Cambridge Chantry Bequest Gipsy Hill College Government Art Collection Government House, Singapore Huddersfield, Municipal Gallery Imperial War Museum

Kings College, London National Portrait Gallery Norwich Castle Museum Reuters Somerville College, Oxford Stuart House, Cambridge Tate Gallery, London University College, London

1. Jo Higson, 1949, oil on canvas, 76 x 50 cm

2. June George, circa 1952, oil on board, 44 x 39 cm

3. June with Red Belt, circa 1952-53, oil on canvas, 94 x 62 cm

6. Head of a Girl, oil on wood, 107 x 61 cm

7. Mrs N George, 1962, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm

8. Anne Crosby, 1962-66, oil on canvas, 152.4 x 101.6 cm

9. Enid Starkie, 1963, oil on canvas, 66 x 53 cm

10. Miranda Margetson, 1964-65, oil on canvas, 71 x 67 cm

11. Natalie Dower in Profile, 1963, oil on canvas, 137 x 106 cm

12. Portrait of Hilary Lane, circa 1965, oil on canvas, 107 x 91 cm

13. Hilary Lane, Night Portrait, 1965-6, oil on canvas, 107 x 91.5 cm

14. Janice Dilley, 1967-69, oil on canvas, 76.2 x 61 cm

15. Susan Engledow, 1966-70, oil on canvas, 160 x 107 cm

16. Susan Engledow, Grey Jumper, circa 1968, oil on canvas, 112 x 91 cm

17. Jud with White Stockings, 1969-72, oil on canvas, 91.5 x 91.5 cm

18. Portrait of Jud, circa 1970, oil on canvas, 49 x 52 cm

19. Kate George, 1973, oil on canvas, 91 x 91 cm

20. Portrait of Victoria George, circa 1979, oil on canvas, 71.5 x 71.5 cm

22. Darla Jane Gilroy, circa 1980, oil on canvas, 86 x 90 cm

21. Portrait of Betsy, 1980s, oil on canvas, 63.5 x 84.5 cm

23. Betsy Spedding, the Artist’s Sister, 1985, oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm

24. Portrait of Horatia and Claude, circa 1986, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 129.5 cm

25. At Arm’s Length, 1990-94, oil on canvas, 77.5 x 103.2 cm

26. Small Nude, and Portrait, 1994, oil on board, 16 x 19.5 cm; 16 x 21 cm

27. Susan Engledow, Close To, 1994-5, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm

28. Brian Knox at Sloper House, 1998, oil on canvas, 50.8 x 82.5 cm

Catalogue 1.

Jo Higson, 1949, oil on canvas, 76 x 50 cm

2.

June George, circa 1952, oil on board, 44 x 39 cm

3.

June with Red Belt, circa 1952-53, oil on canvas, 94 x 62 cm

4.

Elspeth Playing the Violin, 1954, 44 x 74 cm

5.

Portrait of Mrs Forge, circa 1940s, oil on canvas, 73.5 x 59 cm

6.

Head of a Girl, oil on wood, 107 x 61 cm

7.

Mrs N George, 1962, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm

8.

Anne Crosby, 1962-66, oil on canvas, 152.4 x 101.6 cm

9.

Enid Starkie, 1963, oil on canvas, 66 x 53 cm

10.

Miranda Margetson, 1964-65, oil on canvas, 71 x 67 cm

11.

Natalie Dower in Profile, 1963, oil on canvas, 137 x 106 cm

12.

Portrait of Hilary Lane, circa 1965, oil on canvas, 107 x 91 cm

13.

Hilary Lane, Night Portrait, 1965-6, oil on canvas, 107 x 91.5 cm

14.

Janice Dilley, 1967-69, oil on linen, 76.2 x 61 cm

15.

Susan Engledow, 1966-70, oil on canvas, 160 x 107 cm

16.

Susan Engledow, Grey Jumper, circa 1968, oil on canvas, 112 x 91 cm

17.

Jud with White Stockings, 1969-72, oil on canvas, 91.5 x 91.5 cm

18.

Portrait of Jud, circa 1970, oil on canvas, 49 x 52 cm

19.

Kate George, 1973, oil on canvas, 91 x 91 cm

20.

Portrait of Victoria George, circa 1979, oil on canvas, 71.5 x 71.5 cm

21.

Portrait of Betsy, 1980s, oil on canvas, 63.5 x 84.5 cm

22.

Darla Jane Gilroy, circa 1980, oil on canvas, 86 x 90 cm

23.

Betsy Spedding, the Artist’s Sister, 1985, oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm

24.

Portrait of Horatia and Claude, circa 1986, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 129.5 cm

25.

At Arm’s Length, 1990-94, oil on canvas, 77.5 x 103.2 cm

26.

Small Nude, and Portrait, 1994, oil on board, 16 x 19.5 cm; 16 x 21 cm

27.

Susan Engledow, Close To, 1994-5, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm

28.

Brian Knox at Sloper House, 1998, oil on canvas, 50.8 x 82.5 cm

29.

Antony Eyton, late 1940s, pencil, 20.2 x 25.3 cm

30.

Self-Portrait, Aug 2, 1954, Oxford, 1954, pencil, 18.4 x 13.3 cm

31.

Susan Engledow, circa 1966-70, pencil, 25.4 x 20.4 cm

32.

Self-Portrait, pencil, 25.3 x 20.2 cm

33.

Seated Figure, pencil, 29.7 x 20.9 cm

34.

Sleeping Figure, pencil, 29.6 x 41.9 cm

Browse & Darby 19 Cork Street London W1S 3LP