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Notes
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This 1960 portrait is a record of the artist. The thickly impastoed, predominantly white palette exudes, curiously, a delicate, translucent air, like watercolour. The face itself appears on the point of dissolution. Though the picture’s hues appear both reticent and fluid, there is a clarity here in the way they are applied and in the firm contouring of features. The painting’s unaffected naturalness is heightened by the ‘natural’ attendant colours – redolent of earth, sand and vegetation. A Gallery One exhibition showed paintings of spiky-limbed human figures abstracted against blocks of near-white paint. In 2001, Millichip recalled Victor Musgrave, Director of Gallery One, saying ‘he just about made ends meet and showed the most avant-garde work in the UK.
After falling ill and ‘a spell of nearly two years in a Yorkshire sanatorium’, he studied at Brighton College of Art from 1952–1954. It was at Brighton that his subject matter of figures against vast expanses of beach began to figure as subject matter. In his current work, he says, ‘my main concern is with expressing ideas through pictorial dynamics’.
The Ruth Borchard Collection
Title
Self Portrait
Date
1960
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 35.5 x W 25.5 cm
Accession number
PCF86
Acquisition method
acquired by Ruth Borchard as part of the original collection
Work type
Painting
