10Story

25 January 2010

Rt Hon Baroness Thatcher

 

Rt Hon Baroness Thatcher. Henry Mee (b. 1955). London, 1990 Photograph. Original oil on canvas. 284.1 x 198.2 cm Palace of Westminster Collection © Henry Mee. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist.

Baroness Thatcher said of this portrait “It is very, very powerful”, "Like it? I love it!" and, when it was put to her she that looked a little formidable, declared: "After eleven years on the front bench I'm no pushover."   Writing in the catalogue to Henry Mee’s exhibition British Eminences (London, Sotheby’s, 1990), author Anthony Powell describes the artist’s working methods, which apply equally to the portrait of Baroness Thatcher, shown here, as to his own. This can be read in the open copy of the catalogue in the adjacent table case. While giving permission for the photograph of his painting to be shown here at reduced size, the artist comments: “Size and scale are contextual, as is the physicality. The texture (a problem for reproduction: an even light flattens and light from the side distorts the tonal values across the picture surface) and the colour temperature, density and contrast of the reproduction can never be the same. The Medici (for example) recognized the aura or quality of the painted surface in context and used this presence to create a feeling of the sacred, through the sensual enjoyment of materials in context. Art and architecture through time have been used to underpin power. A 48 sheet billboard of the Mona Lisa is utterly different from the Louvre's carte postale, or the original behind bullet proof glass. Walter Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction "to ask for the original makes no sense" considered some of this but, writing early as he did, did not have the view from a post Warhol world. Jasper Johns' flags are more painterly than people realize, knowing them from reproductions.” (personal communication, December 2009, January 2010).

 
 
 

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