From an Italian Renaissance bishop, Paolo Giovio who became known for his systematic collecting of portraits of famous people, to American Henry Frick, and to the formation of dedicated portrait galleries in the UK (today still nearly without parallel) art collecting has often placed a premium on portraiture. London based art writer Aleksandra Todorovic has picked some of her favourite works which were sold at Sotheby’s last week and reflects on the role portraiture played in the modern era.
By Aleksandra Todorovic
As I wandered the galleries of Sotheby’s Bond Street last week, I was met with a trove of museum-class portraits hanging cheek by jowl. In my mind they collectively trace the trajectory of modern European art. The genre of portraiture is rich and complex historically servings many purposes and with multifaceted connotations. In centuries past, it was mostly used to assert a position of wealth, power or social status - presenting a realistic or purportedly realistic depiction of a patron or their family members. From the late 19th century to the present day, numerous artists have disrupted this traditional notion of portraiture in myriad ways, opening a breadth of stylistic and ideological approaches and interpretations.
The majority of the works on display in Sotheby’s galleries came from the distinguished collection of the London-born businessman Joe Lewis, and were assembled over the last three and a half decades with what was clearly a unique vision and an eye for true masterpieces. From the first acquisitions in the early 1990’s, including works on paper by modern masters from Van Gogh to Matisse and Picasso, the collection grew to become as original as it is eminent, and placing the human figure right at its core. Rather than being centred around any particular art movement, the collection focuses on the human condition in all its richness and complexity.
Walking through the galleries, you are given a wonderfully vivid lesson in the history of modern art through portraiture which starts with a magnificent, 2-metre tall painting by Gustave Caillebotte of his friend Paul Hugot. Created in 1878 and included in the Fifth Impressionist Exhibition two years later, it shows Caillebotte coming from the tradition of Realism, but painting his subject in a modernist manner. Depicting Hugot in a formal, elegant dark suit and coat and wearing a top hat, Caillebotte creates the image of contemporary Parisian high society.
Caillebotte’s dapper gentleman stands in sharp contrast to Edgar Degas’ most iconic sculpture Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, created around the same time and first seen in public in the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition held in 1881. Noted at the time for its modernity as well as perceived vulgarity, this now-revered sculpture was at the time largely considered anything between daring and shocking. Young students at the Paris Opéra ballet school, like the girl Degas based this image on, typically came from working class families and were disparagingly called ‘Opéra rats’. By choosing to depict the reality that stood behind the polished front of public performances attended by the upper classes, Degas changed the course of portraiture while at the same time creating what would become one of the most iconic modern sculptures.
If every picture tells a story, few tell one as dramatic as that hidden behind Gustav Klimt’s serene Portrait of Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsöványi) from 1902. The sitter is the daughter of Sophie and Dr Anton Loew, who was Klimt’s patron and an early supporter of the Vienna Secession. Commissioned by the parents of the 19-year-old model, the painting reaches far beyond the descriptive and biographical value of portraiture to create an image of ethereal, timeless beauty.
For several decades, the portrait remained in the family of the sitter Gertha Loew, who eventually married Elemér Baruch von Felsőványi. Although her family had converted to Roman Catholicism, the Jewish-born Gertha was persecuted by the National Socialists. In 1939 she was forced to flee Austria, leaving behind this painting together with the rest of her possessions, and eventually settled in the United States, where she spent the rest of her life. During the Second World War, the portrait was acquired by Gustav Ucicky, who was one of Klimt’s illegitimate sons, and whose widow eventually gifted it to the Klimt Foundation in Vienna. In 2013 a process of returning the work to the heirs of Gertha Felsöványi resulted in an agreement reached between the heirs and the Klimt Foundation, and the painting was subsequently sold at auction, where it was acquired by the Lewis collection.
Kazimir Malevich’s Head of a Peasant from 1911 is a rare gouache from a formative time of the artist’s career, when his main source of inspiration was Russian peasant culture. Dating from his Primitivist period, this is a study Malevich created in preparation for his large-scale oil Peasant Funeral, which is now lost and only known from a black-and-white photograph. Like his friends Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Malevich sought to combine Russian folk traditions with the latest trends in Western art which was becoming increasingly accessible through magazine reproductions, and magnificent examples of which were abundantly represented in the collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov.
In Head of a Peasant, Malevich used the genre of portraiture to represent an archetypal image, rather than to depict a particular individual. Included in the legendary exhibition Donkey’s Tail held in Moscow in 1912, this work, along with many others on exhibition by Malevich, Goncharova and Larionov, demonstrated the artists’ focus on local folk imagery. Synthesising a range of influences, including Russian icons as well as elements of Fauve and Cubist art, Head of a Peasant is a rare example of Malevich’s Primitivist painting, exemplifying an important step in his artistic development.
