Portraits

There are two exhibitions in London worthy of your attention and both on until early next year. Isn’t it frustrating to read a recommendation about a play/opera that is about to close or is sold out? First Paul Cézanne’s 19th century portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. I will report in due course, if there is anything worth writing about. Secondly, Chaïm Soutine’s portraits at The Courtauld Gallery.

I don’t expect you have heard of Soutine, I hadn’t and I’m not even sure how to pronounce his first name. It is a small show that won’t detain you for more than thirty minutes but try and go because you are not likely to see so many Soutine’s together again. Most of them are on loan from American galleries and private collections. So many block-buster shows make you pay to queue to see pictures that you can see free in solitude anytime in major galleries in London and the UK. I don’t think I have ever seen anything by Soutine, although it is possible that I have seen one or two in the US years ago.

If you have read the deservedly excellent reviews you will be aware that it is titled Cooks, Waiters and Bellboys. They are studio portraits of restaurant and hotel staff in their uniforms. It is important to understand that this is not his legacy. In so far as he is famous outside the art bubble it is for his friendship with Modigliani who painted him, was a mentor and it is for his landscapes. He was painting in the 1920s but his pictures are part of a continuum of artistic development, if that doesn’t sound too unbearably pretentious. There was not so long ago (well, 2008) an exhibition I saw at the Grand Palais, Picasso and The Masters. It juxtaposed pictures by Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, Rembrandt, Titian, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Renoir, Cezanne and Picasso’s riff on them. A scaled down version of this show later came to London. Now that was a block-buster worth seeing. The Soutine exhibition doesn’t attempt this so let me have a try.

First compare Jean Fouquet’s mid 15th century portrait of Charles VII (in the Louvre) with Soutine’s, The Little Pastry Cook (1922/23) on loan from the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. They both sit in front of a curtained background on formal chairs. Both pictures reveal much about the sitters, so different in time and status. I think Soutine is saying that a pastry boy has as much right to be painted as a king and as much character to reveal. Neither look happy.

Now look at Soutine’s Butcher Boy (1920/21) on loan from a private collection.

It looks so much like a Francis Bacon that if he hadn’t pre-dated Bacon by nearly half a century he would be accused of plagiarism.

Afterwards we went to The Delaunay for lunch and I only just restrained myself from photographing the young serving boy behind the hatch who had stepped straight out of one of Soutine’s timeless pictures. Instead here is a portrait from my private collection. It is by Walter Firpo, a disciple of Albert Gleizes like Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, and possibly is of Gleizes. Artists do love painting each other.