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Notes
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This 1950 self portrait was painted when Graham was living in ‘a very dark room in Euston – at seven shillings and ninepence a week – in a building that was condemned’. Graham portrays himself as a slender, serious-minded youth with a noble-looking head. The treatment of the green-tinged background and the artist’s yellow and red skin is richly painted. The artist’s countenance exudes gentle melancholy, seemingly shy and perceptive. The loose tie, shirt and jacket half resemble a standard poet’s garb but also the kind of ‘floppy dung-coloured garment’ that the novelist Colin MacInnes said characterised male attire at the time. At 13, Graham was a student at Hammersmith School of Art, also studying at Saint Martin’s. In 1944, he joined the Grenadier Guards, but was transferred to ‘Stars in Battledress’ to design and make scenery.
Though freer in handling of paint and radically higher in light voltage than he was used to as a young painter, his 1980s paintings made in Israel – portraits of young Bedouin men, a Coptic priest, a young Arab woman – reach back to the poignant, introverted portraiture of Graham’s early days.
Title
Self Portrait
Date
1950
Medium
oil on board
Measurements
H 37.8 x W 25.5 cm
Accession number
PCF42
Acquisition method
acquired by Ruth Borchard as part of the original collection
Work type
Painting