Also included in the 1912 Donkey’s Tail exhibition was Larionov’s Head of a Soldier painted in 1910 and coming to auction from a private Swiss collection. Building on the Russian avant-garde artists’ experiments in the Neo-Primitivist manner, this portrait witnesses Larionov’s transition towards Rayonism, a style that he pioneered which would prove to be a pivotal step on the road towards abstraction. Reflecting the same sources of influence as Malevich’s portrait of a peasant woman - Cubism, Fauvism and Expressionism - Head of a Soldier demonstrates Larionov’s avant-garde approach to painting: flat surfaces and bold use of colour that deliberately exposes areas of unpainted, primed canvas.
The Russian avant-garde artists had many counterparts in Western Europe who leaned heavily on primitivist sources, albeit looking outwards towards non-European cultures rather than their own. Few were more crucial in pioneering African, ancient Egyptian and Greek artefacts than Amedeo Modigliani, whose portraiture is represented in the Lewis collection by two outstanding examples - Nu assis au collier from 1917-18 and Homme à la pipe (Le Notaire de Nice)from 1918-19. An intimately and seductively painted female nude, Nu assis au collier effortlessly blends antique and Renaissance sources with modernity. Rather than portraying a named individual, it is a portrait of an anonymous young woman; her frontal pose makes her vulnerable and exposed to the viewer’s scrutiny, whilst her closed eyes and intimate hand gestures render her introspective, distant and out of reach.
René Magritte’s exquisite gouache La Belle promenade from 1965 tackles the genre of portraiture in a more tangential manner, yet one that delves deep into the question of the human condition. Here, the artist has reduced his famous bowler-hatted man to a mere silhouette, cut out of a background of rich foliage to reveal a blue sky with fluffy clouds. Painted with Magritte’s characteristically meticulous precision, this image, at once straightforward and sublimely mysterious, conjures up connotations of a generic, impersonal figure, one that is seen as an opening, a portal to a world of infinite possibilities.
Pablo Picasso’s Buste de femme from 1938 is a supreme example of the artist’s complex and multi-layered approach to portraiture. The subject is Dora Maar, a Surrealist photographer of great intelligence and beauty, who was the artist’s companion and muse throughout the years of the Spanish Civil War and most of the Second World War. Maar’s face became the catalyst of Picasso’s radical formal inventions; his earlier Cubist idiom and the drama of the historical moment converge on Dora’s physique to create some of the most revolutionary portraits of the 20th century.
Following in Picasso’s footsteps, Francis Bacon’s Two Studies for Self-Portrait from 1977 is an anguished, emotionally charged composition. Bacon’s self-portraits are at once highly intimate, reflecting the artist’s innermost feelings in the years that followed the sudden death of his partner George Dyer, and universal, giving visual form to the subject of the human condition. Like Bacon’s diptych, Lucian Freud’s Sleeping by the Lion Carpet from 1995-96 is a powerful image filled with conflicting emotions. A monumental full nude depiction of Sue Tilley, a government benefits employee from London who was a frequent sitter for the artist, the painting exposes her body to the viewer’s scrutiny in astonishing detail, invoking a sense of intimacy and vulnerability, which are only augmented by the large scale of the canvas. At the same time, her nonchalant sleeping pose and the scale of her body imbue her with power, as the alert lioness from the carpet behind her watches over her slumbered body.
A few days later, as I watched the auction unfold and thought about the new homes these modern faces would find themselves living in, I was struck by the enthusiastic bidding which recognised the rarity and exceptional quality of art on offer. The highest price of the evening was achieved by Modigliani’s nude, which sold for over £48 million. Magritte’s bowler-hatted man was sold for £16 million, quadrupling its high pre-sale estimate and establishing a record price for the artist’s work on paper. Klimt’s magnificent portrait of Gertha Loew Felsőványi fetched over £36 million, while Freud’s portrait of Sue Tilley, which had never previously been at auction, was sold for over £29 million. Overall, the collection realised just under £300 million, setting the new record for a single-owner sale in Europe. For those of us like myself fortunate enough to have walked through the galleries ahead of the auction, the chance to see and absorb so many masterpieces hung together felt as fleeting as a sitter’s expression caught by a painter’s brush. Yet, like those subjects - both the named and anonymous ones - immortalised in paint or bronze, the portraits will surely remain strongly imprinted in our memories.
Images:
Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsöványi), 1902, oil on canvas
Kazimir Malevich, Head of a Peasant, 1911, gouache on card
Mikhail Larionov, Head of a Soldier, 1911, oil on canvas
Amedeo Modigliani, Nu assis au collier, 1917-18, oil on canvas
Amedeo Modigliani, Homme à la pipe (Le Notaire de Nice), 1918-19, oil on canvas
René Magritte, La Belle promenade, 1965, gouache on paper
